Homeworks
| # | Topic | |Problems| | Assigned | Due | Questions | Solutions |
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| 1 | Languages and RegEx | 4 | Aug 25 | Sep 04 |
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| 2 | DFAs and NFAs | 4 | Sep 01 | Sep 11 |
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| 3 | Fooling Sets and CFGs | 4 | Sep 07 | Sep 18 |
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| 4 | Reductions and Divide & Conquer | 4 | Sep 29 | Oct 09 |
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| 5 | Backtracking and Dynamic Programming | 4 | Oct 06 | Oct 16 |
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| 6 | More Dynamic Programming and Problem-Graph Modeling | 4 | Oct 13 | Oct 23 |
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| 7 | DAGs, Shortest Paths | 4 | Oct 20 | Oct 30 |
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| 8 | Reductions, NP-Completeness | 4 | Nov 03 | Nov 13 |
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| 9 | NP-Completeness, Decidability | 4 | Nov 10 | Nov 27 |
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Couple things to note about homeworks:
- Homeworks are to be completed individually. Yes, this is a change from previous seemsters but we have good reason to believe that the group homeworks hamper learning instead of facilitate it.
- Each homework is assigned when you have all (or at least most) of the required knowledge to complete it. In two cases, because of scheduling constraints, one or two problems may require knowledge from the lecture/discussion right after assignment. Either way you’ll have the knowledge for those problems by Wednesday. This is a long-winded way of saying: There is zero reason not to start the homework early
- Most homeworks will consist of 2 novel problems and 2 problems you’ve seen in the labs. All the problems counts equally toward your final course grade.
- The homework average consists 25% of your final course grade. We will use the highest 27 scores to calculate your homework average for your final course grade. Since there are expected to be 36 problems, this means that 8 problems will be dropped (>2 homeworks).
- It’s a bad idea to skip homeworks. Homeworks and labs are where we get inspiration for exam problems.
- You can find a sample HW LaTeX template here.
Homework Logistics: How to submit
- All homework solutions must be submitted electronically via Gradescope. Submit one PDF file for each numbered homework problem. Gradescope will not accept other file formats such as plain text, HTML, LaTeX source, or Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx).
- Homeworks are due by 6 AM of their due date.
- You should not use Canvas to keep track of homeworks or any other course policies and logistics. Canvas is a gradebook, that’s all.
- You will be registered with Gradescope using your university email address. If you can’t access Gradescope let the course staff know.
- All homework assignments must be completed and submitted individually this semester. No group assignments.
- As error correction, each submitted homework solution should include the following information in large friendly letters at the top of every page/problem.
- The homework number
- The problem number
- Name + netid
- We will not accept late homework for any reason. To offset this rather draconian policy, we have a very generous number of homework drops (compared to other sections/courses). Also remember you can always resubmit a problem to gradescope. There is zero reason to wait until the last minute to submit your work.
Homework Grading Policies:
- Homeworks are graded by the entire course staff, within Gradescope. All numbered homework problems are worth the same amount.
- Under normal circumstances, all homework should be graded within two weeks of submission. However, your graders also have significant responsibilities and may take longer to grade the homeworks. This is all to say one thing: homeworks should not be used to check your mastery of the material. After the due date the homework solutions are immediately posted and you can check your answers against the solutions. Every semester students email me that they got something wrong on the exam because the HW were not graded beforehand. I am sorry but I simply do not have the resources to ensure that homeworks are always returned before an exam and so, you should verify your submission against the posted solutions and ping us on Piazza or come to OHs if you don’t understand a discrepancy.
- Homework grades are not a proof of correctness and cannot be used to argue for correctness on a exam.
- Partial credit is given for work that is very close to being correct.
- We will give zero points for long and tedious solutions (i.e., solutions that are longer than the official solutions by a significant amount). We reserve the right of not even reading your solution if it exceedingly and unnecessarily long. If your solutions seems too long - rewrite it to be short and precise.
- This semester I am limiting solutions text to be 300 words long max per problem. It is incredibly important to be able to convey complex idea as concisely as possible and I think this is good practice. I highly suggest using figures(flowcharts, graphics)/equations(useful for recurrences) to cut down on the word vomit.
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. - Unknown
Regrades
Regrades requests would be open for a week once grades are released (except for final exam because of registrar grade submission deadlines). Regrade requests are not intended for arguing about point allocation, or whether the grading scale is fair.
Unfortunately, certain students think that they can tire us into giving them point that they did not earn, by keep asking for unjustified regrade requests. As such, superfluous, argumentative and repetitive regrade requests, after an appropriate warning, would results in a zero on the relevant questions - please do not waste our time.