Syllabus

Course Goals

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• 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

The course is designed with "formative" and "summative" assessments. Formative assessments 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 the morning of the next lecture. For example, a concept check released on Wednesday will be due Friday morning (note that it is due in the morning, even if you attend the afternoon lecture).

Because the goal of concept checks is practice, we count them differently in the gradebook. At the end of the quarter, we will add together your points on all concept checks. Your `average' on concept checks will be min{1, points earned / (.8*points possible)}. 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).

The goal is to make these assignments a low-stakes way to get quick feedback on what you don't understand.

Section Participation

This course is designed to introduce concepts in lectures and give you practice with them in sections. As a result, trying the problems associated with each section is extremely important for success in the course.

Each week, TAs will record everyone who came to section and participated. "Participated" doesn't mean you ever have to get questions correct, or even say something out loud for the whole class. It means you're working on the problems, and talking with those around you.

You are expected to attend the section which you are officially registered for. If you cannot attend your section for a specific week, you may attend another with permission of the section's TAs.

If you cannot attend any section in-person, you may do the section problems on your own and submit them to a TA for credit. Each week, the problems to do will be posted on the course calendar for the day of the section. Attempts at the problems must be written and emailed to the TA(s) for your section by Sunday at 11:59 PM following the section. More logistical details will be posted on Ed.

There will be 10 sections during the quarter where we count participation. Your section participation grade will be: min(9,number-participated)/9. I.e., you can miss one section without penalty (and without doing the replacement problems), but you do not get extra credit for participating in more than 9.

Homework

There will be approximately eight week-long 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.

Quizzes

We will have 4 quizzes during the quarter, which will happen in your Thursday sections. The goal of quizzes is to start bridging you from formative assessments to summative. By the time you're taking a quiz, you will have had multiple chances to gain skills (concept checks, section, homework), and should be ready to do problems on your own and with time constraints. If you are ready, you'll do well on the quizzes and are on pace to be ready for the exams. If you haven't solidified those skills yet, the quizzes will help you realize that before you get to the exams.

We will drop the lowest of your four quizzes.

Quizzes will last 20 minutes; you will have a short break, and then run section as normal (for the last 25 minutes or so). Participation in section will be based on those last 25 minutes.

Second Chance Quizzes

Sometimes assessments in the middle of the quarter don't show us what you know at the end of the quarter. Maybe you just had a bad day when the exam happened, maybe the concepts took a little longer to click.

We will offer a "second chance" to try (some of) the quizzes at the end of the quarter to try to compensate for those effects.

Your grade will be MAX( first-attempt, MIN(second-attempt, 90%)). I.e., you cannot score higher than 90% on the second-chance quiz, but otherwise we take the higher of your two scores.

The second chance quizzes are optional---if you're happy with your initial grade, you can just skip them.

Midterm

We will have an in-person midterm. Exact time and location will be announced once room reservations are confirmed.

Since this exam is being offered outside of "normal" class hours, we will offer conflict exams for immovable important conflicts (that would include things like other class meetings and job responsibilities); we might not offer a conflict exam if your conflict is moveable or optional (e.g., a regular meeting of an RSO). See more details in the Exam Conflicts and Absences section. We will send out a form to request a conflict exam a few weeks before the midterm.

Final

We will have an in-person final exam.

We will offer conflict exams for the final for students taking a course with a final exam in the same slot. Note that conflict exams are often toward the end of finals week, and therefore may affect travel plans if you plan to request one.

Please note that we cannot offer conflict exams early. Students unable to be on campus for finals week (e.g., due to an early internship start date) should plan to take the course another quarter.

Important Dates

Quizzes will occur in section on the following days:

• January 22
• February 5
• February 26
• March 5

The Midterm will occur in the evening on Thursday February 19th.

The second-chance quizzes will occur in the evening on Thursday March 12.

The Final exam will occur on Monday March 16th.

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, and phrase regrade requests professionally and respectfully.

Regrade appeals

• TAs will respond via gradescope to regrade requests when they can. Note that this is frequently weeks after a regrade is filed, as 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) or you miss the regrade window but still want a regrade, contact Robbie (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.

Assigning course grades

Course Average

The main measure of the grade is your course average. Your course average will be a combination of your scores on assessments. We will weight those categories as follows:

• Concept Checks 7.5%
• Section Participation 5%
• Homework 35%
• Quizzes 15%
• Midterm 7.5-15%
• Final Exam 22.5-30%

The ranges in the midterm and final exam are adjusted by individual student: if the final exam grade shows improvement over the midterm grade, we put more weight on the final (and if the midterm is stronger, we put more weight on the midterm). It might help to think of the midterm as being worth 15%, the final exam as 22.5%, but know that improvement on the final causes us to move weight from midterm to final exam.

Extra credit is incorporated after we have set the grade breaks according to the weights above. Extra credit has a minimal effect on grades (changing GPAs by 0.1 or less).

Separate Requirements for Formative and Summative Assessments

Both the formative assessments and summative assessments are important for successful completion of the course. Formative assessments (because you do them with less time-constraints) can cover more topics, and cover topics in more depth, than the summative assessments can. Summative assessments ensure that you have mastered some of the most important topics in the course (to the point that you can do them fully individually and under time constraints). To ensure you accomplish both of those goals, some grades have requirements in each of these categories. (See the table of grade guarantees for a sense of what these are likely to be).

In the formative requirements, "good-faith completion" means you've submitted (by the late deadline) a reasonable attempt at the homework that represents your own work. You don't necessarily have to complete every problem or do well on it to meet the good-faith requirement (whether you get things right or not is already in the course average). If you've seriously attempted the homework, you've met the requirement.

In the summative requirement, you summative assessments average is the quizzes, midterm, and final, according to the weights we would use in the course average.

Grade guarantees

In order to give you a sense of how you are doing during the quarter, we offer the following minimum guarantees. Guarantee means that if you meet all 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.

Assigning Course Grades

Students often wonder whether the class is "curved." For example, whether the median course grade must be some specified value, or if we have a maximum amount of "good" grades we can assign. We do not "curve" in either of these senses. We do, though, look at the performance of students this quarter relative to other quarters (especially where homework or exam problems were similar) to try to keep grades consistent between different quarters (that is, that similar levels of understanding of the content would lead to similar grades). This process means that before we have collected all the grades, we don't know exactly where gradebreaks will be.

At the end of the quarter, we decide on a 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 formative and summative requirements 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 six late days to use during the quarter for homework assignments. A late day allows you to turn in an assignment up to 24 hours later without penalty. Simply submit late and we will keep track of your usage internally.

Regardless of how many late days you have, you cannot submit an assignment more than 72 hours after it is due without prior permission from course staff.

For example, an assignment due at 11:59 PM on Wednesday could be turned in at 10 PM on Friday with no penalty by using two late days. However, you cannot submit at 12:01 AM Sunday as it would be more than 72 hours.

If you run out of late days, you may still turn in an assignment late, at a penalty of 15% per day (but still may not turn in an assignment after the 72-hour-late-deadline without prior permission from the course staff).

Concept Checks

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, extra late days, dropping assignments, or other accommodations may be appropriate. The earlier you contact us, the more options we will have 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.

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.
• 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 (Chat-GPT, LLMs, etc.)

AI systems (including large language models, like Chat-GPT) are powerful tools in the right hands, but can be harmful to learning when misused. The goal of the staff is to help form you into capable computer scientists. One of the major goals of this course is to teach how to think clearly about CS topics and communicate clearly with other computer scientists. This skill will continue to be a critical one, regardless of the existence of AI systems (even if your code and an explanation of how it works comes from an LLM, you'll have to see if you believe it, and have to convince other programmers whether it is correct or not).

You may not utilize artificial intelligence or machine learning systems (e.g., Chat-GPT) on any assignments (including homeworks and concept checks). There are a variety of reasons for this policy, but the main one is to ensure that you learn the skills you need to from this course. Systems that do problems for you slow down your learning.

Specifically, the following uses of AI are prohibited

• You may not plug the homework problems into these systems (even if you later put the response in your own words).
• You may not superficially alter a problem, and plug that into an AI system (even if you put it away before solving the problem itself).
• You may not ask an AI system to generate practice problems for you before finishing the homework assignment on that topic (as it may lead to a violation of the rule above).
• You may not put a draft submission of your own into the system to use the system for editing purposes (as the writeup must be your own work).
• You may not put anything written by the staff (e.g., section solutions) into an AI system (e.g., as part of a prompt). This rule may seem a bit different from the others, so we provide some explanation below:
• AI systems often use submitted prompts as part of their "training set" (the set of input they look for patterns in to generate future answers). This means that text you input may appear in future answers for other people, which the authors of that text might not want (and might have a legal right to prevent, if they hold the copyright).
• This rule applies to all AI systems and staff-generated text; even if a particular AI system makes promises about how they will use input, we want a clear rule (we're not lawyers to tell whether a particular use is legal, but even if the use is legal, it's still good to respect the wishes of the people who wrote the text).
• If you find yourself wanting to plug particular text into an AI system, put the text into your own words first (that is good practice for learning the material anyway).

The rules above apply to both programming and non-programming questions.

The following uses of AI are allowed, but are discouraged. The main reason they are discouraged is because they are likely to trip up at least a fraction of the people who try them (and in a class this large, a fraction of the class can be a non-trivial number of people). Many of these tasks would be more reliably done by asking a TA or looking things up in lecture slides or a textbook, even if an AI system might be quicker.

• We allow, but would discourage, asking an AI system to generate a practice test for you before quizzes or exams. This is allowed (since you would have finished the homework by then, it is not a violation of the rules above), but practice may be the wrong difficulty or have incorrect solutions.
• We allow, but would discourage, asking an AI system to summarize a topic for you.
• We allow, but would discourage, asking an AI system to check a solution you came up with for a problem that isn't going to be graded.

The following uses of AI are allowed (and not discouraged), if done with care.

• We allow asking an AI system purely conceptual questions. e.g., "What is the difference between the strong pigeonhole principle and the regular pigeonhole principle" or "How do we do a continuity correction when applying the Central Limit Theorem."
• We allow, after completing a homework assignment on a given topic, asking an AI system to generate extra practice problems and solutions. e.g., "give a set of counting problems that can be solved with the stars and bars formula"
• We allow asking for Python help on the programming problems, but not conceptual help. Generally, asking about syntax or style is fine, but getting conceptual help on the problems is not. Asking "can I see examples of for-each loops in python" or "what function would I use to take a log-base-2 in python" are fine (though a google search might be better in some instances).
  • If you know what you'd do in Java, but not python, the question is probably fine; if you don't know what you'd do in Java, you're probably wanting to ask a conceptual question that should go to a TA.
  • You must still type everything you submit yourself (you cannot generate extended code snippets and copy-paste them into your submission).

For all of these instances, you are still responsible for the content taught in official resources (if an AI system generates an incorrect example, or an example that uses different style, you're still responsible for learning the correct information and style for this course). AI systems can give answers to you fast, but often a TA or an old-fashioned google search might give you something more reliable.

If you do use AI systems, please consider these warnings (the first two of these also apply to any other outside resource---say other textbooks---but the issues are worse for AI-generated text)

• Be careful that text means what you think it means. Definitions sometimes vary slightly by source. For example, some resources will index from 0 while others index from 1 (for example, for geometric random variables, which we'll see about week 5); when you access any outside resource, you have to watch that a sentence means what you think it means. If you're looking at another textbook, it's easy to check the meaning the author has (go back a few pages to find their definition); AI systems inherently draw from texts that use both definitions, making it harder to tell which convention they are using (or could even cause them to switch conventions in the middle of an answer).
• Expect style conventions and notation to differ. Other authors have their own style guides that won't match our style guide.
• Be suspicious of any generated text. It hasn't been checked by anyone (except for you). Verifying the logic of someone else (or here, something else) is one of the things we are trying to train you in for this class! If you already don't feel confident about a topic, that's all the more reason to not use unverified information (of course, official course resources are made by people who also sometimes make mistakes, but at least you can ask us clarifying questions directly and know that an expert has checked it).

Academic Integrity Sample Scenarios

Default Penalties

• If the assignment is one that normally can be dropped (e.g., a quiz), the assignment will not be dropped (we would drop the lowest score among those for which you were not found responsible for violating course policy).
• If the assignment is one that can normally be reattempted (e.g., a quiz), you would not get credit for the other version.
• We will not make any adjustments to category weights to move weight away from the category you were found responsible for violating (e.g., moving weight between midterm and final).
• A homework would not count as a good-faith attempt to meet the minimum number of formative assessments completed.

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. We'll have a schedule on the website to start week 2 of the quarter. You can go to anyone's office hours (not just your section TA's). You don't have to have a specific question to come to office hours, but it can make 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.

These are conceptual questions:

• Can we talk about the solution to this problem from the section handout? (this question if always fine, even if you picked that problem because it reminds you of a homework problem)
• Can we talk about this old homework problem (where solutions have been released)?
• I don't understand induction, can you explain it again?

• I'm stuck on problem 3 of the current homework, can you help?
• I'm using a late day to turn in this homework assignment, can you clarify what this problem was asking?

Course Tools

Zoom

Zoom is how meetings that must be virtual will be delivered. That includes at least some office hours throughout the quarter. 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.

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. Information on canvas may be partial or inaccurate for large portions of the quarter, you should not rely on it for this course. We may use canvas's gradebook at the end of the quarter, but we will announce which information should be relied on and when.

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. Contact Robbie 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 a quiz or exam if you're sick! Contact Robbie, 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 Robbie 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, or had another exam at the same time). Don't confuse this with the "second chance" quizzes at the end of the quarter. "Second chance" is open to everyone as a way to demonstrate you have improved over the course of the quarter; makeups are only for people who had an excused absence from an exam.

Quiz Conflicts

We will have a form before each quiz to request a conflict quiz. For quizzes, these will only be granted for limited reasons (like illnesses and unexpected family responsibilities).

We will schedule makeup quizzes (e.g. due to illnesses) within a week of the original quiz.

Midterm and Final Exam Conflicts

There are some circumstances for which we offer conflict exams (exams scheduled at different times than the main exam). However we don't offer these for every possible situation (with a large class, logistics limit what we can do).

"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 cannot reschedule. We will ask you if you have a hard conflict about a week before the exam. Please be sure to fill out the form on-time. If you fill out the form by the deadline with a hard conflict, we guarantee we'll find you a conflict exam (or other appropriate accommodation).

Examples of hard conflicts include

• An exam for another course scheduled at the same time
• 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 hope to give conflict exams to students with soft conflicts, but don't guarantee we can do so.

Examples of soft conflicts include

• Having a very long commute that is difficult at night (for an evening exam).
• Having another exam across campus immediately after our exam (more likely for the final).
• Something that would usually be a hard conflict, but you tell us about after the deadline to fill out the form.

We will tell you before the main exam whether we can accommodate your soft conflict, and the time of the conflict 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 Robbie) 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 Robbie of the situation as soon as you can (and before the exam begins).

Non-conflicts

There are some things we don't accommodate---in a class of our size, logistics require us to draw a line somewhere. 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)

Conflicts and Makeups for Second Chance Quizzes

Because second chance quizzes are optional, and so close to the end of the quarter, we will limit makeups for them. Makeups will be offered at limited time slot(s). To manage logistics, we may be more restrictive on soft conflicts for the second chance quizzes than we are for the main exams.

Conflict process

A few days before the exam, everyone who has filled out the conflict form will get an email saying whether we think they have a hard conflict, soft conflict that we can accommodate, or non-conflict.

We schedule conflict exams in phases. We generally have one within a day-or-two of the main exam that we schedule a few days in advance. Once we know everyone who needs a conflict, we will finalize a schedule of conflict exam(s) (we can generally do that scheduling starting the day after the main exam, since we don't have the full list of who was sick until just before the exam happens).

Exams are always scheduled within a week of the main exam. Generally they will be during daytime class hours (8:30-4:30 Monday through Friday), though we may schedule at unusual times if it works better for staff and for the students involved.

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.

For quizzes, if you cannot attend any scheduled makeups within a week, we would use the corresponding second-chance quiz to replace your main quiz score. In this case, it would count as your first attempt, so it would not have the 90% cap, but you would not have an additional second chance exam. For logistical reasons, the number of quizzes in the second-chance slot will be limited, so you may decide to drop a quiz you missed the first version of instead in some cases.

If you cannot makeup an exam (midterm or final) during the main sitting or its makeups, we might use another exam score 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 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 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