Grading

Exams

Exams are graded collectively by the CS111 instructors. Many questions require us to use judgement, and we do our best to be both consistent and fair. If you think we made a mistake grading your exam, please come talk to us. Do not write on the exam at all if you will seek a regrade. We will consider the regrade and return the exam to you as soon as possible.

You should not communicate with any other person about the contents of any CS111 exam before or after taking it except CS111 instructors. Any violation of this policy will be brought before the Honor Code Council.

There will be three kinds of exams in this course, which are detailed in the following three sections.

In-Class Midterm Exam

There will be one 70-minute in-class midterm exam during the lecture section on Fri. Nov. 3.

This is a pencil-and-paper exam; you are not allowed to use any computers or other electronic devices (including smartphones!).

This is an open-notes exam: you may bring with you any of your own notes, as well as hardcopies of any course materials from the semester. However, your time to consult notes during the exam will be limited, so we encourage you to make a one- or two-page summary of key notes you may want to consult as part of studying for the exam.

Take-home Quizzes

In the past, we have had a week-long take-home exam that was similar to a long regular problem set (about four problems) except that you had to do all work completely on your own.

In order to reduce stress, this semester we are experimenting with splitting the take-home exam into four take-home quizzes sprinkled throughout the semester (see the course schedule). Each take-home quiz will be similar to one problem from a take-home exam in previous years.

In take-home quizzes, you are allowed (indeed, required) to use Canopy on a computer to write, test, and debug Python programs that solve the quiz problems. However, you must do all work completely on your own. You may consult any of the materials from the current semester of CS111 and standard documentation on Python, but may not consult any other resources on the Internet. You may not communicate with any other person about the exam except CS111 instructors. Because this is an exam, they can clarify what is expected in take-home quiz problems, but cannot help you solve such problems. Any violations of these policies will be brought before the Honor Code Council.

Final Exam

There will be a 2.5-hour self-scheduled final exam that you can take in any one of the slots during the final exam period.

This is a pencil-and-paper exam; you are not allowed to use any computers or other electronic devices (including smartphones!).

Problem Sets

Please see the Problem Set Guide for grading details.

Course Grade

Your course grade will be based on a weighted average of the following components:

Problem Sets (includes electronic submission, in-class quiz, reflection/self-assessment): 35%
Exam 1 (in class): 15%
Take Home Quizzes scattered throughout semester: 25%
Final Exam: 25%

At the end of the semester, we will compute a weighted average for each student and assign letter grades.

In general, the mapping from numerical score to letter grades looks like this:

>= 95.00 is an A
>= 90.00 is an A-
>= 86.67 is a B+
>= 83.33 is a B
>= 80.00 is a B-
>= 76.67 is a C+
>= 73.33 is a C
>= 70.00 is a C-
>= 60.00 is a D
< 60.00 is an F

Depending on the overall performance of the class, we may adjust this mapping.

The above information is intended to tell you how we grade. It is not intended to instill in you a preoccupation with point accumulation. We encourage you to treat points in this class as you would Monopoly money. If you focus on learning the material, the grade will normally take care of itself.