Evaluation

Weekly Practice Quizzes [10%]
One quiz per week to check the key topics discussed
Goal of these quizzes is to encourage studying the materials with the same speed as the class since the topics are built on top of each other and it is hard to follow the lectures if falling behind the class. These are designed to make sure the key concepts are understood. The first non-graded quizzes assess the background knowledge required and point you to what concepts might need brushing up.
Quiz late submission policy: no late submissions allowed, you have a whole week to complete it, and the results are released after the deadline so it would be unfair to other students.
Assignments [50%] (4 assignments in total, 12.5% each)
Four programming assignments to be done in groups of three*, *no exception to this given the grading load on TAs
Groups can stay the same between projects, you can also regroup when needed, you need to register your group for each assignment before each assignment is released, otherwise you will be randomly assigned a group. Your group for A1 is not automatically carried over for the next assignments.
Each group member needs to do the whole assignment for themselves, no dividing up the work. But at the end you can take the best parts of each member for the submission, and you can collaborate as you wish. Saying that your teammate didn't do their part will not be accepted as an excuse, everyone must do every part, otherwise you will not have learned all that you need to learn for this course.
All group members receive the same mark unless there are major complaints on not contributing, responding, etc. from group-mates, which will be resolved in a case by case basis. If a significant difficulty/conflict arises, please send an email to the course email, put 'Group-Issue' in the title
Assignment late submission policy:
All due dates are 23:59 Montréal time, unless specified otherwise.
2^k% of the assignment grade will be deducted per k days of delay.
If you experience barriers to learning in this course, submitting the projects, etc., please do not hesitate to discuss them with me directly, and please make sure to put "551 special" in the header to make sure I see your email [for general course correspondence, please use the course email: comp551.f24@mcgill.ca]. As a point of reference, you can reach the Office for Students with Disabilities at 514-398-6009.

Work submitted for evaluation as part of this course may be checked with text-matching software within myCourses
First Exam [15%]
In person, tentatively on Oct. 7
Closed book, but you can bring 5 pages of your hand written notes
Second Exam [25%]
In person, tentatively on November 13
Closed book, but you can bring 5 pages of your hand written notes

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Bonus Points [?%]
We reserve the right to give bonus points for different things which believe will contribute to your learning experience throughout the term. Whenever we do give bonus points, we will give advanced notice and explain exactly how bonus points can be obtained and according to what criteria.
Eurovision Lecture Summary Contest: For every lecture starting today, we will hold a contest of can write the best summary of the lecture on Ed. To participate write your summary of the lecture on Ed and make sure to tag it with the category "Summary". The person who write the winning Summary will be attribute 0.5% bonus marks on their final grade. There is a cap of 5% total bonus grade which you can earn this way so even if you win 16 times, you will earn a bonus of 5% on your final grade not 8%. The person with the most points for their summary wins. The points will then follow the Eurovision Song Contest method: 50% of the points comme from the public (i.e. how many hearts you receive on Ed from your fellow students, public_points = number of hearts divided by the number of hearts received by the Summary who garnered the most hearts times 5, for a maximum of 5 points), and 50% of the points comme from the jury (i.e. the instructors) who will give a grade out of 5 for each summary. This will give each summary a number of points from 0 to 10. The one with the highest points wins.