CS 519: Homework puzzles

Merits and demerits

Programming  is hard, and sometimes takes longer than you would expect. To allow you to submit homework late without necessarily incurring a penalty, we have developed the following merit/demerit policy.

Each homework has a due date, and the homework is due at 9pm on this  date. If you submit homework before the due date, you will get merits correspoding to the number of days you are early. For instance, if you are two days early, then you will get two merits. Symmetrically, if you are two days late, you will get two demerits. You can get at most three merits or three demerits per homework. Homework submitted more than three days early will get three merits and homework submitted more than three days late will not be accepted.

At the end of the semester, we will add up your merits and demerits. If you get zero or positive merits overall, then you will receive no penalty. If, however, you get a negative number of merits, then you will get a penalty proportional to the number of demerits. This is calculated as follows. The six programming assignments are worth 30 points. If you get the worst possible demerits, which is three for each of the six, then you will get 18 demerits. This corresponds to a penalty of 15 points. Lesser numbers of demerits will get proportionately smaller demerits.

How to turn in homework

Please follow these rules exactly.

• Email the code for your solution to snorri@cs.cornell.edu with the subject line
              CS519: Homework ###
  where ### is the number of the homework.
• Send your file as plain ASCII text
• Don't send your homework as an attachment
• Don't uuencode or tar your file
• Don't send binaries
• The body of the email should only contain the  program text--any comments from you will be ignored

If your submission is successful, you will get an automatic acknowledgment by email.

If you did not follow any of the rules above, your submission will be rejected, and you will get a rejection by email. If you get a rejection, it is your responsibility to correct any problems and resubmit.

If you do not get an acknowledgment, this is most probably because of delays in forwarding email. Don't submit the homework again. Instead, contact the TA and await further instructions.

If you want to resubmit homework, for instance, because you found a bug in an earlier submission, you can resubmit once. You will get the number of merits/demerits corresponding to the day you resubmit the homework, plus an additional demerit. If you try to resubmit a homework twice, the second resubmission will be ignored.

Grading policy

Assignments will be given one of three grades. If the assignment is correct, you will receive a grade of 5. If you have a 'minor' bug (defined below), you will get a grade of 4. Otherwise, you will get a grade of 0.  We will check your assignment with an automatic script. Your grade will be mailed back to you.

A `minor' bug means that you should be able to explain to the TA exactly why your assignment did not work, and can fix the bug within ten minutes in his presence. If either of these conditions is not met, you will get a 0 grade.