Grading and policies
Table of contents
Course grading scheme
The course grading scheme is designed to encourage students to keep up with the course content as it happens, and to join lectures in person if they’re able.
- Homework (50%): weekly (or so) homework assignments
- Quiz (20%): biweekly (or so) quizzes
- Project (20%): one final data analysis project
- Participation (10%): students are expected to answer questions on each lecture (graded on completion, not correctness)
These weights are approximate; we reserve the right to change them later.
More details about each assignment follow.
Homework
Slip days. We recognize that students are balancing many priorities, and so we make accommodations to allow for late homework. Students have 7 slip days that may be used through the quarter with no grade penalty. At most 5 slip days may be used for a single assignment. For example, you could submit one homework five days late and a second two days late; or your friend could submit seven homeworks one day late each. To calculate slip days, we round up: a homework submitted 24 hours and one minute after it is due will use two slip days. Homework submitted after all your slip days are used will receive a score of 0.
Drops. Your lowest homework grade will be dropped.
Regrades. You can ask for your homework to be regraded up until two days after grades have been posted. Regrades can increase or decrease your grade. (We will regrade the whole assignment, not just a single question.)
Weights. Although some assignments are more difficult than others, we weight all assignments equally when computing your overall homework score.
Collaboration. The goal of the homework is to help you practice the skills that you’ll use later in this class and - we hope! - later in life. Homework carries weight for your grade to encourage you to spend time on it and think deeply about it. Our collaboration policy is geared to make sure you can get the help you need, and so that by the time you turn in your work you understand what it’s about, how it works, and why it’s important.
Students are allowed - and even encouraged - to collaborate on homework. However, each student must submit their own homework. We ask that you
- Give credit to the people who have helped you: please write on your homework the names of the people you worked with.
- Give credit to the other resources that have helped you: please write on your homework the textbooks, notes, web pages, or large language models you found useful.
- Write up your homework by yourself. ~That is, all of the text that you submit should be typed or hand-written by you. No copy-pasting.~ UPDATE: Tab-completing code via CodeSquire or equivalent is allowed. You do not need to re-type autocompleted CodeSquire output.
Partial credit. If you’re not able to answer a homework question, but you show us the work that you performed to think about the question and to try to understand it, you will receive partial credit.
Sharing solutions. Under no circumstance should you seek out or look at solutions to assignments given in previous years, or share or post solutions (yours or ours) to a public website.
Quizzes
This class will have no exams. Instead, we will have about 5 quizzes (approximately biweekly), which will ask some simple questions on course material. Each quiz should take you about 20 minutes. Quizzes will be cumulative. We may have in-class or take-home quizzes.
Take-home quizzes will be posted on Gradescope. They will be open from Friday 10am to Saturday noon ET; you will have 40 minutes from the time you begin the quiz to complete it. (We suggest setting a reminder on your calendar or phone to remember to take the quiz!) Do not close your browser; you will not be able to reopen the quiz. Take-home quizzes are open book, open note, open internet, and open AI tools. Collaboration with other students is prohibited. Do not communicate with other students during the quiz or about what questions were on the quiz, until after the deadline for quiz submissions.
In-class quizzes will happen in class on Wednesdays. These quizzes will be closed book and internet. You may bring a single sheet of handwritten notes. (It’s fine to write on both sides.) You will have half an hour to complete the quiz.
Regrades. You can ask for your quiz to be regraded up until two days after grades have been assigned. Regrades may increase or decrease your grade.
Drops. In computing your final grade, we will drop your lowest quiz score.
Exceptions
Beyond the slip days and drops outlined above, extensions on assignments will be granted only with an academic accommodation letter from the Office of Accessible Education (generally for medical reasons). or in other such exceptional circumstances. Requests due to job interviews, other classes and assignments, and poor planning will not be considered. We suggest you save your slip days to insure against catastrophe.
Attendance
Class participation is important for staying engaged and in-sync with the course material. Attending in person is encouraged through our participation policy:
- In-class participation will be recorded using in-class polls on the Poll Everywhere website. You must log in using your SUNet credentials. Go to Pollev.stanford.edu and log in with your SUNet credentials to access your free account. Or enter your SUNet email address at Polleverywhere.com and click Log in with Stanford to enter through the SUNet portal.
- If you are not able to make it to class (e.g., if you are sick), you can instead watch the lecture recording, which will be posted after the lecture on Canvas, and submit the makeup participation form before the start of the next class.
- We drop your lower two participation scores; so, you can get a perfect participation score even if you miss class twice without submitting the makeup participation form.
DO NOT register for this course if you have a recurring conflict with the lecture block. Lectures are recorded so that students who are sick or otherwise unable to come to class can receive full credit without having to prove their disability. However, we still believe that students learn best in class, and so if attendance is too low, we may drop the remote participation option at any time.
Office hours are not recorded.
Discussion section will consist of one-on-one help with hands-on exercises that prepare you for the homework assignments. Discussion section attendance is not mandatory. Be sure to bring your laptop.