Instructor: Carla Ellis
Office: D324 LSRC
Phone: 660-6523
Email: carla@cs
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30-11:30 AM
TA: Ken Yocum
Email: grant@cs.duke.edu
Office: D307
Phone: 660-6599
Office Hours: TBA
Assignment Number 3: proj3.ps (also
available in proj3.pdf).
Lecture Notes are all available now.
All homework stats can be found here .
The E-track, Grading, and Quals. This is a two-track class. Assigned work includes mandatory "G-track" components and some optional "E-track" components. The E-track work is necessary if you want to earn a grade of E or E+. You may choose at any time to do any or all of the optional E-track work, but it is not likely to improve your grade much unless you take on the primary E-track requirement, a project on a topic of your choosing (see below). This will demand a significant commitment of time and energy on your part (and ours).
CPS 210 is a "quals course" for CPS graduate students. We assign quals passes based on demonstrated mastery of the quals material, regardless of your grade. In particular, E-track work is not necessary for a quals pass and will not improve your chances of earning a quals pass. The E-track is intended for students with a serious interest in systems or architecture. If you decide to take on E-track work, make sure you also leave yourself enough time to learn the course material and earn your quals pass.
Grades will be assigned by adding your scores on the G-track work and exams, and assigning base grades curved from G- to E-. Undergraduates are graded on a different scale since this course is more advanced than typical undergraduate classes. Your scores for the E-track work are then added and curved to improve your base grade from 0 to 3 notches (e.g., 3 notches advances you from a base grade of G+ to a final grade of E+). We give S grades only for barely satisfactory work, since graduate students cannot receive credit for more than two S grades.
To summarize: if you do an outstanding job on all the G-track work, you'll get an E- and a quals pass; if you do a good job on the G-track work you'll get a G or a G+ and a quals pass; if you do good work in both tracks you'll get an E- or an E and a quals pass. We reserve E+ grades for truly outstanding students.
Project. If you choose to do an optional project, you must discuss your ideas and goals with me prior to February 23 and we must arrive at an agreement on a project no later than March 2. We encourage you to form groups of two or perhaps three students. At the end of the reading period you will post the URL of a web page describing your project, with pointers to your code and related material. Projects and other E-track work are held to a high standard; incomplete or incorrect work will receive little if any extra credit. It is acceptable to combine this project with project work from another course (e.g. CPS 296.2 or CPS 296.3) as long as the topic of the project is appropriate (i.e., has something to do with Operating Systems).
On giving credit where credit is due. You must acknowledge the sources of your words and ideas, when they are not your own, and you should list the names of anyone who helped you with your work. Thus, I acknowledge that much of this web page content comes from Professor Jeff Chase who developed the clever E-track system in previous offerings of CPS 210. The Gilligan's Island Rule is an inspiration of Professor Larry Ruzzo from University of Washington. Failing to give appropriate credit is at best a violation of professional etiquette, and at worst it is plagiarism. Plagiarism, like collaboration on exams, is cheating. Cheating is a very serious offense and I do not expect it to occur in this class.
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