How the week works

A week in this course runs Wednesday through the following Monday, across the weekend. The Schedule has the same thing as a table; this page is the longer version, with the reasons.

The two class meetings do different jobs

Wednesday opens the week. Nothing is assumed: the reading has not been assigned yet and no assignment on this week’s material has gone out. Wednesday is designed so you can follow it having done nothing in advance.

Monday closes it. By then you have had the reading and the weekend, so Monday is where the quiz goes and where the harder material lands.

That is the whole reason for the odd shape. A Monday-to-Friday week would put the two meetings back to back with the weekend after them, which is the wrong way round: the weekend is when there is time to read.

Readings

Due before the Monday class. Read ahead if you like — Wednesday does not depend on them.

The quiz is the enforcement. If you did the reading it should be quick; if you did not, Monday will be harder than it needed to be.

Assignments

An assignment may go out on Wednesday, and when one does it is due Tuesday — the day after the Monday class, so you get both meetings before the deadline.

Not every week issues one. Some weeks a later assignment picks up that week’s material instead, which is why the Schedule is the place to check rather than assuming a weekly rhythm.

Quizzes

In the weeks that have one, at the start of the Monday class. A quiz covers that day’s material and the reading it rests on, not the previous class.

You get two attempts, and the higher one counts:

• the first in class, closed book, at the start of the period;
• the second in class, near the end, after the part of the period that teaches it.

That is how quizzes work in this course, not an arrangement for one week. The two attempts are doing different jobs. The first is the measurement — it tells us both, honestly, what you took from the reading — and since it can only ever be raised by the second, it costs you nothing to answer it as you actually are rather than as you would like to look. The second is taken after the class has worked on the same material, which is the point at which you learn the thing.

Presentations

On the Wednesday after an assignment was due, one or more students are picked at random to walk the class through their solution and take questions — on correctness and on style. See Assessment in the syllabus for how it is graded.

Picked at random means every solution should be one you can explain.

Weeks with only one class

When a holiday takes out the Monday, the week has a single Wednesday — and that Wednesday keeps its usual job. It opens the material, and you can walk into it having done nothing in advance, exactly like any other Wednesday.

The reading then belongs to the next class rather than to that one. It is assigned on the Wednesday and due before the class after it, and a quiz on it moves with it.

The reason is that there is nowhere else to put it. Making the single Wednesday carry both jobs would mean a reading due at the start of a week you had not begun. So in these weeks the class comes first and the reading consolidates it afterwards — the opposite order from a normal week, and the one time the material is easier the second time you meet it.

The assignment keeps its usual place: out on the Wednesday, due the Tuesday after. The Schedule says which weeks these are.