Syllabus

Course Goals

• Read and write statements involving combinatorics and probability (including conditioning and both discrete and continuous probabilities).
• Model situations with appropriate probability tools (including standard random variables).
• Calculate and estimate probabilities using standard tools (including Bayes Rule, the Central Limit Theorem, and concentration inequalities).
• Understand and use discrete, continuous, and multi-variable probability distributions.
• Write short Python programs to simulate simple random processes.

Assessments

Grades will be based off homework assignments, concept checks, quizzes, a midterm, and a final. There will also be an opportunity for a small amount of extra credit.

The course is designed with "formative" and "summative" assessments. Formative assessments (concept checks, problem sets) are aimed at practice. That is, they are supposed to form skills in you. Formative assessments include grades and feedback, but the goal is to learn. Taking shortcuts on formative assessments might not have a grade impact immediately, but shortcuts mean you won't have the needed skills formed when you get to summative assessments (the exams).

Concept Checks

For each lecture, there will be a small Gradescope quiz reviewing the concepts covered in that lecture. The material in this course builds on itself quickly: concept checks are a good way for you to detect misconceptions and ask questions early. Concept checks are due at noon (12pm) of the next lecture. For example, a concept check released on Wednesday will be due Friday at 12pm. We highly recommend doing the concept check as quickly as possible after class.

The goal of concept checks is practice, so we count them differently in the gradebook. At the end of the quarter, we will add together your points on all concept checks. Your percentage on concept checks will be min{1, [points earned /( .8*points possible)]} x 100%. That is, getting 80% of the points on concept checks is enough to get full-credit (and you cannot get extra credit by getting a higher score). Note that we will not accept late concept checks.

Section

This course is designed to introduce concepts in lectures and give you practice with them in sections. As a result, participating in sections and trying the problems associated with each section is crucially important for success in the course. It will be your loss if you miss attending a section, but we are not assigning grades or extra credit to section participation this quarter.

Homework

There will be approximately seven homeworks.

Homeworks are both a chance for you to improve your understanding and for us to evaluate how well you understand the material. For that reason, although you are encouraged to discuss the problems with one another, you must still write up solutions on your own. More details are included in the collaboration policy.

At the end of the quarter, we will add together all points you earned on the homeworks and divide that by the total number of points possible to get your homework average.

We reserve the right at any point to ask you to explain your solution to a homework problem in person. IF you are unable to explain it, we may take away some or all of the points on that problem.

Midterm

We will have an in-person midterm. The midterm will be held from 12-1pm (during lecture time) on Wednesday July 22nd. If the midterm is missed due to extenuating circumstances, please email Jolie as soon as you can, so that we can discuss your options.

Quizzes

We will have 6 in-person quizzes during the first 10-15 minutes of lecture on Fridays. Coming late to class may result in having less time to complete the quiz. Only your top 4 quiz scores will be factored into your quiz grade, this means that you can miss up to 2 quizzes and still get full credit for the quizzes. Makeups for quizzes will not be offered as we will go over the solutions right after the quiz is completed. Topics for the quizzes will be shared ahead of time and working through section problems on Thursdays will help you prepare. The goal of the quizzes is to give you an opportunity to test your understanding of the concepts before the exams.

Final

We will have an in-person final exam that will be split into two parts. The first half of the final will take place in your assigned section room Thursday August 20th at 12pm. The second half of the final will take place during lecture time August 21st at 12pm. The final will be cumulative but focus more on the latter part of the course. Details about the final and practice material will be shared a week in advance of the final. If the final is missed due to extenuating circumstances, please email Jolie as soon as you can, so that we can discuss your options.

Regrade Requests

The course staff is made up of people. That means we sometimes make mistakes! When those mistakes happen in grading, we want to correct them.

Regrade timing

• Regrades will be submitted on Gradescope. We will open regrade requests approximately 24 hours after scores and feedback is released, and will remain open for at least 72 hours (except for the last homework and final exam, where grade submission deadlines will limit the amount of time we have---even for these assignments, we will have a window to request regrades, just a shorter one).
• Regrade requests should address the TA feedback and your solution, e.g., "The feedback says my formula is incorrect, but my formula is actually equivalent to the one listed in the solution."
• Please remember that people are reading your regrade requests so you should phrase your regrade requests professionally and respectfully.

Regrade appeals

• TAs will respond via Gradescope to regrade requests when they can. Note that this can occasionally take a while, since TAs are grading the next homework by the time all regrade requests are filed.
• If you wish to appeal a regrade request (because the TA has responded to your request, but you still believe your answer is correct), contact Jolie (either via private Ed post or email).
• Appeal and late regrades are only granted for clear errors (e.g., your calculation was correct even though a TA marked it incorrect). We do not alter rubrics, switch which rubric item was applied, or change any "judgement calls" at this stage.

Grading

Course Average

Your course average will be a combination of your scores on assessments. We will weight those categories approximately as follows:

• Concept Checks 15%
• Homework 20%
• Exams 65%
  • Quizzes 15%
  • Midterm 20%
  • Final Exam 30%

Extra credit is incorporated after we have set the grade breaks according to the weights above. The main opportunity for extra credit will be if you are very helpful in responding to questions on Ed (and your responses are correct). Extra credit has a minimal effect on grades (changing GPAs by 0.1 or less).

Grade guarantees

Although we have "curved" the grades in the past, what we have found is that students often get very high grades on the homework, but are unable to back that performance up on tests, in some cases, to an extreme degree.

Therefore, this quarter, we will have quizzes and put more weight on the tests. We will also be sure to make the tests very doable. In particular, 50% of each test will be questions at the level of difficulty of concept checks and the section "content review" questions. 35% of each test will be questions that are very similar to, but easier (and faster to do) faster to do than homework and section problems. In particular, they will be such that if you understand how to do the homework problems and the section problems, you should have no trouble solving them on the tests. 15% of the questions will be slightly more challenging, similar to a more difficult homework problem (but also faster to do).

With all that in mind, the following table provides you with a grade guarantee. In particular, if you meet all of the requirements in a row, we guarantee that you will get a GPA of the grade shown or higher. These guarantees are intended to give you a simple way to interpret how you are doing throughout the quarter; we will still decide at the end of the quarter on exact grade breaks as described below. In the event that exams or homeworks (or both) turn out more difficult than intended, we may make grades higher than indicated here (by making these requirements less strict), but we will not make them less generous.

At the end of the quarter, we decide on the course average requirements for every grade break (the minimum for 4.0, 3.9, 3.8,...,2.0, and some below that), and the minimums for course average and test average for the key gradebreaks listed above (3.5, 3.0, 2.0). You will then get the highest grade for which you meet all of the requirements.

Late Policy

Homeworks

You will have 2 penalty free late days to use for each homework assignment (except the last homework) as long as a meaningful attempt has been submitted by the original deadline. A meaningful attempt should demonstrate that you have thought about and worked through the majority of every problem on the homework. If you do not submit a meaningful attempt by the original deadline a penalty of 25% per day will be applied to your homework score.

Submissions after 48 hours will not be accepted unless prior arrangements are made with Jolie.

Concept Checks

You may not use late days on concept checks. You should submit the concept check even if you have solved none of the problems. That way you will have access to the solutions immediately after the due date/time.

Other accommodations

Late days are designed to handle the "normal" difficulties in a quarter (e.g. prioritizing different courses, fundraising for an RSO, a minor cold, or attending a relative's birthday dinner). If your situation goes beyond those "normal" circumstances, you should contact the course staff as early as you can. Depending on the situation, the staff can consider whether any other accommodations are appropriate or available.

Academic Integrity

We want to make sure that you fully understand and internalize the approach to the materials. So, we take academic integrity very seriously. We refer violations of our policies to the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct. Penalties, if you are found responsible for violating the policy, are described at the end of this section.

If we suspect but are not sure about a violation of academic integrity on a problem set, we may ask you to come meet with the instructor to orally explain and defend the solutions you submitted. If you cannot explain why a step was taken, you will get 0 points for that problem.

Collaboration (with classmates and other people)

You are allowed (and encouraged!) to discuss homework problems with other students currently taking the class. With your classmates, you can discuss the exact problems asked in the homeworks (including brainstorming and solving them together), as long as you:

• Do not take away any notes or screenshots during your discussion.
• Take a 30 minute break between discussing the problem and writing down your solution
• Write up your solution individually. Once your assignment is written up, you must not let others see your solutions.
• List the names of all of your collaborators in the feedback problem on the homework.

Note that the individual writeup portion means that your homework submission and your friends will look different! Even if you end up with identical formulas (you often will), you will still show work differently and explain in different words.

You may ask other people you know (e.g., friends who have already taken 312) for help on concepts and for high-level discussions, but they may not do a problem with you.

Resources Outside of CSE 312

You are strongly encouraged to seek out resources beyond official course resources, with the following caveats:

• You may not look at solutions to homeworks from prior quarters, nor share homework solutions from this quarter with others after this quarter.
• Definitions and terminology can differ significantly (and in subtle ways) depending on the author. Be careful that other resources are saying what you think they are saying.
• You may not search with the intent of finding a solution to the homework problem we've given you (or one that is essentially identical, say by just swapping out numbers). This provision also applies to asking human collaborators about completed solutions and to AI systems.
• You may not use commercial tutoring resources like Chegg for the problems we ask, nor post our materials or your answers to those websites.
• You may not publicly post your solutions, even after the course is over.

Artificial Intelligence tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc)

AI tools are becoming increasingly more common as a learning tool. It can help explain the concepts we are teaching you, walk through section worksheet solutions, generate extra practice problems, and give hints if you are stuck. There are many strengths of using AI tools, such as for accessibility, helping organizing or ground your thoughts, or as a tool for review and practice.

However, considering the context of the course to help you learn foundational skills for future coursework, it's important to recognize what you are learning yourself vs. cognitively offloading to an AI assistant. As such, you may not utilize artificial intelligence or machine learning systems (e.g., ChatGPT) on any assignments (including homeworks and concept checks). That means you may not plug the homework problems into these systems (even if you later put the response in your own words), nor can you put a draft submission into the system to use the system for editing purposes.

Academic Integrity Sample Scenarios

Default Penalty

Concluding Thoughts

If you are confused as to whether or not some collaboration is allowed, ask us! No set of rules will be completely exhaustive.

If something unexpected happens or you are worried you may have accidentally violated the policy, please tell us! We will not consider any action to be a violation of the academic integrity policy (and therefore will not report a case to CSSC) if you tell us about it before turning in the assignment.

Office Hours

Office hours are a chance to talk to the course staff (TAs or instructors) about course content. The tentative schedule is already on the website. You can go to anyone's office hours (not just your TA's section). You don't have to have a specific question to come to office hours, but it makes things easier. We will answer questions about homework at office hours, but there are some things we can't answer:

• We won't "pre-grade" your answer at office hours. We won't say "that's correct" or "you'd get 3/5 if you submitted that right now" or anything to that effect. TAs might instead ask if you have a specific conceptual question they can answer, or a specific part of your answer you'd like to focus on, or remind you of general course policies (like "it's ok to cite a theorem proven in class, you don't have to reprove it").
• We won't just give you a hint if you ask "can I have a hint?" Usually, if you find yourself wanting a hint, it means you're stuck on a core part of the problem, where you'll learn by getting yourself unstuck. If you find yourself wanting a hint, still come to office hours! Staff are very happy to help---just expect that help to come in the form of questions "what have you tried so far? Have you compared to problem 3 from this week's section? Have you used all the information given to you in the problem?" and so on, until you find the hint you've needed.

Course Tools

Zoom

Some office hours will run over zoom. You can find meeting IDs in a pinned post on the Ed discussion board.

Zoom meetings will be restricted to accounts logged in with @uw.edu email addresses. If you have trouble joining a meeting, make sure you choose the "Sign in with SSO" option.

Ed

Ed is our discussion board and the right place to ask any questions about the course.

We will happily answer questions from lecture or about general concepts. We also will answer clarifications about homework (e.g. correcting typos). Students are encouraged to answer each other's questions on the message board as well. In fact, there will be some opportunity for a small amount of extra credit if you are one of the top 20 answerers of questions on Ed!

If you have a question that might reveal your approach or the solution to a homework problem, you must ask the question privately. For accommodations and other private questions, you can ask privately on Ed or email the instructor. Only you and the course staff can see a private question on Ed.

Gradescope

Gradescope is the tool to turn in completed assignments. After grading, you can also find our feedback there and submit regrade requests if needed.

You will get an automatic email with account setup instructions before Concept Check 1 is due.

Canvas

We will not be consistently updating Canvas.

Illness/Absence Policies

What happens if I get sick?

Late days are intended to handle "normal" issues during the quarter. Additional accommodations (e.g. extra late days or longer extensions on specific assignments) may be possible if you have an extended illness and can bring a doctor's note. Contact Jolie as soon as possible if your illness is severe or extends for a long period.

We will be recording lectures and posting to panopto so you can keep up/catch back up when you're healthy.

What if I get sick right before a quiz or exam?

Don't come to an exam if you're sick! Contact Jolie, and we'll schedule a makeup for you. More information on that process is in the next section of the syllabus.

What happens if a staff member gets sick?

Depending on who is sick (and how sick they are) we may find a substitute or convert an in-person meeting to zoom. In extreme circumstances, we may cancel a section or office hour, but we do not expect that to be common. Any such changes will be announced via Ed.

If Jolie has an extended illness, we may find a substitute or switch to zoom lectures for a short time.

Exam Conflicts and Absences

This section describes how we run conflict and makeup exams---that is, exams for when students can't attend an exam for a good reason (e.g., you were too sick to make it).

Midterm and Final Exam Conflicts

There are some circumstances for which we may offer conflict exams. However we don't offer these for every possible situation.

"Hard" conflicts, known in advance

A "hard" conflict is one which is unavoidable, and which is important enough that it takes precedence over an exam. Generally, these would be important family or academic responsibilities that you absolutely cannot reschedule. We will ask you if you have a hard conflict shortly. Please be sure to contact Jolie at least a week in advance of the exam if you are expecting a hard conflict.

Examples of hard conflicts include

• A regularly-scheduled course meeting for another course (e.g., if you're taking an evening class that overlaps with the midterm).
• A work shift for a job (though we do ask that you try to swap shifts or otherwise find someone to cover for you if that is possible).
• Caretaking responsibilities for a family member (though we do ask that you try to arrange your schedule to attend the main exam, if that is possible).

"Soft" conflicts, known in advance

A "soft" conflict, is one which would make it difficult---but not impossible---to attend the main exam. We are unlikely to be able to give conflict exams to students with soft conflicts, but will try if possible.

Examples of soft conflicts include

• Having another exam across campus immediately after our exam.
• Something that would usually be a hard conflict, but you tell us about after the deadline to contact Jolie a week in advance.

We will tell you before the main exam whether we can accommodate your soft conflict, and the time of the conflict exam. Keep in mind that it's possible the conflict exam will be an oral exam.

Conflicts due to illness or emergency

If you are sick on the day of the exam, we will treat it as a hard conflict. Just let us know (send an email to Jolie) before the exam starts to let us know you're sick. Similarly, we will accommodate family or other emergencies that come up at the last second. In all cases, please notify Jolie of the situation as soon as you can (and definitely before the exam begins).

Non-conflicts

There are some things we don't accommodate. If you have one of these, we expect you to attend the exam at the usual time. Examples of things which don't qualify for a conflict include:

• Meeting of an RSO
• Travel (unless a family emergency or responsibility is involved). Travel for break or for the start of an internship are things we usually can't accommodate.
• Having multiple midterm or final exams on the same day (where you can physically attend all of them); UW rules specifically do not limit the number of exams you take in a day (see the last clause of rule 4 under this university policy)

Other exam accommodations

In some instances, it isn't possible to make any of the scheduled conflict or makeup exams. Extended illness (e.g., contracting COVID shortly before the exam) or an extended family emergency (e.g., death in the family) and similar emergencies sometimes cause this to happen. In such instances, we usually don't offer remote exams.

If you cannot attend a quiz (e.g., sick, one-time conflict), do not attend the quiz! Two (2) quizzes will be dropped to account for any illnesses or unexpected conflicts that arise. If you need additional accomodations, contact Jolie and we can discuss your options.

If you cannot make up the midterm during the main sitting or its makeups, we might use your score on the final as a replacement (e.g., use your final exam to count in place of the midterm grade).

If the final is missed, we may decide to give you an incomplete and have you take the final exam in the next quarter. Note that we only offer this accommodation when you meet the university listed requirements and we are confident you'll pass the course; if that's not certain, students are usually better off withdrawing from the course (though you should discuss your options with the advising staff before making a decision).

We may also reach some other different accommodation, such as an oral exam, when that is more appropriate. In any of these cases, we'll work with you to find something that makes sense.

Accommodations

Your performance in this course should not be affected by circumstances beyond your control. We can still work with you for situations other than the university-wide accommodations. If anything does come up, you should contact the course staff as early as you can.

Health, disability, and similar accommodations

If you have, or think you may have, a temporary health condition or permanent disability, contact Disability Resources for Students (DRS) to get started with accommodations. In some prior quarters, DRS has become overwhelmed with new requests and were slow to process them. We strongly recommend reaching out as soon as possible, as we are unable to provide certain accommodations (e.g., extra testing time) except as decided on by DRS.

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW's policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (/staff-faculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accomodations Request form on that page.