Course Information
CS162 Fall 2011

Course Staff:

Instructors:

Anthony D. Joseph, Associate Professor
465 Soda Hall, 643-7212.  Email: adj AT cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: M 2:00P-3:00P and Tu 1:00P-2:00P,  465D Soda
Ion Stoica, Associate Professor
465 Soda Hall, 643-4007.  Email: istoica AT cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: M 3:00P-4:00P and W 11:00A-12:00P 465D Soda [tentative]

Teaching Assistants:

Angela Juang
Email: Y at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where Y = cs162-ta
Office Hours: Th 10-11am, F 2-3pm, 651 Soda Hall

Steve Hanna
Email: Z at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where Z = cs162-tb
Office Hours: Monday 11am-12pm, 751 Soda Hall(alcove)

Karan Malik
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-tc
Office Hours: M 3-4pm, F 1-2pm, 651 Soda Hall

Patrik Sundberg
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-td
Office Hours: Tu 1-3pm, 283E Soda Hall

Andrew Wang
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-te
Office Hours: Tu 9:30AM-11:30AM, 611 Soda Hall (6th floor alcove)



Lecture and Discussion Times:

Lecture:


Discussion Sections and Labs: 

Course Communication:

You can email the staff at cs162 AT eecs.berkeley.edu. We are using Piazza to replace the newsgroups which have been used in the past. You should create an account and join the Berkeley instance of CS162. Piazza is effectively required reading for this course.

Course Reading Materials:

Textbooks:

Course Grading:

The EECS Division guideline for an upper division EECS class is that the overall class GPA should be between 2.7 and 3.1. (See policy for undergradute courses.) Thus, the average gradein this class will be a B or B+. Please set your expectations accordingly.

We grade on a curve rather than on an absolute scale because it protects students from stressing out if we happen to give an overly hard exam. Graduate students and reentry students are not included in establishing the curve (to be fairer to undergraduates), but they will receive grades based on where they would fall on the curve.  The downside of grading on a curve is that it tends to lead students to think they are competing against each other; in practice, this is mistaken belief in a class this large. We're told told that in past years, the absolute difference between each half-step grade (between a B+ and an A-, for example), has been roughly 5%, while the largest impact any individual student's performance is likely to have on your grade is less than 0.1%... in other words, well into the noise.

Projects: There will be four projects. Each project consists of a design document and solution code. The document will be worth 40% of the project grade, and the code will be worth the other 60%.

Exams: There will be one midterm exam and one final exam. If you have a conflict, let us know, and we will schedule a makeup for the day before the exam is given to the rest of the class. All exams will be closed book, and will cover material from lecture, sections, the readings, and the project. In particular, you are likely to do poorly on the exams and in the course if you do not do your share of the work on the project.

Rough Breakdown of Points: