Procedure for estimating your CS 3 course grade

The CS 3 "General Information" document contained information about the relative contribution of quizzes, homework, projects, and exams toward your course grade, along with the correspondence between total course points and grade in CS 3. However, it was rather vague about how the points for homework and quizzes would be computed. Here are more details.

• There will be roughly 157 total points of homework; This includes 10 points for the April 6 homework, 3 for April 13, and 8 for April 20. (I think there are 19 homeworks, but points per assignment vary.) Your total will be capped at 90% of these homework points, namely 141.3; thus any homework points over and above 141 will not count toward your final grade. The minimum of your total homework points and 141.3 is then scaled to a maximum of 24 by multiplying it by 24/141.3. That gives you the course points you earn from homework.
• A similar procedure is used to determine your quiz score. There are 190 total points available from quizzes: 19 quizzes, 10 points each, including quizzes on April 6, 13, and 20. Your total is capped at 90%, that is, 171, and then scaled to 16 to determine the course points you earn from quizzes.
• No caps are applied to miniprojects, the end-of-semester project, or the exams. Your miniproject total is at most 60 points; this is scaled to a maximum of 24 to determine your course points from miniprojects. Exam points count 1 for 1 toward your final grade and are not scaled.

Here is a Scheme procedure that implements this computation. It estimates your final project score by the sum of your scores on the miniprojects, and estimates your final exam score by the sum of your scores on the midterm exams.

    (define (total-course-pts midterms miniprojects homework quizzes)
      (cond
        ((< (count midterms) 2) 
         (error "You should supply scores for both your midterms.") )
        ((> (count midterms) 2) 
         (error "You supplied too many midterm scores!") )
        ((< (count miniprojects) 3)
         (error "You should guess at your missing miniproject scores.") )
        ((> (count miniprojects) 3)
         (error "You supplied too many miniproject scores!") )
        ((< (count homework) 19)
         (error "You should guess at your missing homework scores.") )
        ((> (count homework) 19)
         (error "You supplied too many homework scores!") )
        ((< (count quizzes) 19)
         (error "You should guess at your missing quiz scores.") )
        ((> (count quizzes) 19)
         (error "You supplied too many quiz scores!") )
        (else
          (let
            ((midterm-pts (apply + midterms))
             (miniproj-pts (* 24 (/ (apply + miniprojects) 60)))
             (hw-pts (* 24 (/ (min 141.3 (apply + homework)) 141.3)))
             (quiz-pts (* 16 (/ (min 171 (apply + quizzes)) 171))))
            (show "Estimate of CS 3 course points (max = 200)")
            (+ 
              midterm-pts    ; estimate of final exam
              midterm-pts    ; actual points from midterms
              miniproj-pts   ; estimate of final project
              miniproj-pts   ; actual points from miniprojects
              hw-pts
              quiz-pts) ) ) ) )

A sample call for a student that neglected to contribute to a few of the homework discussions and did badly on alternate quizzes and pretty well in everything else is

    (total-course-pts 
      '(22 24)     ; just above average on the exams
      '(20 15 20)  ; good miniproject scores (guess that miniproject 3 will be perfect)
      '(10 7 15 0 10 10 4 3 13 11 10 0 3 16 6 3 10 3 8)
      '(5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5 10 5))

This student's estimate comes out to around 173 course points (which would earn her or him an A).

Once you get the course point total, you can match it up with the table in the "General Information" document to find the corresponding course grade: