EECS16B | Designing Information Devices and Systems II

Summer 2020

Note

Lectures will be hosted at this Zoom Link and the password is "16B"

Schedule

This schedule is tentative and subject to change.
(Please scroll horizontally if you're viewing this on your phone.)

Calendar

Discussion

Lab

OH and HW Party

Notes

Supplementary Reading to go alongside lectures.

Resources

Piazza: ask questions here.
Homework Practice: practice homework questions.

Lab

• Syllabus
• Lab tutorials
• Oscilloscope cheat sheet

Spring '20 Notes

• Master Lecture Reader (Spring 2020)
• Spring 2020 Lecture Notes

Video Notes

• Scalar Diff Eq
• Change of Basis
• Diagonalization
• Systems of Diff Eqs
• Phasors
• Filters
• Controllability
• Linearization
• PCA Part 1
• PCA Part 2
• Feedback Control

Exam Walkthroughs

• Week 1 Circuits
• Week 1 Notes

Controls

• Murat Arcak's EECS16B reader
• Murray and Astrom
• Franklin, Powell, and Workman

Worksheets

• Circuits
• Controls
• SVD
• Signals

Policies

Course Info

EECS 16A and 16B introduce mathematical modeling in an engineering context, with a particular emphasis on how information systems interact with the world. EECS 16B introduces dynamics and control, and develops linear modeling with a view toward the complex domain.

Grade Breakdown

School is more than just classes, and classes are more than just grades, but we acknowledge that grades matter. Your letter grade in 16B will be determined by the bin that your raw score falls into:

Your raw score is computed by the following weighted average: 10% homework, 20% lab, 20% midterm 1, 20% midterm 2, 30% final. Each grade category contributes a number between 0 and 100, inclusive.

Your homework grade is the average of your homework self-grades, except for the two lowest grades. (We won’t grade your homeworks except for possible occasional audits.)

Your lab grade is a weighted average of your lab checkoffs and your final lab report, multiplied by a participation coefficient of at most 1.25.

Exam grading will account for variances in exam difficulty. Additionally, your lower midterm grade will be clobbered (replaced) by your (higher) final grade.

Notice that you can get many points by being regular with your homework and the lab.

Grading Scale

This course is not curved. We define the following grading scale (in percentages):

Homework Submission

Homework is due on GradeScope Tuesdays at 11:59 PM, Pacific Daylight Time. You need to turn in a PDF document consisting of your solutions that includes (when applicable) an attached pdf printout of your Jupyter notebook code. Late homework will receive zero credit.

How to do homework

EECS 16B’s requirements for homework solutions might be different from what you are used to in math or quantitative science classes. Write your homework (and exam) solutions in concise sentences, with the same level of justification that official solutions would have.

Homework Grading - Self-Grading

We’ll post official solutions after every homework deadline. Afterwards, you have a week to submit per-question self-grades using the following rubric:

Your self-grades will be due on the Tuesday following the homework deadline at 11:59 PM PDT. Late self-grades will be accepted with a 20% penalty.

We will automatically drop the lowest 2 homework scores from your final grade calculation. These drops are meant for emergencies. If you use these drops half-way into the semester, and request another, we cannot help you.

Just like we encourage you to use a study group for doing your homework, we strongly encourage you to have others help you in grading your assignments while you help grade theirs.

If you have any questions, please ask on Piazza.

Discussion Section Policies

We use discussion sections to reinforce and further material taught in lecture, and they are important for keeping up with the course. Material developed in discussion sections may be tested on exams.

Exam Policies

Midterm 1 will be Friday, July 17, 17:00–18:30 PDT.

Midterm 2 will be Friday, July 31, 17:00–18:30 PDT.

The Final will be Friday, August 14, 17:00–20:00 PDT.

(In case of an emergency on exam day, email eecs16b-su20@berkeley.edu.)

We will make accommodations for DSP mandates, other summer classes, religious observance, and time zones, but not internships. If any point of the exam time does not fall between 8:00-23:00 in your timezone, we will provide you with an alternate exam time at 8:00 your timezone.

Exams will be video and audio proctored/recorded, with virtual backgrounds allowed. Accommodations will be provided for students who need them, on a case by case basis. During the exam, collaboration, use of any unauthorized materials, or posting materials related to the exam are prohibited. Any student found to be cheating on any exam will fail the course and will be reported to the office of student conduct.

Exceptions

Any requests for exceptions should be emailed to eecs16b-su20@berkeley.edu.

Email the exception request out as soon as possible. Exceptions will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Since there are two homework drops, missing homework is rarely excused. Examples of situations that merit an exception are medical emergencies and family emergencies.

Course Communication

The instructors and TAs will post announcements, clarifications, hints, etc. on Piazza. Hence you must check the EECS16B Piazza page frequently throughout the term. (You should already have access to the EECS16B Spring 2020 forum. If you do not, please let us know.)

If you have a question, your best option is to post on Piazza. The staff (instructors and TAs) will check the forum regularly, and if you use the forum, other students will be able to help you too. When using the forum, please avoid off-topic discussions, and please do not post answers to homework questions before the homework is due. Also, always look for a convenient category to post the question to (for example, each homework will have its own category, so please post there). That will ensure you get the answer faster.

If your question is personal or not of interest to other students, you may mark your question as private on Piazza, so only the instructors will see it. If you wish to talk with one of us individually, you are welcome to come to our office hours. Please reserve email for the questions you can't get answered in office hours, in discussion sections, or through the forum.

For any exceptions that are of a personal nature, please contact the head TAs. Technical and homework questions are best resolved in homework party and during office hours.

16B Slack

This summer we will have a course Slack channel! Please sign up here. Slack is a workplace digital communication platform. The Slack will have designated channels for each discussion and lab section and for homework parties. The idea behind this is that Zoom conferences are not great settings for meetings in which more than one person might be speaking at once. For gatherings like those listed above, having a place where multiple conversations / threads can be happening at once is very useful.

The Slack is not intended to be used for technical questions or help from TAs outside of discussion/lab/homework parties. Please use Piazza for those types of questions. If you have never used Slack before, there are some tutorials online such as here or here here.

Academic Honesty

We encourage you to work on homework problems with your study group; however, your solutions must be your own words. If you use books or online resources, credit all such sources in your write up, and you must never copy material verbatim. Copying previous EECS 16B homework, exam, and lab solutions will be prosecuted as cheating. Any exam with a high score or taken after the main sitting is subject to validation by an oral exam with the instructors.

Non-technical OH

Are you struggling? Please come talk with us! The earlier we learn about your struggles, the more likely it is that we can help you.

Even if you are convinced that you are the only person in the class who is struggling, please overcome any feelings of embarrassment or guilt, and come ask for help as soon as you need it—we can almost guarantee you're not the only person who feels this way. Don't hesitate to ask us for help—we really do care that you thrive! We’ll hold a couple hours of non-technical OH every week Friday 12-1pm.