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CS 276

Assignments and Grading

Table of contents

  1. Problem Sets
    1. Self-Scoring
    2. Collaboration
  2. Research Project
    1. Grading
    2. Timeline
  3. Scribe Notes
  4. Class Participation

There are three kinds of assignments:

  • Problem Sets: typically involve writing proofs. They are assigned weekly.
  • Research Project: Students will do a research project of their choice in the field of cryptography. They should aim to produce publishable results by the end of the semester or at least make progress in that direction.
  • Scribe Notes: Students will each write scribe notes for one lecture.

Details about each kind of assignment can be found below.

Final grades are based on the following weighted combination of assignment scores:

  • 40% Problem Sets
  • 40% Research Project
  • 20% Scribe Notes and Class Participation

Late Policy: Assignments submitted late will lose 5% for every hour that they are late. For example: if you submit 1 minute late, you lose 5%. If you submit 61 minutes late, you lose 10%.

Problem Sets

Problem sets are assigned weekly and will typically involve writing proofs. You will submit your work on Gradescope (use entry code 2BKDD8 to join).

You don’t have to write a perfect solution to get a perfect score. You will receive full credit if you complete every problem, get most of the details correct, and complete the self-scoring.

Drop Policy: We will drop your lowest 2 problem set scores.

Self-Scoring

After the answer key is posted, you will score your submission based on how rigorous and correct your solutions are, using the following rubric:

  • 5 points: The solution is complete and largely correct. There may be small mistakes.
  • 3 points: The main approach is right, but there are major gaps in the solution.
  • 1 or 2 points: The main approach is not correct.

The self-scoring is due one week after the problem set is due.

Your actual grade may be different from the self-score if the course staff choose to revise the score.

Collaboration

You are encouraged to collaborate with other students on the problem sets, but you must write your solutions individually and list all of your significant collaborators. You may collaborate with other students by explaining the meaning of a question, or exploring a potential approach to solving the question. However, you should never possess, read, or copy from another student’s exact solutions.

Similarly, you may use books or online resources to help solve homework problems, but you should not copy solutions verbatim, and you must cite all your sources.

Any student found to be violating these policies or cheating otherwise risks automatically failing the class and being referred to the Center for Student Conduct.

Research Project

You will do a research project related to cryptography. Aim to produce novel results by the end of the semester, although partial progress toward this goal is fine. You may work with other students and submit one project report for the whole group.

Since many students are already doing research in cryptography outside of the course, you may use an outside project to satisfy this requirement. However, the project should not have been underway before the start of the semester. Additionally, you may collaborate with people outside of the class, but you should be a significant contributor and should write the project report without outside help.

If you need help finding a project topic, please reach out to the course staff. We are happy to offer advice.

Grading

Projects will be evaluated similarly to how papers are reviewed for conferences and journals. The following criteria are important:

  • Motivation: Review the literature and explain why your project – if successful – would be a novel and useful contribution to the field.
  • Results: Present your work clearly. Support your claims with proofs or data.

We understand that research projects often fail to produce results and that 1 semester may not be enough time to produce a publishable paper, so it is fine to produce partial results or failed attempts. You can explain what you would do if you had more time or what you can learn from any failed attempts. Projects that do these things can receive full credit if the work is presented clearly.

Timeline

We will have the following checkpoints throughout the semester.

  • F 9/20: Identify a topic and collaborators (if any).
  • F 10/25: Submit a research proposal (no more than 3 pages). The proposal should state a clear research goal, review the relevant literature, and argue why this goal is novel and interesting. Furthermore, it should describe the approach that you will take to solving the problem and explain why it could plausibly succeed.
  • F 12/13: Submit the final project report.

Scribe Notes

Each student will write scribe notes for two lectures. Sign up to scribe lectures here. Your notes are due within 1 week after the lecture you scribed.

  1. First clone the github repo for the scribe notes.

  2. Make any changes locally. If you’re scribing lecture 4, for instance, create a file called lec04-F24.tex for your notes. Additionally, you may find it useful to copy from old scribe notes. They can be found in the Old Scribe Notes folder and can be previewed by compiling the Old Scribe Notes/collection.tex file.

  3. Use latexdiff to generate a latex document diff.tex that illustrates your changes, and add it to the repo. If diff.tex already exists in the repo, you may overwrite its contents.

  4. Create a pull request of your changes. The course staff will review and approve your changes, which will then become part of our scribe notes on Overleaf.

  5. Please make any revisions to your notes that the course staff may suggest.

Class Participation

Some examples of good class participation include answering questions on Ed and participating in lecture discussions.