CS 130A and CS 130B.
I sent you e-mail through your umail address provided by the Registrar's office. It it important that you check your e-mail on that account regularly or add a forwarding instruction so that you receive your e-mail in an account your read regularly. Course announcements and the (partial and final) grades will be distributed through this list. I normally send about 50 emails per quarter.
There will be three written homework assignments. Turn in all your assignments at the 230A Turnin Box located in 2108 Engineering I. The written assignments will be due on Wednesday January 28th, Wednesday February 11th, and Wednesday March 4th. All the assignments will have a due date and a deadline. If you hand them in after the due date, then 7% of the total points the FULL ASSIGNMENT is worth (not just the part that is late) will be automatically deducted each day (rounded up) the assignment (or part of the assignment) was late (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and University Holidays). Assignments will not be accepted after their deadline. Assignment will not be accepted after Monday March 9th ( Noon ).
There will be a mid-term exam and a final exam. The mid-term exam will be held during the lecture period on Monday February 23rd. The final exam will be on Thursday March 19th (4 pm - 7 pm). All of the exams are closed book and notes. However you are allowed to bring one 8.5" by 11" page of notes (you may write on both sides) to the exams. The exams will be based on all the material covered up to the day of the exam in the lectures. There will be no makeup exams. There will be no makeup exams. There will be no makeup exams. But note than in the past 33 years, I have made very few exceptions to this rule.Students with a disability that would like to discuss special academic accommodations please contact me during my office hours, and contact the Disabled Students Program (DSP) which coordinates services geared towards assisting students with temporary and/or permanent disabilities. For more information contact the DSP as soon as possible. Their phone number is 7127.
The TENTATIVE weights for the assignments and exams are given below.
|
Assignment/Exam
3 Written Assignments 1 Mid-Term Exam Final Exam Total |
Points
300 280 420 1000 |
Notes
( 100 each ) |
I might add a group assignment to substitute for part of a written homework.
The Statue of Limitations for any grading is two weeks. I.e., if there is an error in the grading, it must be settled within two weeks of the time the assignment or exam was returned. If you have any questions about the grading, see the TA. If you cannot reach an agreement with him, please see the instructor. Only letter grades will be given, i.e., A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and F. There will be no incompletes, there will be no incompletes, there will be no incompletes, and there will be no incompletes.
The grades are normally computed as follows: Normally, students with the average number of total points receive a B+ or A-. It will in the A- range (or slightly higher) if the students are active participants in class and almost all of the students show up for class during the whole quarter, but in the B+ range (or lower) if the students are not active participants. Very few students receive the total (or close to the total) number of points in my exams, but students normally receive high grades in the hw assignments.
Since all the assignments and exams count towards your final grade, you must do them INDEPENDENTLY. To motivate you into working independently we will recycle up to 50 points that you loose in the WRITTEN Assignments and assign those points to the final exam. I.e., If the total number of points that you earned in the written assignments is 240, then min{(300 - 240), 50} points will be assigned to the final exam. In this case your final exam may be worth up to 50 extra points. So, if in the final exam you earn 75% of the 420 the final is worth, you will recover 75% of the points from the points lost in the written homework assignments (in the above example you will recover 0.75 * 50 = 37.5 points). If the total number of points you received in the written assignments is 280 then we will recover min{(300 - 280), 50} points = 20 points. If you earn 80% of the total points in the final you will recover 0.8 * 20 = 16 points.
If the above rule does not motivate you to work independently and we can prove that two or more students solved together an assignment or part of an assignment, the case will be reported to the appropriate administration officials. You are allowed to study in groups and you may discuss the homeworks problems with other people in order to fully understand the problems you are being asked to solve in the homeworks; however, you may not SOLVE the assignment or any part of the assignment or the exams in groups, and you may not ask anyone how to solve any particular problem or subproblem in any homework assignments.
Why work independently? Because quite of bit of the learning process for this course is by doing (proving, analyzing, trying, etc.) and the skills you will develop will not only help you solve problems in this course, but they will help you in the future, even if y research areas where there is little or no quantitative analysis.
Policy on Academic Integrity
The university, the department, and this instructor all take the issue of academic integrity very seriously. A university requires an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. While collaboration is an integral part of many scholarly activities, it is not always appropriate in a course, and it is never appropriate unless (1) explicitly allowed and (2) due credit is given to all participants in the collaboration. This goes for both ideas and programming or other work.The university labels each of the following activities as academic misconduct:
Cheating. Whether on exams or homework assignments, this includes copying the work of other students, and asking or allowing another student to do your work.
Plagiarism. Also known as "academic theft," it refers to the use of others ideas or words (or source code) without proper attribution or credit.
Collusion. "Any student who knowingly or intentionally helps another student to perform any of the above acts of cheating or plagiarism is subject to discipline for academic dishonesty. There is no distinction between those who cheat and plagiarize and those who willingly allow it to occur."
The following are examples of violations of academic conduct (this list is not inclusive):
- Working together (that is, actually writing the computer code) with another student.
- Showing any portion of your code (no matter how small) to another student.
- Viewing any portion (no matter how small) of the code of another student.
- Copying any portion, no matter how small, of another student's code for use in your program.
- Modifying another student's work to make it "your own."
- Sharing solutions in the form of pseudocode.
- Asking a fellow student to help you find a bug in your program, or to help you write any portion of your program, no matter how small.
- Using the Internet or Library to seek explicit solutions to programming projects.
- Knowingly allowing any of the above to take place.
The following is a description of allowed forms of seeking help with a programming assignment (this list is not inclusive):
- Discussing your project with your TA, professor, a CS tutor, or the email help-desk.
- Discussing the general ideas of solving the project, or relevant lecture and textbook materials, with a friend or fellow student.
- Using the Internet or Library to read about the general principles that apply in the project.
For some views on academic integrity at UCSB, please see:
Any act of cheating will result in an "F" for the course and a report to the associate dean of students. This includes any sharing of computer code.
Summary: Academic integrity is absolutely required - dishonesty (cheating, plagiarism, etc.) benefits no one and will not be tolerated! If you are not sure whether or not something is appropriate, ask the instructor or a TA beforehand. (Don't try the "I didn't know" route.)