Course Information
CS162 Fall 2005

Course Personal:

Instructor:

John Kubiatowicz, Associate Professor
673 Soda Hall, 643-6817.  Email: kubitron@cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: M/W 2:00-3:00,  Location: 673 Soda Hall

Teaching Assistants:

Administrative Assistant:

Rakhi Cook
676 Soda Hall, 643-7066.  Email: rakhi@cs.berkeley.edu

Lecture and Discussion Times:

Lecture:


Discussion Sections and Labs: 


Course Communication:

You can email the staff at cs162@eecs.berkeley.edu. The newsgroup ucb.class.cs162 will be used extensively to communicate information on the course and labs.You must read it regularly.


Course Reading Materials:

Course Reader:

To reduce the printing load on department printers, the course reader is mandatory. Copies are available from Copy Central on Hearst Ave beginning Friday.

Textbooks:


Course Grading:

The EECS Division guideline for an upper division EECS class is that theoverall 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 with either exam, 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:


Last Updated: 8/29/05