Grading Notes on Project 0

Graded Project 0 ("Electronic voting security properties") will be returned in class on Tuesday, Feb 26. Thereafter, it will be available for pick-up on weekdays after 1:30pm from Ms. Carpenter (4115 Upson).

Grades. Project grades ranged from A+ through B-. The average, median, and mode was B+, with the following distribution: A+(7), A(8), B+(71), B(21), B-(6), C+(1). Grades above B+ were awarded to particularly nice treatments; grades below B signify inadequate time or care spent on writing a solution.

Common Errors. The biggest error was a confusion between requirements and implementation. Requirements state what is desired; implementation concerns how that is achieved. Thus, in a requirements document like what you were asked to provide, one would expect to see "passive wiretappers are unable to learn the contents of messages" but it would be inappropriate to stipulate "messages should be encrypted". The former is a requirement; the latter is an implementation. More confusion led to a lower grade; discussion keyed to a particular implementation also resulted in a lower grade.

Many did not give references in a useful format. List the title and author, as well as location (url or journal volume and issue), for items in a reference list at the end of a document. (This did not affect your grade, but sloppy reference lists are nevertheless bad scholarship.)

Procedure for Regrades. Graders make mistakes. Write a clear explanation of what mistake you believe was made in assigning a grade. Return that, along with your original graded paper, to the instructor (using the same envelop your graded homework was returned in) before or after lecture. All regrade requests must be submitted by the end of class, Tuesday March 5.

A regrade request will cause a re-evaluation of the entire paper. Your grade might go up, but it also might go down. Your grade will also be decreased (substantially) if the regrade request does not have a credible basis and is seen to be an exercise in trolling, since that would convey your continued failure to master the material. Spending more time on your subsequent homeworks and projects in this class is by far the less risky approach to increasing your course grade.