MY POLICIES

Once you are in the classroom and the class is in session, please be courteous. Please, avoid walking out of the class, except for an emergency e.g. to use the bathroom. You must not use your cellular phone, talk, or in general disrupt the class.  Mobile phones, pagers or other devices that emit alerting sounds or make noise should be deactivated or switched to the vibrating mode.

I believe that the integrity of grading must be protected and I will adhere to this principle. During exams you may be asked to produce a state-issued picture id. If you fail to do so your grade may not be credited to you, until we will be able to verify your identification. Please, don't talk during exams. You are also not allowed to use the bathroom without an instructor's permission. Please, treat the homework that you have to turn in as a take-home exam. You must not work on it in collaboration with other fellow students. If I have any doubts on the originallity of your homework I reserve the right to invite you to give an oral presentation of your homework in my office. If you fail to do so, then the grade of the disputed homework will be changed to zero. The use of cellular phones, data storage devices, or notes are not allowed during exams.

Each time you solve a problem in a test or for a homework assignment you have to show ALL your work and justify your answer. Plain answers in problems will not be considered at all, even if the question is of multiple choice type or short-answer type. A correct solution must show how you approached and worked an assigned problem.  Solutions containing only formulas will not receive full credit. Partial credit is always given for solutions that may not be complete, but indicate that some work towards the correct direction has been done. In addition, for the Statistics course the final conclusions must be interpreted in layman’s language.

Check my office hours in my welcome page.

Attendance will be occasionally observed. Those, for whom I don't have attendance records, or those who sparingly attend records will be dropped without warning. Participating only in exams and turning in homework will not be sufficient for passing the course, regardless of the grade. Up to 2 absences will be automatically excused. Should you have more absences you should justify to me the reasons for these absences, otherwise you may be dropped from the course, without prior warning. If you want to be excused for an absence please contact me!

Grades: We will have three exams, M1, M2 and M3 respectively on the 2nd, 4th and 6th Thursday of the semester. Each exam gives 60 pts. For late homework submission there will be a penalty of 20 pts for each occurrence. Each homework gives 40 pts.  There will be three homeworks (H1, H2, H3) due each of the remaining Thursdays. The final grade at this point is given by (M1+M2+M3+H1+H2+H3)/3.

If a student chooses to take the final exam, then F, the grade of final is out of 160 marks. Then the final grade will be calculated according to the following rule, where

Tavg =(M1+M2+M3+H1+H2+H3)/(3.5):

Final grade:

If F > 2Tavg,   (F + maximum of {(best two of M1, M2, M3+ best of H1, H2, H3) or (best of M1, M2, M3+ best two of H1, H2, H3)})/3

If F <= 2Tavg,  (F/2 + best two of M1, M2, M3+ best two of H1, H2, H3, H4)/3

Use the blue notebooks available at the UH-bookstore for your homework and exams. Effective with exam 1 each time you don’t use the blue notebook you miss 5 pts.