CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington and Marius Minea

Fall 2018

Course Requirements and Grading

Your grade in CMPSCI 250 will be based on the following:

Calculation of Grades

My system for computing grades is a bit unusual, so I will try to explain it here. I take every graded component of the course and assign it a number on a scale from F (0) through C (200) to A (400) and sometimes higher. These are the numbers that are averaged together by Moodle to get your "course total" at the end of the term, and this is the basis for your letter grade. (For example, if your course total is 342, the closest letter grade to this is a B+ (333) so that's what you get. There is some provision for rounding up in close cases, since a 345 is within five points of the boundary (350) between A- and B+, I would give that an A-.

For exams and homeworks, there is thus both a raw score, typically ranging from 0 to around 100, and a normalized score on the 0-400 scale. The mapping from raw score to normalized score does not always take 0 to 0. A typical scale for a homework assignment takes 30 (and lower) to 0, 45 to 100, 60 to 200, 75 to 300, 90 to 400, and higher grades above 400 by the same linear function. On each assignment, I decide after grading what raw score constitutes a 200, and what score a 400, then find the linear function that meets those two points.

Academic Honesty Policy

All work submitted must be your own in presentation. How much outside help is allowed depends on the course component.

Last modified 1 October 2018