Grading¶

General grading breakdown¶

Course grades will be given using the standard six-level grading scale from 0 to 5. Your grade will be based on (1) weekly laboratory exercise summary write-ups, and (2) a course project (briefly described below). The weight of each item is given below.

50% - Exercises (14 total)
50% - Final project report

Note

Deadlines for exercise write-ups and the term project are firm and given in the course schedule. Generally, exercises are due at the start of class the week following their assignment. If you anticipate you will not be able to submit any of these items by the given deadline, you should let me know as early as possible and must let me know at least one day in advance. Late write-ups will be marked down 25% per day late, so please submit it on time.

Final project¶

The final project is being revised for 2017, but a description from 2016 is given below.

The final project is based on the results you will produce in the final two exercises. In these exercises, you will modify a Python code to read in a data file, make some basic calculations using some of the equations we’ve discussed earlier in the course and produce a series of plots. The goal of the exercise is to model a geological dataset and use your model to interpret the data. The final project report will involve writing a short paper with the introductory and background material for the data from the final two exercises, presenting your results in a series of plots with a short section of text, and discussing the meaning of the results. The intent is for you to write a short scientific paper with the same content that would typically be present in a scientific journal article. Further details on the final project paper will be given later in the course.