Format, Student Activities, and Grades

Class meetings involve a combination of lecture, questions and discussion, and sometimes small group activity; the instructor chooses the appropriate mix.

Homework is an important part of the course: the students are striving both for manipulative skill as well as habits of thought. This requires practice.

The instructor chooses the exact grading scheme, but a typical distribution would be:

Homework (scaled to)	50
4 Exams	400
Final Exam	200
Total	650

Letter grades are usually based on a standard scale in which 90% of the total possible points guarantees an A , 80% a B, and 70% a C, with the instructor having the discretion to raise or lower these cut-offs if warranted.