Here are some important clarifications about how grades will be assigned for individual homework assignments:
Correctness determinations will be based on the intention of the problem. As long as we believe that the intention was clear, we will deduct points from solutions that do not solve the intended problem. We will not listen to legalistic arguments about why poor solutions should be considered correct.
We may deduct points for other reasons than correctness:
Legibility: We cannot give credit to solutions that cannot be read. Furthermore, we will deduct points whenever the grader has to spend a significant amount of time just trying to determine what the submission says.
Clarity: The goal of writing is to make the ideas clear to the reader, so the grader will deduct points for solutions that are unclear to them. (Note that we will not give points back just because the writing was clear to the writer. It must be clear to reader, and only the reader can say whether that was the case.)
Style: While it is generally better to err on the side of writing too much rather than too litle in this class, we may deduct points for solutions that are overly verbose or hard to follow.
We will not debate the amount of points deducted for mistakes. Those are at the descretion of the course staff.
Overall percentage scores for the course will be determined roughly as follows:
| 4% | Section Participation |
| 56% | Homework (7% per assignment) |
| 15% | Midterm exam |
| 25% | Final exam |
However, since the homework and test problems we will give out in the course have not been tried by students before, we feel the need to leave ourselves room to adjust these weights based on how students perform. If an assignment turns out to be much more difficult (or much easier) than expected, we would want to decrease the weight on that assignment relative to others.
The final weighting for each assignment will be chosen when the grades for that assignment are released. Likewise for the exams. Each student's overall percentage will then be a weighted average using the weights chosen in that manner rather than the fixed table of weights shown above (though we expect the weights we choose will be very close to what is in the table).
Overall percentage scores will be translated into course grades as described in the following table:
| 96.5% | 4.0 |
| 94.5% | 3.9 |
| 92.5% | 3.8 |
| 90.5% | 3.7 |
| 88.5% | 3.6 |
| 86.0% | 3.5 |
| 84.0% | 3.4 |
| 82.0% | 3.3 |
| 80.0% | 3.2 |
| 78.0% | 3.1 |
| 75.5% | 3.0 |
| 73.5% | 2.9 |
| 71.5% | 2.8 |
| 69.5% | 2.7 |
| 67.5% | 2.6 |
| 65.0% | 2.5 |
| 63.0% | 2.4 |
| 61.0% | 2.3 |
Grades for scores below 60% will be determined by the instructors on a case-by-case basis. (In particular, we reserve the right to pass students whose percentages would fall below 2.0 if we continued the table above.)
As an example, an average of 90% on the homework assignments and 80% on both the midterm and final exam would give an overall percentage score of 86.4%, using the tentative weights in the first table above. Per the second table, that translates to a 3.5 grade as it is above 86.0% and below 88.5%. In a similar manner, an average of 80% on the homework assignments and 70% on both the midterm and final would would translate to a 3.0 grade, while an average of 70% on the the homework assignments and 60% on both exams would translate to a 2.5 grade.
As noted in the syllabus, most homework assignments will also include the opportunity for extra credit. This will be incorporated into the grades, but it will have only a tiny effect, meaning that it will only change grades that are very close to a dividing line. Generally speaking, a student who completes a reasonable amount of extra credit would expect to see an 85.9% score bumped up to 86.0%, which would become a 3.5. However, in no circumstances will extra credit increase a student's percentage score by more than 0.3%.