Handout #27 -- CS 423: Theory of Algorithms

cos423: Theory of Algorithms	handout #27
Michael Goldwasser
Princeton University	Tuesday, April 28, 1998

In-Class Final Cancelled
Optional Take-home Assignment instead

Canceled final exam

We have decided to cancel the in-class final that was originally scheduled at the beginning of this course. The foremost reason is that the workload of the weekly assignments throughout this course has been consistently demanding. As a result, the large number of graded assignments for each student will already allow us to assign course grades fairly and with high confidence.

Given this situation, it seems unnecessary to require students to spend more time studying for one more assignment, to further prove themselves. Also, we are aware that students are taking other courses which may have had lesser workloads during the semester, but which require heavy workloads due to final projects or final exams. You have already spent enough time on this course.

The formula from Handout 1, regarding overall course percentages will be adjusted as follows. We will scale up the weight of the homework and midterm grades proportionately, and so the overall percentage for each student will be calculated as follows:

Each of your 8 top homework scores will account for 10%.
The midterm will account for 20% of the overall grade.
Extra credit problems will increase your overall grade up to 5%.

Optional Final Assignment

Since some students may have been hoping to use the final exam in order to significantly increase their overall percentage, we will offer an optional final assignment. For those who turn in the assignment, we will use the original formula from Handout 1 to calculate an overall percentage for the course.

The assignment will be available on or before Thursday, May 7th, and will be due promptly by 5pm on Monday, May 18th. Extensions will not be granted by the instructor, and can only be approved by the appropriate Dean. Copies of the assignment may be picked up on the second floor of the CS building, or from the course web page.

Note that this assignment should not be viewed as extra credit. Your performance on the final assignment may lower your overall grade for the course, just as it may raise it. For this reason, it is strongly suggested that students should complete this assignment only if they feel their previous grades for the course have been unrepresentatively low (for example if some assignments were skipped and received zeroes). By default, if you do not turn in the final assignment, we will calculate your final grade using the re-weighted formula above.

This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 97.1 (release) (July 13th, 1997)