MY POLICIES

1. 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 visit to 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.

2. Seating may be assigned only for exams and possibly for quizzes as well. Failure to comply may result in a failing grade for this particular test. Seating assignments will be posted 10' before the test outside of the classroom.

3. I will be tough to those who cheat or attempt to cheat. I also believe that the integrity of grading must be protected. During an exam or a quiz please make available to me your driver's license or a passport (Cougar ids may be used with another form of id but a regular picture id may be requested). If you don’t produce a picture id your grade may not be credited to you, until we will be able to verify your identification. During a quiz or an exam you are not allowed to talk. You are also not allowed to use the bathroom without an instructor’s permission. The use of cellular phones, data storage devices, books, tables, or notes are not allowed during exams and quizzes, unless I explicitly change this policy for a certain exam or quiz.

4. 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.

5. Check my office hours in my welcome page.

6. Attendance will be occasionally observed. Those, for whom I don't have attendance records, or have very few attendance records will be dropped without warning. Participating only in exams will not be sufficient for passing a course. Up to 3 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. In addition, the grades of the all the quizzes that you have missed will be set to zero. If you want to be excused for an absence please contact me!

7. Quizzes can be handed out any time during class. Most of the time, in each quiz you should expect only one problem from the list of problems suggested for home study.

Grades: Approximately 10 quizzes for a total Q out of 100 marks two midterms, M1 and M2 out of 100 each, for a total of 200 marks. If the total number of quizzes is more than 10, or less than 10 the total q will be adjusted so that the quiz total equals 100. Below B stands for the total bonus points (see bonus policy in 10).

Final grade at this point (Q + M1 + M2+B)/300 = Tavg

If student chooses to write a final, mark is F out of 200 marks.

Final grade:

If F > 2Tavg, (F + best of {Q,M1,M2}+B)/300

If F <= 2Tavg, (F/2 + best two of {Q,M1,M2}+B)/300

8. To be eligible for bonus points you must get at least 15 in each of the two exams and/or 15 in the final.

9. You may withdraw form the course at your request with a “W” until April 1st. Past that date you will receive your grade upon withdrawal.

10. Bonus policy: Bonus marks are added to your grades.

a. If you score over 7 in three consecutive quizzes you receive 4 pts.

b. If you score over 75% in each of exams 1 and 2 you get an extra 10% on the sum of your grades in both exams.

Grading scale: <45 is F, >=45 is D-, >=50 is D, >=60 is C, >=70 is B-, >=75 is B, >=88 is A.