Grading Policy for VO+PS "Computational Geometry"

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 individual assignments have to be worked out by each student.
• Unless announced explicitly otherwise, after each VO lecture (on Fridays) I will post a sheet with new assignments no later than on the subsequent Tuesday.
• All assigments (given so far) will be available as one PDF file on the webpage of the course.
• All new assignments will be discussed in the PS class in the week following the post date. E.g., the assignments for the PS on 21-Oct-2022 will be posted till the evening of 10-Oct-2022. Exception: One sheet of assignments is due already on 17-Oct-2022.
• Hence, in general you will have about one and a half weeks to work out the assignments. Exception: One sheet of assignments is due already on 14-Oct-2022. (There might be some further exceptions to this rule which I will announce clearly.)
• Please use our "Assignment Administration System" to mark those assignments which you are willing to present in class. You can enter (or change) your checkmarks until 00:00 on that Friday on which the assignments are due.
• Your PS grade will be based on the number of assignments for which you declared a willingness to present them 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 (at the blackboard/whoteboard), 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.
  I expect X to be about(!) 48, and Y to be about 12. (For those numbers we'd get MAX = 44 and MIN = 22.) Please note that marking at least MIN assignments is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for passing the PS!
• You are not required to hand-in your assignments, unless explicitly requested for some particular assignments.
• However, you can get credit for the assignments worked out only if you attend the PS personally.
• 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 ticked some assignments. If you get in touch with me before that PS class has started then we can try to come to an arrangement that allows you to keep your tick marks even though you are not present in class. (E.g., I might suggest to email me clean PDF scans of your solutions.)
• Please note that I will use the quality of your explanations and arguments as a positive or negative weight when determining your final grade. In an extreme case, this means that marking all X assignments but delivering very poor explanations whenever I ask you to come to the blackboard/whiteboard will still result in failing the PS!
• In any case, if presented with a full line of arguments then I will be much more lenient towards "solutions" that fall apart. On the other hand, 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 computational geometry, and I will react harshly to such "solutions". Hopes and fears are an important part of everybody's life, but computational geometry is not about hopes or fears but about rigorous arguments!!
• 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.

• You may cooperate and discusss the PS 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!)
• Similarly, you are welcome to consult textbooks or online sources.
• Frankly speaking, 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.
• For specific assignments that are to be handed in in writing I do 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 throughout the entire duration of this course.
• 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 NGD5.
• that an improvement of the obtained grade 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!

• We will use a video conferencing system and meet via https://edumeet.cs.sbg.ac.at/held_sbg_lectures if we have to move from classroom-based teaching to online teaching.
• All video conferences will take place exactly during the times scheduled for classroom teaching.
• The solutions for the PS assignments will have to be presented during the video conferences in a suitable way, e.g., by sharing one's screen.
• It is the each student's responsibility to make sure that we will have decent means of communication during the PS. Experience tells me that a decent communication link requires all students to have access to a reliable and reasonably fast Internet connection and to use a microphone plus a headset (rather than loudspeakers) during all communications.
• All grading regulations will stay the same and apply to both classroom teaching and online teaching.