Grading

As I write this (two weeks before classes start), I envision 6 homework assignments, each worth 12.5% of the semester grade, a midterm worth 10%, and a final exam worth 15%. If we get behind schedule, we'll actually do fewer assignments than this; I'll try to keep an up-to-date schedule on my Web page.

Exams must be taken at the scheduled time, unless arranged in advance or prevented by a documented medical or family emergency. If you have three or more exams scheduled on the same date, or a religious holiday that conflicts with an exam or assignment due date, please notify me in writing within the first two weeks of the semester in order to receive due consideration. Exams not taken without one of the above excuses will be recorded with a grade of 0.

Homework assignments will be accepted late, with a penalty of 10% per 24 hours or portion thereof after they're due. An hour late is 10% off, 25 hours late is 20% off, etc. Any homework assignment turned in more than ten days late will get a zero. Any homework assignment turned in after May 9 (the second to last day of class) will get a zero. (This is so I have, perhaps, time to grade them before the final exam.)

There will be several kinds of homework in this class. At one extreme are the analysis and ``thought'' problems on paper, resembling problems in a math class. At the other extreme are programming assignments, which may be written in any language that you and I both know and that runs at Adelphi (e.g. Scheme, Prolog, Java, C, C++). In between are pseudocode assignments: these need to be precise descriptions of an algorithm, like a computer program, but they don't need to meet the syntactic requirements of a compiler (only a human being will read them) and you can ignore details that aren't relevant to the problem at hand.