Grading

Here are the assignments that contribute to your grade, with their frequencies and percentage of the final grade:

• Homework (due once a week): 80% total, which is almost 9% each;
• Final exam (March 19 Wednesday): 20%.

Strictly speaking, there is no curve, so you are not competing against your fellow students. I encourage you to study together and learn from each other! However, if grades don't turn out as I expect, then I'll consider whether an assignment was more difficult than I intended and adjust the grades accordingly (usually by making a hard problem extra credit).

Here are the letter grades at SCC:

At SCC, a C is the minimum grade necessary to qualify for a later course, which is usually also what you will need to transfer a prerequisite; for meeting transfer admission requirements, you usually only need a D. However, sometimes you may still need a C for admission, and sometimes you may need a C+ or (very rarely) even a B for either purpose; talk to an advisor if you don't know what you need. Of course, you should try for an A+!

Sometimes you will be required to show some of your work; make sure that you read and follow the instructions! To get as much credit as possible, it's good to explain your answers as clearly as you can, even when the instructions don't specifically ask you to. If you can convince me that you know what you're doing, then you'll get some credit. But if it looks as if you pulled an answer out of thin air (or the back of the book), then you won't get credit. I also suggest that you cross out (and not erase) any significant amount of work that you decide is incorrect, in case you later want to look at it after all.

Homework will be due once a week, usually on Wednesday. However, only some problems will actually be graded; during class on the day that the homework is due, you will have the opportunity to work in small groups to discuss your answers to those problems and rewrite them if you wish. Since I take questions before I split you into these groups, the whole process may spill over into the next class day.

As you do your homework before class, I encourage you to talk with your fellow students; you can also talk to other people and look at other books. However, when you write up your homework during class, you should only communicate with the people in your group (or me), and you should all understand as much as possible what you turn in. When making the final write-up, you may use calculators (but not communication devices such as cell phones) and any notes that you wrote yourself (including, of course, any homework that you wrote up before class); you may also use your textbook, but only to reread the problem.

The small groups will be assigned differently every day. You may all sign the same paper, or you may turn in separate papers; either way, please write up a fresh paper with your answers. No one can be forced to sign on to a paper that they disagree with, nor can anyone be prevented from signing on to any paper from their group.

If you miss class, then you can turn in your homework later, but you may be graded on different problems, so you should turn in the entire assignment; once the homework has been graded and returned, you may not be able to get full credit (or indeed any credit) for late homework. I encourage you to contact me as soon as possible if you miss class or expect to.

You can always do more homework problems! You may need to practise the material if you want to remember it for the final exam, a subsequent course, or the rest of your life. If you bought MyMathLab access with your course textbook (or separately), then you can find supplementary problems there; use Course ID bartels96466. (However, MyMathLab is not required for this section.)

For the specific assigned problems, see the homework list.

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