Homework and Extra Credit

In order to improve your performance for the rest of the class I am providing you an incentive to work hard the last two weeks of class. There will be two homeworks, one each due on the last two Thursdays of the semester. Each homework will be graded for completion, based upon effort not on whether the answer is correct. For each homework that you successfully complete your exam grade for my portion of the class will be augmented. Your exam grade consists of the weighted average of the two exams. The first exam is worth 40% and the last exam is worth 60%. Therefore your exam grade for my portion of the class is given by

exam grade=0.4*exam 1 % correct+0.6*exam 2 % correct

The exam grade will lie between 0 and 1.

Your exam grade will be augmented by the following algorithm:

• exam grade>0.9: each homework raises exam grade by 0.005
• 0.9> exam grade >0.8: each homework raises exam grade by 0.01
• 0.8> exam grade >0.7: each homework raises exam grade by 0.015
• 0.7> exam grade >0.6: each homework raises exam grade by 0.02
• 0.6> exam grade: each homework raises exam grade by 0.025

If you do two homeworks and the first homework raises your exam to a higher class (such as from 0.79 to 0.810) then the second homework raises your exam grade based upon the new category.

Note that this algorithm provides you some insurance in the case of poor exam performance.