COURSEWORK

Participation

Regular class attendance and class participation is important and expected. You are expected to come to lectures, participate in discussions, read the textbook (including examples not covered in class), and ask questions. Students are responsible for all announcements and supplements given within any lecture.

How do I participate!? We are online!
Online or not, we use an app/website called Campuswire for particpation, class discussion, chats, Q&A, etc. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TA, and myself. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, I encourage you to post your questions on Campuswire. You can post anonymously and chat directly with other students who are online. Find our class page here https://campuswire.com/p/G361DB329.

Participation grade has two components: activity in AhaSlides interactive quizzes and activity on Campuswire (anonymous posts DO count).

Homework & labs/projects

Homework problem sets will be posted online at least one week before the due date. Typically, there will be weekly homework, with possible exceptions around exam time. There will also be reading assignments and worksheets to which you will be asked to respond (typically on Campuswire).

Code and examples in HW&labs&exams

Any and all solutions and analyses using R or Python must be written using Markdown. Communicating your results to others is as important as getting good results in the first place. When you analyze data, or run a piece of code, showing / presenting/ turning in raw piece of code is unacceptable. Your document must be readable by a human (your professor and classmates). So, you should submit an Markdown or knitr file, integrating text, figures and R code; submit both your knitted file and the source. If that is not feasible, contact me as soon as possible. Microsoft Word files get an automatic grade of 0, with no feedback.

Resources for Markdown: A template file, including additional links, has been posted on Campuswire! (Check out post #19.)

Important note: Solutions to homework problems and exams must be written clearly, legibly, and concisely and will be graded on correctness as well as presentation. Points will be deducted for sloppiness, incoherent or insufficient explanation, or for lack of supporting rationale.

Exams

There will be a regular mid-term exam sometime mid-semester, the date to be determined at least two weeks in advance. Exam dates and topics covered will be announced on the course homepage and in class. Make-up exams will be given only in case of a documented emergency. A comprehensive final exam will be given during the IIT final exam week.

Exams will generally consist of three types of problems: (1) examples; (2) computations and applications; (3) writing. Nothing too different from the homework that had been done thus far in the course.

Exam logistics:

• you will have a longer time window within which to complete a 75-minute or a 2-hour exam. You'll submit it electronically.

• Then you'll meet me for 10 minutes for a "interview", so to speak, where I get to ask you to explain your solution to a randomly selected problem from the exam you just turned in.

• I'll also have one follow-up question to clarify anything in the solution, which may or may not be a statement you wrote down or explained. No surprises, though. Everything from the lectures, homework, notes, syllabus.