CPSC 421/501 Course Policy Page, Fall 2019
This page concerns CPSC 421 Section 101 and CPSC 501 Section 101. The courses have been combined, except that CPSC 501 will have an additional essay to write for 20% of the grade.
| Grading Scheme |
For CPSC 421 students, the course grade is computed as:
0.55 f + 0.35 max(f,m) + 0.10 max(f,m,h) where f,m,h are the grades on, respecitively, the final exam, midterm exam, and homework, after any scaling of the exams; your three lowest homework scores are dropped in the overall homework computation. For CPSC 501 students, the course grade is computed as 80% of the above CPSC 421 mark, plus 20% of an expository essay (see below). |
|---|---|
| Midterm |
The midterm will be held during class hours on
Wednesday, October 30, 2019.
Location TBA.
I will give only one midterm and only one final during the semester. Please make sure you do not make plans (travel, work, etc.) without regard for the midterm and final dates; also, do not make such plans assuming that the preliminary exam schedule will not change (it sometimes changes). |
| Prerequisites and Background |
Formally, the prerequisites are
CPSC 221 (or CPSC 260 and EECE 320, both of which are no longer taught);
CPSC 320 is also recommended.
The point of these requirements
is that you should be familiar with some tools used in
algorithms and discrete mathematics;
these are mostly covered in Chapter~0 and Section~7.1 (regarding Big-O and
little-o notation) of Sipser's textbook.
More importantly, this course requires much more mathematical abstraction than one sees in a typical Computer Science course. This may require a significant amount of time if you haven't seen abstract mathematics; an example of this is Cantor's Theorem (covered at the start of the course). |
| Homework Policy | You may work together on homework, but you must write up your own solutions individually. You must acknowledge with whom you worked. You must also acknowledge any sources you have used beyond the textbook and two articles on the class website. |
| Essay for CPSC 501 | Students in CPSC 501 have to write an expository essay on some advanced topic in Theoretical Computer Science (for 20% of their grade). Here is a description of the assignment. |
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