INFO 150: A Mathematical Foundation for Informatics

David Mix Barrington

Fall, 2017

Course Requirements and Grading

Your grade in INFO 150 will be based on the following:

• Midterm Exams: There will be two evening midterm exams as specified on the syllabus. Each will count for 15% of the course grade. You will have up to two hours for an exam that I hope will be doable in one hour. I will make up a practice exam, similar in length and difficulty to the real exam, and post it a week before the real exam. I'll then post solutions to the practice exam with a few days to go.
• Final Exam:This will be during the December final exam period as scheduled by the University, and will be cumulative. You will have two hours. This exam will count for 30% of your final grade. I will give you a practice final and solutions to it before the actual final.
• Homework/Attendance: Because our class size is small, I need everyone to attend every class section, as nearly as possible. Attendance is thus required, as there will be a graded activity in every class. (I can grant exceptions for medical or other conflicts, particularly if I am informed about them in advance.) Most of the written homework will be in sets of a few problems assigned in one class session for the very next session. I'll have you present solutions to these problems in class as well as handing in a written solution. The attendance and homework together will count 30% of the final grade, so that each class session will count about 1%.
• Project: Each of you (alone or in a pair) will research a topic of your choice and make a written presentation for me by the end of term. This will count 10% of the total grade. Here is more detail on the project.

• Note: I recognize that this is a diverse class in terms of experience and mathematical ability. To some extent my expectations as to the amount and difficulty of what you can do may evolve over the term. You will not be competing against one another -- anyone I judge minimally able to go on in this area will get at least a C, and anyone who fulfills all my reasonable expectations for a student at your level will get an A.

Academic Honesty Policy

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

• The exams are closed-book and no outside help is allowed. Any cheating on an exam is grounds for an F in the course.
• For in-class assignments, almost anything goes as a source of information, including the instructor and your classmates, but you must still write up the solution in your own words so direct copying is not allowed.
• With homework the situation is in between and the rule harder to specify. You may discuss homework with other students, in fact I encourage this as a learning experience. But again, the writeup must be your work. Copying is not allowed, and collaboration so close that it looks like copying is not allowed. (In general, if I get two identical homeworks I will accept neither of them (i.e., both get F's) and will give you a stern warning that could lead to formal action the next time.) A good practice is to divide your work into an "ideas phase" where you collaborate and a "writeup phase" where you work alone -- enter the writeup phase with notes, but not written solutions.
• If you make use of a printed or on-line source for the homework, other than specific course materials such as the textbook or web site, please mention it in your writeup. Of course copying a solution to a problem from the web is cheating, and this is easier for us to detect than you might think.

Last modified 4 September 2017