Welcome to ESE 2000. This page contains important information to help you make the most of this course. Please read with care.
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Lectures
We meet for lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm in Towne 100.
Office Hours
| Time | Location | TAs |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM | Moore 100B | Vishva Gajaraj |
| Tuesday, 5:15 PM – 6:45 PM | Skirkanich 508 | Varun Chitturi |
| Tuesday, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM | Walnut 401B | Teresa Shang, Claren Ogira |
| Wednesday, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM (starting Sep 11) | Walnut 452C | Vishva Gajaraj, Khush Sabuwala |
| Thursday, 5:15 PM – 6:45 PM | Skirkanich 508 | Varun Chitturi |
| Friday, 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM | Towne M70 | Teresa Shang, Claren Ogira |
Calendar
Throughout the term we will follow this calendar. It will be update regularly. Make sure to check it often.
Materials
During each week of the term we will give you one or two documents called lab assignments. These documents are required reading. In addition to descriptions of the tasks you are to accomplish they contain a substantial amount of background material. Some of this material will be reviewed in lectures. However, I will assume that you have read these documents before attending lectures.
In addition to the lab assignments we will release one or two Jupyter notebooks with the lab’s solution. The reason for releasing the lab solutions are (i) To help you jump straight into the more important parts of the lab (ii) To aid you in the programing of the more important parts of the lab. It is instructive to take a look at the solution of Lab 1A to understand these points. Task 1 asks to load data make some plots. There is not much to learn here other than the commands that instruct the computer to load data and make plots. I’d rather give them to you than have you spend hours searching online or asking a chatbot. Make sure you understand the commands and move on.
Task 2 asks you to implement some interesting computations. There is something important to learn here, which is how to get an equation and implement its computation. This is a part of the lab that I would expect you to attempt to do on your own. If you are failing to make progress, checking the solution may help.
In releasing the solution I am trusting that you will use it wisely. It may be tempting to just run my notebook and hand me back my own answers. However tempting this is a waste of your time. You are better off spending three hours to develop your own solution than spending one hour running mine.
Grading
I believe that we are all better off when each of does their best in whatever role life demands of us. The course topics are the best we could find a way to teach, the course materials are the best we could prepare, and the lectures will be the best I can deliver. I expect you to grant me the same courtesy. Attend lectures and pay attention and put your best work into the labs. In the end, learn as much as you can. For as long as you do this, you will earn an A for this course.
Since I need a more defensible grading policy, formal grading in ESE 2000 is based on class attendance and lab grades. There are a total of 23 lab reports due throughout the year. Two of the lab reports are worth 8 points and the remaining 21 are worth 4 points. The idea is that students get full marks in each of the reports. If they don’t, we give them a week to submit corrections and get full marks. If no corrections are submitted, the original lab score stands.
Lab scores are further weighted by class attendance. The formula for the final score is as follows,
$$ \text{final score} = (\text{lab score}) \times \text{min} (1, \text{attendance} / 20)$$
In this formula “lab score” is the sum of all of the lab reports. Since there are a total of 25 lectures during the term, the class attendance factor implies that students can skip 5 lectures without repercussion. If they skip more than 5 lectures, the “final score” decreases in proportion to the number of classes missed.
The translation from final score to letter grades is the standard. Less than 60 points is an F, 60 to 69 points is a D, 70 to 79 points is a C, 80 to 89 points is a B, and more than 90 points is an A. Minus marks are added to the first 3 scores in a range and plus marks for the last 4 except in the A range. E.g., 70, 71, or 72 points is a C- and 86, 87, 88, or 89 points is a B+. There are no A+ grades awarded.
Etiquette
Etiquette is the code of polite behavior in a certain environment. Here are some etiquette rules that apply to a learning environment:
- Reading assignments, class attendance and, lab work. You are expected to read all reading assignments, attend all lectures, and develop solutions to all labs.
- Class behavior. Pay attention during lectures. Do not talk with your classmates and do not get distracted online. Please notice that electronics are not permitted in my lectures. No phones, computers, tablets, or any other electronic device that is not medically necessary.
- Code of Ethics. Every piece of work that you hand back to me and my teaching assistants must be your own.
My experience is that these rules are unnecessary for the vast majority of you. You are a lovable bunch of hard working kids and you were already planning on following these rules.
I am aware, however, that some of you may think that these rules are absurd. They are not. It is my honest belief that these rules will help you out. During my years as a teacher I have experimented with a complete gamut of rules. From very lax to very strict. The relatively strict rules above are the ones I have found to work best.
Asides from that, the etiquette rules above are common human decency. We owe respect to each other’s work. It is disrespectful to register for a course and then skip reading assignments, check social media during lectures, or use a text generator to answer lab questions. It is also disrespectful for a teacher to sign up to teach a class and then make it boring and incomprehensible. My promise is that I will teach the best course that I can. If something is unclear or boring, it is because making it more fun and clearer is beyond my abilities. I expect your promise to be that you will learn as much as you can.
I should also state my belief that teaching is a privilege. I am thankful to my fellow citizens for granting me the privilege to teach and I am thankful to my students for taking their time to learn from me. As we start to work together, please accept my gratitude.
Violations of the Code of Ethics
I expect you to behave ethically because, as I explain above, it is the polite thing to do. Unfortunately, society also expects me to police unethical behavior. I do not like this role. On the other hand, we gotta do what we gotta do.
Every piece of work that you hand back to me or my teaching assistants must be your own. I have a no tolerance policy for violations of this norm. If I judge that you submitted work that is not your own, I will refer the case to the office of student conduct. If it turns out that my assessment is correct, you will get a fail grade.