Grading Policy for
VO+PS "Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures"

to be examined according to an alternative method if they suffer from a permanent disability which makes it impossible for them to take an examination in the prescribed manner and the other method does not limit the content and standards of the examination.

• Weekly assignments have to be worked out by each student by their due date.
• Unless announced explicitly otherwise, after each VO lecture (on Thursdays) I will post a sheet with new assignments no later than on the subsequent Monday.
• All new assignments will be due and will be discussed in the PS class in the week following the post date. E.g., the assignments for 16-Oct-2025 will be posted no later than in the evening of 06-Oct-2025.
• Hence, in general you will have about one and a half weeks to work out the assignments. (There might be exceptions to this rule which I will announce clearly.)
• All assigments (given so far) will be available as one PDF file on the home page of the course.
• Occasionally I will ask you to hand in your solution for some specific assignment.
• Coding assignments: Some assignments will be coding assignments and if I ask you to hand them in then you will have to follow the following rules and guidelines.
  • Use C or C++ as programming language and, please, stick to a recent standard of C/C++.
  • Use GCC or Clang as compiler.
  • Provide a CMake file or put the command that shall be used to compile your code at a prominent place of your code, e.g., into a comment in the first few lines of your main.c or main.cc file.
  • Make sure to hand in all source files that I need to compile your code in a Linux environment. (FYI, I use Ubuntu 22.04.)
  • Needless to say that the minimum requirement for maintaining the chance to obtain at least partial credit for a coding assignment is that I can compile your code "as is". (I will not try to "fix" your code if it does not compile!)
• Handing in assignments:
  • If you are to hand in assignments then this has to be done via email sent to held@cs.sbg.ac.at until 00:00 (midnight) on the day on which they are due. (The time of arrival of your email according to our logs is important!)
  • If asked to do so, send your source code (in Unix file format) and/or your written solution (as PDF in DIN A4 format).
  • Please bundle multiple files into an archive: .zip/.tar/.tar.gz. If you are to hand in code then I ask you to always resort to an archive, even if you'd hand in only one C/C++ file.
  • Please use your family name (in lower-case ASCII characters) as name of the file. If you send an archive then make sure that the archive extracts to a directory which contains your files. The name of that directory shall match your family name. That is, I shall get "mueller.pdf", "huber.tar", "maier.tar.gz" or "wagner.zip", with the latter three archives extracting their content to "huber/", "maier/" and "wagner/".
  • No tar bombs!
  • Assignments that are not explicitly marked as "[Hand-in]" need not (and shall not) be emailed to me.
• Grading:
  • Please use our online tick-mark registration system ("Kreuzerlsystem") to mark those assignments which you are willing to present in class. You can enter (or change) your tick marks until 00:00 (midnight) on the day on which they are due.
  • Please make sure to tick also those assignments that you hand in!
  • Your PS grade will be based on the number of assignments for which you declared a willingness to present them in class, on the evaluation of your hand-ins and on your performance at the blackboard/whiteboard during the presentation of assignments.
  • In addition, I will take notes of other noteworthy contributions of students during class.
  • In order to get a passing grade you are required to mark at least MIN assignments as the ones which you are willing to present in class, where MIN is computed as follows:
    • Let X be the total number of assignments posted.
    • Let Y be the total number of different assignment sheets.
    • Let MAX := (X/Y) * (Y-1).
    • Then MIN := 0.5 * MAX.
    • If MIN is a fractional number then it will be rounded down to the next integer.
    I expect X to be about(!) 84, and Y to be 12. (For those numbers we'd get MAX = 77 and MIN = 38.)
  • Please note that marking at least MIN assignments is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for passing the PS!
  • In particular, please note that I will use the quality of your explanations and arguments given during your presentations as a positive or negative weight when determining your final grade!
  • Let A (as a rational number between 1 and 5) denote the average grade on your presentations. (In Austria, 1 means "very good" and 5 means "insufficient/failed".)
  • Your average grade on your presentations has to be strictly better than 4. However, achieving A < 4 is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for passing the PS!
  • If A < 4 then your total point score on the PS will be determined by the following formula:
         P := 100 * (K / MAX) * [1 + (2 - A) / 5],
    where K>=MIN denotes the number of assignments marked.
  • The point score calculated according to this formula translates into an actual grade for the PS as follows: P>=89 yields "very good" (1), 76<=P<=88 yields "good" (2), 63<=K<=75 yields "average" (3), and 50<=K<=62 yields "fair" (4). Achieving less than 50 points result in "insufficient/failed" (5).
  • This means that marking all X assignments but delivering very poor explanations whenever I ask you will still result in failing the PS!
  • As a rule of thumb, if you are not convinced that you can outline a full suite of arguments then it is likely smarter not to claim credit for an assignment and have one assignment less to your credit, than to risk being caught by me.
  • If you'd come up with two or more solutions then I'd advise you to focus on one solution and work it out in detail, rather than have several "half-baked" solutions.
  • If presented with a full line of arguments then I will be much more lenient towards "solutions" that fall apart.
  • You are not required to hand-in your assignments, unless explicitly requested for some particular assignments. (However, it seems advisable to work out the assignments in writing since you may use your notes during presentations.)
  • You can get credit for the assignments checked only if you attend the PS personally. If you are not present while one of the assignments is discussed which you had checked then I will delete all check marks entered for that PS unit.
  • Please contact me as soon as it becomes obvious that you won't be able to attend all or part of a PS unit although you checked some assignments. If you get in touch with me prior(!) to the start of that PS unit then we can try to come to an arrangement that allows you to keep your check marks even though you are not present in class. (E.g., I might suggest to email me clean PDF scans of your solutions.)
• Academic honesty:
  • You may cooperate and discusss the assignments with other students. (Of course, with the exception of possibly a few assignments for which I explicitly request everybody to come up with his/her own solution -- see below!)
  • Similarly, you are welcome to consult textbooks or online sources, and to employ AI tools.
  • Frankly speaking, in general I do not care whether you discuss assignments among your peers, or how you come up with a solution.
  • However, I will not tolerate naive plagiarism: Once you mark an assignment as solved then I expect you to fully understand your solution. That is, if I ask you to come to the whiteboard and to explain your solution then you'll have to be able to argue why your solution ought to be correct, and you have to be able to answer questions concerning (sub-)problems related to your solution --- without the help of anybody or anything else!
  • Phrases like "It seems like..." or "I believe that..." or "This is true!!!" (without any rational why it should be true) simply do not belong to the line of reasoning employed by algorithm theory, and I will react harshly to such "solutions". Hopes and fears are an important part of everybody's life, but algorithmic thinking is not about hopes or fears but about rigorous arguments!!
  • For specific assignments that are to be handed in in writing I will not allow cooperation since I do not want to read the same solution several times, once verbatim identically, once with "I" replaced by "J", once with "I" replaced by "K", and so on. Part of the reason why I might want you to work out written solutions is that I would like you all to practice writing up solutions. (Clearly, this goal is not met if one solution would be copied multiple times.)

• that attendance is compulsory during at least 70% of the time of the PS.
• that a grade will be assigned even if you should decide to drop the course, with the grading being done relative to your accomplishments achieved up to the time when you dropped the course. This rule does not apply if you should opt out of the course prior to the third unit of this course. Please note that dropping the course results virtually always in the non-passing grade "insufficient/failed" (5).
• that an improvement of the grade obtained is no longer possible after I entered the grade in PLUSonline.
• that the entire PS course has to be repeated in a later semester if you should have failed it!