Grading
Table of contents
Grading
- Homeworks & Oral Exams - 20%
- Midterm I - 20%
- Midterm II - 20%
- Final - 40%
We have a full clobber policy for the lowest midterm. Your lowest midterm score will be the max of your current score on your lowest midterm and the z-score of the final mapped to your lowest midterm. Your other midterm will remain the same.
Oral Exams
We will have an oral exam one week before each midterm, and during the last week of classes (before the final). Homework scores are adjusted based on the oral exam results as follows:
Adjustments are made in percentage points to each homework score, and each resulting score is capped between 0% and 100%.
- Check+: Add 8 percentage points to both homeworks. For example, scores of 50% and 70% become 58% and 78%.
- Check: Add 5 percentage points to both homeworks. For example, scores of 50% and 70% become 55% and 75%.
- Check-: No adjustment.
- No Show: The first no-show reduces the homework score by 10 percentage points; each subsequent no-show reduces it by 40 percentage points.
Late HW Submission
All homeworks will be due at 8:59 PM on the due-date. Please try to submit your homework on time. However, we understand that unforeseen difficulties may arise, so we have the following policy on late submissions. We hope that you will not need to use this policy. And please note that no exceptions whatsoever will be made to this policy.
- Late policy: (updated) Assignments submitted late will lose 5% for every hour that they are late. For example: If you submit 1 minute late on an assignment worth 80 points, you lose 4 points (5% of 80). If you submit 61 minutes late, you lose 8 points (10%).
- Homework drop policy: Best x-3 (out of x). For example, if 10 homeworks are given then we will score the best 7.
AI Policy
As the landscape of AI tools continues to evolve, all of us have been figuring out how to best utilize AI as part of our work, including coursework. In order to help set you up for success in this course, we want to offer some advice on how to incorporate the use of AI in a way that supports your learning.
Research has suggested that AI usage negatively impacts exam performance insofar as it results in less time being spent on homework and other coursework. Really, it’s unsurprising: time spent thinking carefully about the material in this course is crucial to developing your own understanding of it! Concretely, when working on homework assignments, we suggest spending at least 15-20 minutes thinking about a given problem before asking AI for assistance—similarly to how in the past we would suggest the same before asking for assistance from other students, TAs at office hours, or the internet.
Spending some time thinking through a problem on your own helps you understand where the limits of your own understanding are and where exactly you’re getting stuck—which will be important to know since you won’t have access to AI to get you unstuck on the exams! But most importantly, doing so will help you incorporate the information you receive from AI or other sources into your own understanding, which you can continue to build on going forward in this course and beyond.
Finally, we want to emphasize that the homework collaboration policy extends to the use of AI. Similarly to when you get help from other students, books, or online resources, you should still write up the solution in your own words. Further, you should cite your use of AI and briefly indicate how you utilized it as a resource. Writing up solutions yourself is important for internalizing the material and checking that you fully understand what you’ve gotten help on, and citing your use of external resources is a crucial component of maintaining academic integrity.
Collaboration
You are encouraged to work on homework problems with fellow students; however, you must always write up the solutions on your own. Similarly, you may use books or online resources to help solve homework problems, but you must always credit all such sources in your write-up and you must never copy material verbatim. However, as a general rule of thumb, you should never possess solutions to exact homework questions other than those solutions you have written yourself. We realize that it is sometimes possible to stumble upon solutions on accident. If this happens, please cite the source and write up solutions in your own words. We believe that most students can distinguish between helping other students and cheating. Explaining the meaning of a question, discussing a way of approaching a solution, or collaboratively exploring how to solve a problem within your group are types of interaction that we strongly encourage. But you should write your homework solution strictly by yourself so that your hands and eyes can help you internalize this material. At no time should you be in possession of another student’s solution. You may discuss approaches but your solution must be written by you and you only. You should explicitly acknowledge everyone whom you have worked with or who has given you any significant ideas about the homework. Further, it is your responsibility to ensure that your solutions will not be visible to other students. If you use Github or any other source control system to store your solutions electronically, you must ensure your account is configured so your solutions are not publicly visible. Many popular version control systems provide free repositories to students; staff members or fellow students can help you obtain one. As a final note, we’d like to point out that collaboration on homework, while encouraged, can be detrimental to your learning if misused. In particular, avoid collaborations where you do not contribute enough to your own satisfaction. Such a collaboration not only cheats you out of an opportunity to learn through homework, but can also affect your confidence. If you feel that you are not contributing enough to your group, then try to spend time thinking about the problems alone before working with your group. If you end up solving the problem all by yourself that’s great! And if not, you’ll still be prepared to better contribute to your group. If you’re ever in doubt about what constitutes academic dishonesty, always ask a TA or on Ed. Warning: You should be aware that copying or sharing solutions, in whole or in part, from other students in the class (or any other source without acknowledgment) constitutes cheating. Any student found to be cheating risks automatically failing the class and being referred to the Office of Student Conduct. Please find more information below.
Berkeley Honor Code
Everyone in this class is expected to adhere to this code: “As a member of the UC Berkeley community, I act with honesty, integrity, and respect for others.”
Student Conduct
Ethical conduct is of utmost importance in your education and career. The instructors, the College of Engineering, and U.C. Berkeley are responsible for supporting you by enforcing all students’ compliance with the Code of Student Conduct and the policies listed in the CoE Student Guide. The Center for Student Conduct is set up to support you when you have been affected by actions that may violate these community rules. This includes an organized and transparent process, student participation in the process, mechanisms for appeals, and other mechanisms to protect fairness.