Academic integrity
Every student must formulate and write up his or her homework assignments independently. You are not allowed to show your homework to other students before it is graded. You are responsible for protecting your homework from being copied. If multiple students turn in problem solutions that are identical, this is cheating, and all students involved will be held accountable. No collaboration is allowed during exams.

Violation of these policies will be considered a breach of academic integrity. The minimum penalty for any violation is a grade of F. In addition, the student may be subject to other penalties outlined in The Rensselaer Handbook of Student Rights and Responsibilities.

You may discuss homework prior to the submission deadline with the instructor or TAs during office hours.

Students with special needs
Federal law requires all colleges and universities to provide specified types of assistance to students with disabilities. If you have need of special assistance, please obtain an authorizing memo from Disability Services for Students by contacting the Dean of Students in the Dean of Students Office (x6266). Information about a student's special needs will be treated as confidential. You must submit a copy of your authorizing memo to your professor well in advance of any affected exam or assignment. Failure to do so may result in a lack of special accommodations.

Homework
Homework must be typed, with one problem per page. You must upload a PDF into gradescope. Homeworks that are not typed will receive a grade of zero.

We recommend LaTeX for typesetting your homework. Here is a sample file that produces this pdf file when compiled with pdfLaTeX.

We will use gradescope to collect and grade assignments. You are responsible for uploading your homework by 11:59pm on the due date. You may turn in homework up to 24 hours late, for at most 50% credit. No homework will be accepted after that time without an excused absence from the Student Experience office.

Recitation
You are encouraged to discuss recitation problems with fellow students.

In weekly recitation meetings, the TAs and undergraduate mentors will go over solutions to recitation problem sets chosen to illustrate the use of the most important concepts. You should make your best effort to solve the recitation problems before attending recitation. Attendance at recitation is not required, but this is the only place solutions to homework and recitation problems will be made available.

Grading
15% Homework
25% Exam 1
25% Exam 2
35% Final Exam

To pass this class, the average of your three exam grades must be at least 60%. Mathematically, (0.25*exam1 + 0.25*exam2 + 0.35*final)/0.85 must be greater than or equal to 60.

The following grade ranges will be used to map numeric grades to letter grades. A (93 and above), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (60-66), F (59 and below). Grades falling between these ranges will be rounded to the nearest integer.

Exams and homeworks will not be curved. The final grade may be curved, but only to raise course grades, not lower them.

There are 12 homework assignments. The two lowest homework grades will be dropped.

Make-up exams
There will be no make-up exams (unless the absence is excused by the Student Experience office).

Grade appeals
Grades will be made available to students throughout the semester on Gradescope. Grades for all assignments will be determined by the professor and the TAs. You may appeal a homework or exam grade by first contacting the responsible TA. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of this appeal, you may then appeal to the professor. Grades must be appealed within 7 days of the return of the assignment or exam in question.