Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 14:45:06 -0500 (CDT)
From: ian@cs.rice.edu
Subject: grading hw01 guide


A few things I noticed, in the ones i looked at:

  -1/2  If not stapled.

  -1/2  If hand-evaluations aren't connected
        with "=".  (reasoning is explained 
        in /~comp210/Handouts/homework-eval.ss).

  -1    If they didn't fill out the Lab Preference Form
        (If they didn't do this, then they won't be in the grade
        database; tell them to fill out the form (linked from hw01),
        and to go to www.cs.rice.edu/~grademgr/ and add themselve to db.)
        Yes, i know the problem said worth 0pts, but this is an annoying
        hassle that we shouldn't have to deal with.
        The "0pts" means, if you do it, you have earned 0 pts.
        However if you don't do it, you may lose points
        (see the general grade guidelines, about why
        points-possible can exceed 100%.  Yeah, i really should
        have made this worth 2pts, and still had the hw as worth 10pts.)

In the future, we'll take off a full point (at least) for
these first two items.  (I was going to do so for this
homework, but found that the instructions-otherwise
had been fairly hard to find.  I've clarified them
for the future.)

  -1    If hand-evaluations don't indicate which
        sub-expr is about to be evaluated (as requested).

  -1/2  If they converted fahr to celc,
        rather than the other way around
        (esp if their name mis-matched).
        
  -1 (at least) for code w/ poor whitespace,
        e.g.  "(avg(+ 3 2)(* 4 5))".
        The reasoning is:
        THEANCIENTROMANSDIDNTUSESPACEANDGOLLYITREALLYDOESIMPACTREADABILITYNO?
        Things like lone-parens on their own line,
        mark it, but don't take off any pts this time.

In general, feel free to take off half-points,
even though we'll round (up) to full points
for the assignment as a whole.
  (Remember that you can also make gestalt judgements on papers:
  if there were many little annoying things that didn't merit a half-point
  in themselves,
  you might decide to take of a few points overall,
  rather than handing the paper a perfect score.
  The guidelines are only guidelines.)

Most homeworks will be worth 20pts.


As for recording the scores -- we'll get the grade-database
up soon; hold on to the scores until then,
and then we can enter them.


Finally, fyi, other things which might catch your eye
during grading:

   NO pts taken off for:
     - in translating a function into scheme,
       switching things around a bit:
          e.g.  "(+ 32 ...)", 
          rather than "(+ ... 32)".
          The first is what the arithmetic had,
          but they're using specific knowledge
          of arithmetic (w/o realizing they're even doing so).
     - Note that scheme understands 9/5  as a number,
       though of course (/ 9 5) is acceptable.