This course will consist of two 2hr 45-minute lectures (MW) and two 1hr 15-minute studio sections (TTh) per week, at the times listed on the course schedule. During lectures, we will go over the course material as found in the textbook, work examples, and answer your (hopefully) many questions. Please participate actively in lecture, as I will tend to engage the class during lecture and have a very interactive teaching style.
During studio, you will spend time working on problems in groups, going over problems with your teaching assistant (TA), reviewing for quizzes and exams, and further discussing course material. You will also take the midterms in studio section.
Attendance is required at all lectures and studio sections. Classroom polling questions and quizzes in section both count toward your final grade. You must attend your assigned section — your attendance in a different section will not be counted.
There will often be a quiz during after your studio section, on the dates listed in the course schedule. Quizzes are 20 minutes each. Typically (but not always!), quizzes will cover the material that was done in the previous few lectures. Quizzes also serve as practice for the exams. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped. Quizzes are not proctored, but you must not collaborate or use any online resources to get information about the quiz or get help answering the questions. You may take the quiz at any time during the window after studio from 1:45pm - 4:00pm, but late submissions will receive a zero.
We will be using Piazza for online class discussion. The system is designed to get you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TAs, and the instructor. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, we encourage you to post your questions on Piazza and attend office hours. You can access Piazza through Canvas.
Your instructor will use Piazza or Canvas (or both) to post announcements. It is important that you read the announcements! Note that you will not receive announcement emails from Piazza until you login for the first time!
We will do classroom polling through Gradescope in lecture and studio, with a short question based on the current material being taught that day, so you need to read ahead to get a basic understanding of the ideas before coming to lecture/studio. Responding to these questions counts toward your final grade — although you will get half credit if your answer was incorrect just for attending that day. The poll questions will be extremely easy so it should be very simple to get full credit. The lowest three poll scores will be dropped. Please do not use outside resources or notes/calculator when responding to a poll. Academic integrity rules apply.
Homework will be assigned online and will consist of exercises in
WeBWorK (accessed through Canvas).
You are
responsible for understanding how to solve all homework exercises for exams
and quizzes. Homework assignments will generally be due at 11:59 PM on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On the first day of class, there is an
ungraded practice "Warmup" assignment on
WeBWorK designed to get students accustomed to working with the system.
The lowest two homework grades will be dropped. No late
homework will be accepted — no exceptions. Each homework assignment
counts the same amount toward your grade. Often due to the condensed schedule, we will have multiple homework assignments that are due the same day.
Note that the quiz in studio section may sometimes be based closely on the homework that was due the very same week.
If you get a funny error message when clicking the WeBWorK tab in Canvas, try closing the window and trying again. Like many other Georgia Tech websites, the authentication procedure sometimes requires two attempts to login. Other permission denied errors may be solved by deleting your browsers' cookies for the gatech.edu domain.
There are three midterm examinations during the semester. Their dates can be found on the course schedule. No books, notes, calculators, cell phones, or secondary electronic devices are allowed during exams. Students must not collaborate or use any outside resource such as Reddit, Chegg, or Wolfram Alpha on quizzes or exams. The exams will be worth an average of 15% of your final grade, with the best score counting 20% of your grade and the worst score counting 10% of your grade.
Absences from quizzes and midterms are generally excused only for Georgia Tech official business, religious holidays, serious illness, and the like. Absences for religious holidays and university travel should be discussed with your instructor in advance of missed assignments, quizzes, or exams. We reserve the right to ask for a letter from the Dean of Students to justify an absence. In the event that you miss the midterm for an acceptable reason, you will be able to take a makeup exam on the week immediately following the midterm. If this is not possible, then the weight of that midterm will be shifted equally to your remaining exams, including the final exam.
The final exam will cover all course materials and will be administered on the date and time set by the Institute, namely, on Wednesday, August 4, from 11:20 AM – 2:10 PM.
Your numerical grades on quizzes and exams will be posted throughout the semester
on Canvas. When receiving a graded quiz or exam in studio, check to be sure it matches
the grade posted on Canvas.
The grading breakdown is as follows.
in the Grades tab.
Final letter grades will be calculated as follows:
After all grades are in and all overall percentage scores for students have been computed, grades are assigned. The standard cutoffs are as follows.
A: [90%–100%], B: [80%–90%), C: [70%–80%), D: [60%–70%), F: [0%–60%)
So, to guarantee an A, get 90% or better overall. (90 means 90, not 89.9) To guarantee at least a B grade, get 80% or better overall, etc. These cutoffs might be adjusted, but only in the downward direction (to make letter grades higher).There is no extra credit.
Students are expected to fully adhere to Georgia Tech's honor code.