See tentative exam dates in main course page. Due to the difficulty of monitoring student work on take home assignments for such a standard course and large class, grades will be given solely based on exams.
It is planned that there will be 4 during-semester exams, roughly one every 3 weeks, each cumulative of the syllabus covered so far, but emphasizing the materials covered in the past 3 weeks. Each exam is weighted 18% of the final grade.
The final exam will be cover the entire syllabus and will be weighted 20-24% of the final grade.
The remaining 4-8% will be for zybook activity on chapters BEFORE the chapter is covered in class. ( The range is because it is not clear whether zybooks will extend its availability past March).
There will be no make-up exams without a doctor's note or similarly official proof of emergency.
Exams will be Closed book
Practicing: Doing HW problems carefully is extremely important. (the majority will require writing proofs) Without this extensive practice, you will almost certainly fail the exams which will also require proof-writing.
Solution discussion: Exam solutions will be discussed during the discussion section immediately after the exam.
Partial credit policy: is generally simple and always consistent across students.
The two directions of a proof are generally given separate credit.
A correct claim/final answer with a wrong proof/argument or no proof/argument usually does not merit much partial credit (although there are some exceptions).
You get more points if you indicate that you don't know or are omitting something instead of falsely claiming correctness or completeness.