Grading Policy

There are three components to your raw total:

• Homeworks: 25%
  • Remember we have a late homework policy and a drop so if you miss a homework due to illness or did not perform as well as you’d hoped, you have an opportunity to bounce back.
• Exams: 50%
  • There will be two midterm exams, and a cumulative final exam.
  • I don’t want to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t a valid reason to miss your work (and neither should students have to plead and hope for mercy from professors). That is why I constructed this policy, which is merciful but will be applied strictly. If you have a serious issue that causes you to miss two or more midterms, you ned to contact your department’s advising office and/or the emergency dean.
• Project: 25%
  • There will be a final project that is worth 25% of your final grade. We will grade based on the performance of your model and the short final report you deliver.

Final grade calculation

There are two grade distributions that I use when calculating a final grade. The first is a deterministic grade distribution which is the standard cutoffs used in most American educational systems:

A+	A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D	D-	F
97+	96-93	92-90	89-87	86-83	82-80	79-77	76-73	72-70	69-67	66-63	62-60	59-0

These are the minimum grades that you can achieve in this course using the raw final grade (which includes the flat curve for each exam). Now here is the thing, no one use the standard cutoff calculation. All professors grade relatively. Yes, even the ones that say they don’t. Those professors that say they have a firm, preset grading cutoff are usually older and have banks of questions that they have tested over the course of decades, so they know the performance distribution of any particular question ahead of time.

I can’t do this since I try to constantly find and develop new problems and hence, I’m never really sure how hard the students will find these new problems. So while I won’t give anyone a grade less than the distribution above dictates, I will use an additional relative grading scheme layer where the cutoffs are determined such that the percentage of students getting each letter grades is approximately:

A's	B's	C's	D's and F's
40%	30%	20%	10%

This typically puts the average GPA of my course right around ~3.4 ish which is mostly in-line with what I see in the rest of the ECE department. I’m not promising an exact average, could be a bit lower, could be higher, but that’s the rough target.

Regrade requests

Exams will have regrades conducted via gradescope for one week. Homeworks are mostly autograded and though there will be a few free-form responses that require manual grading. If you are unsure why you received the grade you did on the homework, post on Piazza or go to OHs and we will fix it.

• Make sure the Canvas Gradebook is correct. The only reason why I’m keeping Canvas around is because I want to be open about the grades I have recorded so you guys can keep me honest and point out anything that seems amiss.
• Please check that your grades are tabulated and recorded correctly. If you notice a mistake, please use Gradescope to ask for a regrade. Regrade period for homeworks/exams is one week after the grade is available.
• If you do not understand your grade on a homework or exam problem, please discuss your grade with one of the instructors or TAs during office hours. After that discussion, if you still believe that your work has been graded incorrectly, please request a regrade.
• Late regrade requests will be ignored. Homework and exam regrades can be requested within Piazza or in office hours.
• All regrade requests must include a written succinct justification for the request. Good justifications include the following:
  • My answer agrees with the posted solution, but I still lost points.
  • You took off points for missing the base case, but it’s right here (right here!).
  • My answer is correct, even though it does not match the posted solution. (This happens more frequently if your answer is not even remotely similar to the “standard” solution.)
  • The official solution is incorrect; here’s a counterexample.

Extra Credit

Extra credit (which is given completely in the discretion of the instructors) would be given in exceptional cases for the following:

• Winning an award for a your final project (either by having the highest performing model or best report).
• Being in the top few participants on piazza. (As long as most of your answers are useful and correct [and add to the current discussion {i.e., don’t repost others answers just to increase your count}] - a campaign of disinformation on piazza would gain you little.)
• Taking on small, interesting problem/research challenges I may post to the website.
• Extra credit is only given to people that have completed significantly more work than is required for this course. Significant means tens of hours of solid work/effort.