Grades are weighted as follows:
| 18.0% | assignments |
| 1.0% | class participation |
| 0.5% | two feedback surveys |
| 0.5% | course evaluations |
| 20.0% | midterm |
| 30.0% | final exam |
| 30.0% | project |
The lateness penalty for a non-exam assignment that is submitted between N and N+1 full days late (where N is nonnegative) is 3N% of the assignment's value. For example, if an assignment is worth 100 points, the penalty is 1 point for being up to 1 day late, 3 points for being from 1 to 2 days late, 9 points for being from 2 to 3 days late, and so forth. Assignments are not accepted after the last day of instruction (this is typically the Friday before final exams), and are not accepted after the lateness penalty renders them irrelevant to the final grade.
Class participation is counted through Piazza participation, namely endorsed answers. Each instructor-endorsed answer yields 0.1% of credit, capped at 1%.
Students are responsible for upholding the highest standards of academic integrity, and this includes following the UCLA Student Conduct Code, which prohibits (among other things) cheating, fabrication or falsification, plagiarism, multiple submissions, facilitating academic dishonesty, and conduct that threatens health or safety.
Students are encouraged to study together and to use search engines like Google or generative AI tools to learn and discuss general problem-solving techniques that are useful on assignments. However, when working on an individual assignment students should not share detailed notes, pseudocode or code, and all work submitted must be done individually. In particular, you should not publish your work on sites like GitHub, and you should not use a search engine like Google or generative AI like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT to make use of solutions that others may have published. For the group project these rules apply to the group collectively, as group members of course share their work with each other.
You may use AI or search engines to do your assignments. Use these tools to learn, not to do the homework for you. For example, do not submit the entire problem to the AI; instead, use the tool judiciously only to help get over relatively minor obstacles one at a time. Fully understand every part of the the homework solution that you submit. It can help to use the tool’s lightest-weight tier, and to advise the tool in advance to not get too fancy. A 2026 exploratory study of student experience with AI tools reported:
High-performing students described using AI as a collaborative partner to augment ideas and validate directions while maintaining a sense of control. In contrast, medium- and low-performing students reported a greater reliance on AI outputs, feeling overwhelmed by the abundance of options, and a reduced confidence in their own creative abilities without AI support.
Aim to be a high-performing student. See: Mou T-Y. Artificial intelligence and student creativity: An exploratory study of students’ experiences with AI tools. Comput Hum Behav Rep. 2026;21:100988. doi:10.1016/j.chbr.2026.100988.
Unless otherwise specified, if you use AI or search engine assistance you must attach a textual log as an appendix to your submission, in the form of a text file named assist-log.txt. For search engines this is straightforward: the text file should contain each query and URLs of search hits you used. For AI assistance you should choose one of the following methods:
If you have questions about the policy, please discuss them with the instructor.