Syllabus 📖

About 🧐
Lecture Participation (1% EXTRA CREDIT)
Office Hours
Discussions: 4%
Labs
Homeworks
1. Regrade Requests
2. The “Super Homework”
Collaboration and AI
Exams
Grading
Support and Resources
OSD Exam Accommodations
Waitlist
FAQ
1. Is this class curved?

About 🧐

Welcome to DSC 40B in Winter 2026! This page should answer most of the questions you might have about how the course is run; If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, feel free to make a post on Campuswire.

Here is what the syllabus will cover:

Communication 💬

This quarter, we’ll be using Campuswire as our course message board. You will be added at the beginning of the quarter. If you’re not able to access it, please self enroll using a given link, as we’ll be making all course announcements through it.

If you have a question about anything to do with the course — if you’re stuck on a assignment problem, want clarification on the logistics, or just have a general question about data science — you can make a post on Campuswire. We only ask that if your question includes some or all of your code, please make your post private so that others cannot see it. You can also post anonymously if you would prefer.

Course staff will regularly check Campuswire and try to answer any questions that you have. You’re also encouraged to answer a question asked by another student if you feel that you know the answer!

Gradescope 🖥

We will be using Gradescope: where all assignments are submitted and all grades live. You should be automatically added to Gradescope; let us know if that’s not the case.

Required Materials 🍎

You will not need to purchase any materials for this course; we’ll use lecture slides the main resource, as well as our own course notes. If you’d like additional textbooks to study from, we can recommend these:

Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, Vazirani; Algorithms
Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein; Introduction to Algorithms

These books are also excellent resources for preparing for coding interviews.

Lecture Participation (1% EXTRA CREDIT)

Lectures will be held in-person at the regularly-scheduled time and place. They will be podcasted and posted online.

You will demonstrate lecture participation by engaging with in-class polls. The course will be using the poll software webclicker and as long as you respond to 80% of the questions during a lecture, you will earn the point for the day.

Notes:

The first class does not count toward your participation.
If you came to the class, please stay until the end.

Office Hours

Course staff, including tutors, TAs, and instructors, will hold office hours regularly throughout the week. Please see the office hours page for the schedule and for instructions.

Discussions: 4%

Where: SOLIS 104
When: 2:00-2:50pm

The discussions review the materials from that week’s lectures and prepare you for the homework. Just as with lecture, topics and techniques introduced in discussion might appear on the homework and in exams.

The purpose of these activites is to supplement course content and offer live practice to help with the exam/HW problems. Attendance is required. The discussions will not be podcasted but you can find the discussion sheet and solutions on the course website.

Process:

You will be divided into groups of two randomly.
You will be given problems to work on.
Together you should solve these questions and submit them on Gradescope.
In order to record your participation, you will need to submit your solutions.

Note:

1 lowest (missed Friday) score will be dropped.

Labs

There will be two types of assignments in DSC 40B: labs and homeworks. Labs help develop essential knowledge, while homeworks test your ability to apply that knowledge to solve more difficult problems. You can think of labs as a quick check on your understanding before you head into the homework.

Labs consist of a small number of autograded multiple choice or numerical answer questions. They will be posted on Gradescope weekly. The exams will mostly consist of questions of a similar format and difficulty as those on the labs. However, the exams will have a time limit, while the labs have no time limit.

In previous iterations of DSC 40B, these “essential” questions were actually a part of the homeworks. We have decided to move these essential problems to their own lab assignment, therefore making the homeworks shorter. This has a big benefit: because the labs are autograded and due before the homeworks, you’ll get your lab grade before heading into the homework. This gives you an opportunity to patch up any misunderstandings.

Homeworks

There will be eight homeworks assigned throughout the quarter, plus one “super homework” (described below). Homeworks will be a mixture of written problems (which are manually graded by our tutor staff) and coding problems (which are autograded). Each homework will be due via Gradescope at 11:59 PM on the ${ vars.homeworks.due_date_of_first.strftime(‘%A’).capitalize() } after it is assigned except otherwise noted, and you’ll have roughly a week to complete each assignment from the time it is posted.

Regrade Requests

If you feel that the grader has made a mistake, you may submit a regrade request via Gradescope within one week of the grades being released. Note that part of your grade is clarity, so if your answer was mostly right but unclear you may still not receive full credit.

The “Super Homework”

Instead of a comprehensive final exam, we’ll have a comprehensive “Super Homework”. The super homework will focus on the content from the last two weeks of the quarter, but it will also contain material from throughout DSC 40B. It will be about twice as long as a typical homework.

Because the super homework covers twice as much material as a usual homework, it will be worth roughly twice as much. However, you may still collaborate on the super homework as long as you write up solutions in your own words.

The super homework will be due during finals week (the exact date is yet to be determined).

Collaboration and AI

You are welcome to think about the lab and homework problems together, but you must turn in your own solutions written in your own words. We feel that discussing homework problems is an excellent way to learn, but writing the solutions in your own words promotes a deeper, more solid understanding than discussion alone.

We recommend the following way of working on the labs and homeworks. First, meet with your partner to discuss the solutions, but don’t leave the meeting with anything written down. Wait an hour or so, then write up the solutions in your own words working from memory. In that hour, you inevitably forgot some of the details of the solution. If you find that you have trouble filling them in, its a sign that you might not have understood the solution as well as you first thought!

You’re also welcome to use AI (ChatGPT, etc.) in a similar way: you can talk to ChatGPT about a problem, but DO NOT copy its answer verbatim. Instead, wait about an hour and put the answer in your own words. Keep in mind that ChatGPT is infamous for being very confidently wrong, so be critical of its output. Also keep in mind that you won’t have ChatGPT on the exams, so you’ll need to understand the fundamental concepts for yourself in order to do well.

If you have any questions or worries about whether your collaboration constitutes a violation of academic integrity, feel free to ask us on Campuswire.

Deadlines and Late Submissions:

Homework assignments must be submitted by the midnight 11:59 pm deadline listed on the write-up to be considered on time. You may turn them in as many times as you like before the deadline, but only the most recent submission will be graded, so it’s a good habit to submit early and often.
Homeworks may be submitted up to 24 hours late for no penalty, however late submissions should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Repeated late submissions may result in course staff reaching out to discuss course progress.
Homework submissions after 24 hours late will NOT be accepted.
Lab’s deadlines are set.

Exams

Midterm Exams (69%)

There will be three exams this quarter. 2 of them are during the lecture time and the third one is during the duscuusion. Please check the scedyle for the dates.

Final Exam

The final exam for DSC 40B is a “no fault” final split into two sections:

An optional Midterm 01 “Redemption” section focusing on Lectures 01 — 08
An optional Midterm 02 “Redemption” section focusing on Lectures 09 — 15

If your score on the midterm redemption section is higher than your score on the original midterm, it will replace that grade. Getting a lower score on a redemption section cannot hurt you (but it will make us sad). As a consequence, the redemption sections are effectively optional.

Under this policy, a bad performance on an earlier exam can be erased by good performance on the same material in a later exam.

Example: You got an “F” on Midterm 1 and a “B” on Midterm 2. You decide to take only the first redemption section on the final (though you could have taken both), and you receive an “A”. Your midterm scores are now “A” and “B”.

The redemption exams will be held on the date scheduled by the registrar: ${ vars.exams.Final.strftime(‘%A, %B %d’) }.

Note that the topics from Last Lectures are not on any exam. These will instead be tested in the Super Homework.

For the redemption exams, you’re allowed one sheet of notes per exam that you’re taking.

Exam Pass Criterion

In order to pass the class, the mean of your two midterm scores (after redemption is taken into account) must be 60% or greater.

The reason for this policy is that the exams are the only assessment in this class which you are sure to complete by yourself, and so they are (in theory) the purest measure of your individual understanding. This policy is not meant to be punitive: If your exam scores are not above passing after several attempts, it indicates that you might be better served by retaking the class with a fresh start before moving on to later courses which will draw upon the material from ${ vars.course_name }.

See Resources for practice exams. All times and content are subject to change.

Grading

We’ll be using the following grading scheme:

8%: Labs
14%: Homeworks
5%: “Super Homework”
23%: Exam 01 (or Redemption Exams 01, whichever is larger)
23%: Exam 02 (or Redemption Exams 02, whichever is larger)
23%: Exam 03 (or Redemption Exams 03, whichever is larger)
4%: Discussions
1% (Extra credit): Paricipation

In a typical quarter, the midterm redemption policy has the same effect as a traditional “curve”, therefore replacing the need for one. The standard grading scale (where an A is 93+, A- is 90+, B+ is 87+, etc.) will be used as a starting point, but once all scores are in, we might adjust the cutoffs for each letter grade. These cutoffs can only be lowered. For instance, the threshold for an “A” will never be higher than 93%.

A+ grades are not awarded according to a threshold. Instead, A+’s are awarded to the top 5% of students by overall grade.

Note that in order to pass the class, the mean of your two midterm scores (after redemption is taken into account) must be 60% or greater.

Calculating your grade: when calculating your lab and homework grades, you should weigh each assignment by the points possible on that assignment. In other words, the homework and lab parts of your grade are calculated by dividing the number of points you earned across all assignments by the number of points possible across all assignments. Some homeworks and labs are worth more, and some are worth less. This is by design, since some assignments are intentionally shorter.

You can use the above information to calculate your current grade at any point in the quarter, but we don’t post your overall grade calculation until all grades are in and we can tell you your grade with certainty. In particular, you’ll need to decide whether or not to take the redemption exams before the Super Homework has been graded.

Support and Resources

As instructors, our job is to foster an environment where everyone, regardless of identity, feels welcome and is able to focus on learning. If there is something we can do in this mission, or if there is something preventing you from succeeding in the class, please let us know. If you feel uncomfortable speaking with us or are searching for help on a specific concern, there are several campus resources available to you, including:

More generally, if you have any concerns about your ability to focus or succeed in this course, or just need someone to talk to, please contact us ASAP and we’ll figure something out.

OSD Exam Accommodations

If you have exam accommodations from the OSD, you should receive an email from the data science program that will ask you to provide your availability for your accommodated exam. The program will then schedule the exam and notify the instructor of its time and location. If you do not receive such an email by the end of the second week of classes, please let us know!

Please be sure to respond to the email from the data science program; if the program does not hear back from you, they will be unable to schedule your accommodated exam.

Waitlist

If you’re on the waitlist, make sure you participate in the class just as if you were enrolled (for example, by doing all of the assignments) so that if you do get in, you’re not behind.

Often, people will ask about their chances of making it off the waitlist. Unfortunately, that can be hard to answer! In some quarters, the waitlist moves a lot; in others, not at all.