Piazza

We will use Piazza as the 'one-stop shop' throughout the semester: for a Q&A forum and for official announcements. Enrollment in Piazza is mandatory. If you have questions about anything related to the course, please post them on Piazza rather than emailing the instructors or TAs. Please do not post anything resembling a solution to a homework problem before it's due. We always welcome any feedback on what we could be doing better. See the Piazza Etiquette section for more on using Piazza. To join the class on Piazza, follow this link.

Gradescope

All homework will be submitted through Gradescope, and all homework and exam grades will be returned through Gradescope. If you have not been enrolled in our Gradescope, please fill out this Google Form

Email

Please use Piazza for all technical questions, and also all administrative questions about the course that are not personal to you: other students may also benefit from seeing the answers to these questions. If you have a more specific administrative question that relates to you alone, please either use a private post on Piazza (visible to course staff only) or send email to the course administrative account sp20@eecs70.org (read by instructors and head TAs only).

Instructional Servers

CS 70 does not make use of instructional accounts, but to get a computer account for this course, go to http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webacct, or click 'WebAcct' on http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu.

The Midterms are tentatively scheduled as follows: Midterm 1 is on Tuesday, March 3 from 8-10pm. Midterm 2 is on Tuesday, April 7 from 8-10pm. The Final is on Thursday, May 14 from 3-6pm. Unfortunately, due to large enrollment, we are unable to accommodate final exam conflicts; we strongly discourage enrollment in another class with conflicting lectures and/or final exam; if you choose to enroll in such a class you will have to make arrangements for an alternate Final with the other class. Midterm conflicts will be accommodated only if the conflict is with another campus exam or comparable activity. You must fill out a form (available on Piazza) to request such an accommodation, at least two weeks in advance.

This course spans a fairly broad set of ideas and concepts within a short period of time, and hence sustained and consistent effort and investment are critical to your success in this class. Similarly, by far the most common operating mode we have observed in previous students who struggled and/or failed this class was attempting to do the bare minimum in general and then catch up/cram right before the exams.

In order to formally encourage all of you to maintain the sustained effort that we have observed to be critical to success, we will be adopting a new policy regarding exam clobbering, participation, and effort. Specifically, for students who (1) complete an optional midterm redo and (2) perform significantly better on the final exam, we will provide the opportunity to clobber a midterm.

If you qualify for the clobber (i.e. (1) and (2)), you may replace your lowest midterm score with your scaled score on the final exam according to the formula below.

Replacement MT score (on scale of 100) = max [MT score, final exam score - 15% (on scale of 100)] This essentially allows you to replace your midterm grade by a higher grade --- we want to reward improved performance.

If you complete the optional midterm redo for both midterms, and are eligible for a clobber on both midterm, the clobber that helps your score more is applied (i.e. you may clobber either Midterm 1 or Midterm 2, but not both, and only if you complete both midterm redos). Please note that even though lecture attendance is not included (for logistical reasons) in the two criteria for clobbering eligibility, we do strongly encourage you to attend lecture in person.

You must attend at least two of the three exams (Midterm 1, Midterm 2, Final Exam) in order to pass the class. We will consider granting an incomplete given extenuating circumstances. Simply not attending the final exam does not ensure an automatic failure.

There is no textbook for this class. Instead, there is a set of comprehensive lecture notes. Make sure you revisit the notes after every lecture, and multiple times thereafter: you should be aware that it will likely take several readings before you fully understand the material. Each note may be covered in one or more lectures. Note 0 is background material that you should make sure you understand before the first lecture.

Release Schedule: Discussion solutions are published after all sections are completed.

The discussion sections are designed not to cover new material but to consolidate the material covered in lectures and in the notes. It is highly recommended that you attend both discussions each week. You may attend any discussion section, but we recommend that you settle on a weekly two-section pair (with the same TA) as early as possible in the semester. Some section times are more popular than others: if a particular section is too full, then students will be admitted on a first-come first-served basis and others will have to attend an alternative section. It is in your own interests to find a section that is not over-subscribed. All sections are equivalent: they all cover the same material. Each week, the Tuesday/Wedensday sections will cover the preceding Tuesday lecture, while the Thursday/Friday sections will cover the corresponding Thursday lecture.

There will be weekly required homeworks designed to consolidate your understanding of the course material. Maximum credit for each homework will be given for any score of 75% or more. Your lowest two homework scores will be dropped, but these drops should be reserved for emergencies. No additional allowances will be made for late or missed homeworks: please do not contact us about missed homeworks or late submissions.

We have a zero-tolerance policy for cheating. Consequences of cheating include: negative points for the corresponding assignment, a failing grade in the class, and/or a referral to the Office of Student Conduct.

You are encouraged to work on homework problems in study groups of two to five people; however, you must always write up the solutions on your own. Similarly, you may use books or online resources to help solve homework problems, but you must always credit all such sources in your writeup and you must never copy material verbatim.

We believe that most students can distinguish between helping other students and cheating. Explaining the meaning of a question, discussing a way of approaching a solution, or collaboratively exploring how to solve a problem within your group are types of interaction that we strongly encourage. But you should write your homework solution strictly by yourself so that your hands and eyes can help you internalize this material. At no time should you be in possession of another student's solution. You may discuss approaches but your solution must be written by you and you only. You should acknowledge everyone whom you have worked with or who has given you any significant ideas about the homework. Not only is this good scholarly conduct, it also protects you from accusations of being a "free-rider" regarding your colleagues' ideas.

Warning: Your attention is drawn to the Department's Policy on Academic Dishonesty. In particular, you should be aware that copying or sharing solutions, in whole or in part, from other students in the class (or any other source without acknowledgment) constitutes cheating. Any student found to be cheating risks automatically failing the class and being referred to the Office of Student Conduct.

This course is not graded on a curve. We will set absolute thresholds for performance that will map to grade boundaries. We encourage you to discuss the course material with each other and teach each other new ideas and concepts that you learn. Teaching the material is one of the best ways to learn, so discussing course material with colleagues in the class is a win-win situation for everyone. Grades are not everything, far from it, but that said, here is the breakdown for grading for this class:

• Homework: 40 Points
• Midterm 1: 65 Points
• Midterm 2: 65 Points
• Final: 130 Points

Grade bins:

• A: 90%
• A-: 87%
• B+: 80%
• B: 69%
• B-: 60%
• C+: 55%
• C: 50%
• C-: 47%
• D+: 46%
• D: 44%
• D-: 40%

Important Note:

We will encourage more student participation on Piazza rather than answering right away, that is, we will wait until other students step up and answer questions.

Of course, we will still provide clarifications on logistics, typos, subtle points, etc.

We want to make sure that you are helping each other out, and having instructors give away the answers isn't the most beneficial for your education either.

In order to make Piazza a better resource for everyone, we've outlined some guidelines for you to follow when posting your questions. Questions which follow these guidelines will have a higher chance of being answered!

1. Ask HW questions only in HW posts.

We've created individual posts for each problem from homework. Please ask questions, discuss problems, or help out in those posts only. Before asking a question, read through (or search) the whole post to see if your question has been answered.

2. Don't post answers in Piazza.

Please don't give away the answer on Piazza. You can explain things in a way that still lets other students figure out the essence of the problem on their own, but don't spoil the problem. For example, don't point to a useful YouTube link that works out essentially what the problem is asking about.

3. Try to make posts public.

While not violating Rule 2, try to make your questions public, because others might have the same question and we don't need to answer them multiple times.

4. Piazza is not OH. 5 minute-test.

If you think your questions may take more than 5 minutes to answer, please come to office hours or homework parties instead.

5. Neither Piazza nor TAs are for pre-grading.

Please do not post questions of the form:

• "Is this the correct solution to HW X problem Y?"
• "Would this receive full credit on HW X problem Y?"
• "Is this the right level of detail for HW X problem Y?"

Please do not use Piazza as a medium to ask instructors to check your homework in advance. We simply cannot check every student's homework through Piazza.

Feel free to ask questions of clarification, or ask questions about the course content to achieve a deeper understanding, but at a certain point, you must apply your knowledge, give it your best shot, and submit your answers with confidence.

6. Post a screen shot of any resource referenced.

Your question should be self-contained. The TAs (and other responders) should not have to scan through PDFs to even figure out what the question is. Ask yourself: am I referring to some lecture slide/lecture note/HW solution/discussion solution/past exam?

If the answer is yes, post a screen shot of the relevant part.

7. Post all your work.

Don't post one line saying:

At step n, I get XYZ, and I'm now confused.

This forces the TAs to guess:

What happened in steps 1, 2, ..., n - 1?

Most likely, the TAs will guess wrong, and we run into a mess of followup questions trying to figure out what steps 1, 2, ..., n - 1 were.

Instead, post:

Starting out, we have: ....

Then, I do ..., and I get ...

Next, I do ..., and I get ...

Next, I do ..., and I get ...

Now, I get $&%&#(, and this makes no sense.

Then, the TA can respond:

The mistake is at step 3, you're not allowed to apply ABC to XYZ because ...

8. Post narrow, precise questions.

Questions of the form "Can someone please explain stable marriage to me?" are not helpful.

There's an entire lecture note written on it. There are multiple parts to stable marriage:

• actual algorithm
• proof of termination
• proof of stability
• proof that it's male optimal
• proof that it's female pessimal

No TA is arrogant enough to think they can rewrite the lecture better than notes that have evolved over decades of teaching. Instead, the question should be precise, like:

Title: Can someone please explain this step of the proof of stability?

Body:

[Image of Stable Marriage Algorithm]

[Image of Proof of Stability (with an arrow draw in)]

In the proof of stability, I get that we have:

• fact 1 in your own words
• fact 2 in your own words
• fact 3 in your own words

However, I don't get how we get:

• fact 4 in your own words