Course Information
CS162 Fall 2013

Course Staff:

Instructors:

Anthony D. Joseph, Professor
465 Soda Hall.  Email: adj AT cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Mondays and Tuesdays 10-11am in  449 Soda

John Canny, Professor
637 Soda Hall.  Email: jfc AT cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:00-4:00pm in 637 Soda

Teaching Assistants:

Kevin Klues
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-ta
 Office Hours: M 12:30-2:30 pm in 751 Soda (7th floor alcove).

Matthew Fong
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-tb
 Office Hours: Th 9-10am 751 Soda (7th floor alcove), Fri 10-11am 651 Soda (6th floor alcove).

George Yiu
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-tc
 Office Hours: W 9-10am, Th 11-12 in 751 Soda (7th floor alcove).

Allen Xiao
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-td
 Office Hours: Th 5-7pm in 283E Soda.


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 grade in 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 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. 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 two midterm exams. If you have a valid academic or atheletic conflict, let us know, and we will schedule a makeup exam. 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: