By the end of this course, you will be able to:
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.
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.
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. "Particpated" 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 are 10 sections during the quarter. 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.
We will have an in-person midterm the evening of Monday April 29th.
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). We will send out a form to request a conflict exam a few weeks before the midterm.
We will have an in-person final exam. The combined exam will be Monday June 3rd at 12:30.
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.
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.
Your course average will be a combination of your scores on the homeworks and exams. We will weight those categories as follows:
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).
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 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.
In order to give you a sense of how you are doing during the quarter, we offer the following minimum guarantees. That is, if your course average (calculated as descrbed above) meets these thresholds, 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 above. In the event that exams or homeworks (or both) turn out more difficult than intended, we may make grades higher than indicated here, but we will not make them less generous.
| Course Grade | GPA guarantee |
|---|---|
| 90% | 3.5 |
| 80% | 3.0 |
| 65% | 2.0 |
You will have eight 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.
That's a lot of late days! We intentionally give many late days for Spring quarter, as these quarters often have many students with complicated schedules (for example, due to religious observances in spring).
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).
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.
We want to make sure that you fully understand and internalize the approach to the materials. So, we take academic integrity very seriously. We may refer violations of our policies to the Office of Academic Affairs.
You are allowed (and encouraged!) to discuss homework problems with other students, as long as you:
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 weird happens, please tell us too! We will not consider any action to be a violation of the academic integrity policy if you tell us about it before turning in the assignment.
You are strongly encouraged to seek out resources beyond official course resources, with the following caveats:
| What happened? | Is it a violation? |
|---|---|
| When searching for general information, you accidentally find the exact question we asked. You tell the staff, and provide a link to what you found. | Not a violation! We’ll say thanks for letting us know and make sure you didn’t plagiarize. There won’t be a penalty but only a warm, fuzzy feeling. |
| You and a friend separately write up solutions, then compare. Your friend suggests that your conclusion is a little unclear. You formulate a new conclusion on the Zoom call together. | Violation! That is no longer your individual writeup. |
| You and a friend separately write up solutions, then compare. Your friend suggests changing a permutation to a combination in your final answer. You wait 30 minutes, then return to your writeup, decide the changes would be improvements, and incorporate them. | Not a violation! Minor rewordings and technical changes done by you after discussion (and a break!) are fine. The writeup is still substantially yours. |
| You find a textbook with sample solutions to similar problems. You see that they like to introduce variables with “Consider” and use “hence” instead of “because.” You copy these words, because they seem cooler. | Not a violation! Single words or stock phrases are things you can learn from. It is not a violation to emulate style (but “hence” is a little archaic). |
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.
Office Hours: You can attend any Office Hours, not just the ones held by the TA who teaches your section. They do get busier closer to deadlines, so it is better to attend them early and throughout the week.
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 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 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.
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.
While the course of the pandemic has improved, we still are prepared to adapt to health issues (both individual and broader).
Remember to follow the university policies (which include rules on reporting positive tests if you've been on campus, restrictions on when you can return to campus, and some times when masking may be required for you, even if not for everyone).
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.
Don't come to the exam if you're sick! Contact Robbie once you know you're too sick to attend, and we'll schedule a makeup exam for when you're ready to return to campus.
If your illness hits for the final, we may utilize other options like remote exams or temporarily giving an incomplete until you're well enough to return and take the exam. We will work with you to decide which accommodation is appropriate to your illness.
Lectures will be recorded; we won't track in-person attendance for lectures.
If you have a health condition (mental or physical) that means you should not be in a large lecture hall, you should contact DRS (see Accomodations) to investigate accommodations.
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 switch to zoom lectures for a short time.
We are doing our best to learn and teach during a pandemic. But we are still in a pandemic! If unforeseen circumstances arise during the quarter, please do not hesitate to talk to the course staff. The sooner we are made aware, the more options we will have for designing accommodations. You can also send us anonymous feedback with ideas to improve the course.
Nonetheless, one of the main methods of learning is talking to other students in the course! We strongly encourage you to find study groups you can meet with (remotely or otherwise).We reserve the right to modify the syllabus if extenuating circumstances prevent us from delivering the course as planned. (For example, if a pandemic made it impractical or dangerous to hold an in-person final exam, we might switch to a take-home exam and adjust the weights that go into the course average). If any changes are required we will announce any such changes as far in advance as possible, and will prioritize not negatively impacting students in the event of a change.
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.
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 policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.
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.