Basic Policies

We expect to have most class meetings in person, though it is hard to predict what lies ahead and how the ongoing pandemic will affect things. Occasionally, one or a few classes may need to be held virtually, on Zoom. Our plan is to record all classes to the maximum possible extent and have the recordings made available through the Panopto link on the Canvas page.

Attending Classes in Person

Please comply with all of Dartmouth's COVID-related policies, including testing and masking indoors. We have a firm no-laptop/no-phone policy for all in-person classes. Please engage fully in the lecture and disengage from your laptop/tablet/phone; these things distract me and distract your fellow students. Please read this article to better understand this policy.

Attending Online Classes on Zoom

When attending an online (on Zoom) class session, please prepare to engage just as seriously as you would in person. Please have your camera on (unless there is a very good reason to turn it off for a while) and keep your microphone muted unless you are addressing the whole class. Please use the "raise hand" feature of Zoom if you'd like the professor's attention on any matter in the middle of a lecture.

Absences and Scheduling Conflicts

The material in each class relies heavily on previous classes, so if you miss a class, it is your responsibility to figure out ways to catch up at once on the material covered. If you have a truly unavoidable academic conflict with one of the scheduled quizzes, you must let me know by Jan 10 (firm deadline) and make alternative arrangements. It is not possible to get an extension or to reschedule the midterm and final exams, so please plan accordingly.

Further Reading: General Policies

Besides the above, there are a number of Dartmouth-wide policies that apply to this course. These are described on the course's Canvas page. Please read them carefully and become familiar with them.

Academic Integrity

Collaboration on Written Homework

When working on homework problems, you may collaborate and discuss with the course staff and other students enrolled in this term's offering of this course (and not with any other persons). Share only ideas and do not share any written out partial solutions or any pictures. When you prepare the final draft of your solutions, you must work entirely by yourself and write answers in your own words. At the top of your submission, you must list all people you collaborated with, received help from, or gave help to. If you did the entire homework on your own, you must state that explicitly.

Sources

When working on homework problems, you may consult this course's website, any handouts given out in class, discussions on this course's Ed Discussion forum, the listed textbooks for this course, and your own notes. "This course" means this particular term's offering of CS 39. Consulting any other sources is forbidden, unless the professor has made an exception in writing.

Quizzes and Exams

Collaboration is absolutely not allowed on the quizzes and exams. Giving and receiving help on exams is forbidden, except that you may ask the course staff for clarifications. The in-class exams are closed-book and closed-notes. The take home exams allow you to consult sources similar to those allowed for the homework; precise instructions will be given on the exams.

These rules will be strictly enforced and any violation will be treated with the utmost seriousness.

Graded Work

Submissions and Lateness Policy

All homework and take-home exams must be turned in electronically, using Gradescope, which is linked from the Canvas page.

Doing homework on time is crucial to your understanding in this course. On every homework set, you can earn 3 bonus points for submitting on time (as defined by the Canvas timestamp). Since unexpected and unavoidable issues can arise, on up to 3 occasions throughout the term, we will accept a late submission up to 24 hours past the stated deadline. Any lateness outside these bounds will result in your homework being left ungraded (and earning a score of 0). No exceptions!

Late submissions for the midterm or the final exam will absolutely not be accepted. Please, please, do not be late with those or you risk earning a score of 0.

Advice

Start working on each homework set the day it is posted. The problems won't be solvable in one sitting. Sleep on them; the solutions will come to you over the course of several days.

Do not put off homework submission until the last few minutes before the deadline! Make a submission at least 30 minutes before the stated deadline and then refresh your browser and check carefully that Gradescope has received a clear, complete, and readable version of your submission. That way, if you need to make a correction or an improved submission, you still have several minutes to do it.

Homework Grading Standards

Several homework problems will be long-answer questions worth 7 points. On such problems, our grading guidelines are as follows.

• 7 points: A mathematically correct and concise solution that is written well. Contains no errors other than perhaps small spelling mistakes and minor grammatical errors.
• 6 points: A basically correct solution but with one of the following small flaws.
  • One or two small typos that makes the solution technically wrong.
  • A proof that is missing one or two minor steps of reasoning.
  • A mathematically correct solution but with grammatical errors that make parts of it hard to read or confusing. This includes not writing in complete sentences.
  • An otherwise correct solution that is a bit longer than necessary and the excess length subtracts from its clarity.
• 5 points: A mostly correct solution with more than a minor flaw. For example
  • Minor flaws in two or three places, as above.
  • Mathematically correct solution but with poor grammar throughout.
  • A correct solution that is much longer than necessary (e.g., writing two full pages when half a page would have sufficed).
• 4 points: A solution that is on the right track but has a big mistake somewhere. To get this score, the problem must require at least two major ideas and the mistake cannot be in the more/most important idea.
• 3 points: An attempted solution that has some of the important ideas required but with a mistake in the most important idea.
• 2 points: An attempted solution that solves only a easy special case of the problem, where solving the full problem would require much more sophisticated idea(s).
• 1 point: An answer that would qualify for 2 points except that it has typos or small errors.
• 0 points: An answer that does not make useful progress towards a solution, or is a solution to something other than what was asked.

In all cases, too many typos, too many flaws in grammar, or excessive length (as indicated under "6 points" and "5 points" above) may cause 1 or 2 points to be taken off.

Regrading Policy

Gradescope has a convenient interface for requesting regrades. Use it if needed. All regrade requests will be handled by the person who graded the relevant problem (usually a TA). If you do not reach a satisfactory resolution with the TA, use the private post feature on Ed Discussion to make a formal regrade request to the professor.

All regrade requests must be made within 7 calendar days of the relevant grades being released. Exception: for Homework 8, such requests must be made within 2 days of grades being released.

Extra Credit and Solutions

Challenge Problems

Many homework sets will have one or two "challenge problems" accompanying the regular homework. These are meant to provide a higher level of challenge for students who want to dig deeper into the subject and relish a strong challenge. My recommendation is that you think about these problems only if you have completed the regular homework and you found the homework easy. Your grade will never suffer because of not working on challenge problems and in fact it is unwise to skimp on regular homework to work on these challenge problems.

If you do solve a challenge problem, don't submit it with your regular homework. Instead, email (yes, email — this is the one thing where I'm asking you to use email rather than Ed Discussion) a pdf of your solution to Professor Chakrabarti within 24 hours of the regular homework deadline that week. This is considered extra-credit work, so it won't be graded in the usual sense, but I will keep a count of how many of these you have solved over the term. Only 100% rigorous solutions will count!

Don't be upset if you cannot solve any of the challenge problems. Most of them are very hard!

Homework Solutions

We will hand out official solutions to most homework problems once we release grades. These handouts will be hardcopy only. Our sample solutions may be quite different from yours and may point out useful insights. For these reasons, please treat all sample solutions as required reading, even if you solved all the homework problems correctly.