Course Requirements and Grading

Economics 304K

Participation

The experiments will be held during selected class meetings, as detailed in the class schedule. For many courses, class attendance is incidental to the reading assignments and homework. In such courses, students may quite rationally choose to skip class when they are busy. But for this class, in order to participate in the experiments and to discuss the results, you must attend lectures, and you must show up on time. Students who come late to an experiment will not be allowed to participate and will be marked as absent (your attendance at the experiments is one component of your grade, as explained below).

Lab Reports

You will be required to complete and hand in lab reports analyzing the results of the in-class experiments. For each experiment, the textbook includes a section titled "Lab Notes" and another section titled "Homework". (If you buy a used copy of the textbook, you should make sure that these sections have not been removed by the previous owner!) Your "lab report" for a given experiment consists of your answers to the "Lab Notes" and "Homework" sections for that experiment (if you wish, you can tear out the relevant pages from your textbook and turn these in, along with any accompanying computer printouts).  The completed lab reports are to be handed in at the beginning of the class meeting in which the report is due (see the class schedule for a list of the due dates for the various lab reports).  Lab reports must be turned in on time in order for you to receive credit.  The data for your lab report will come from the experiment you participated in and will be made available to you on the class web page, usually by the next day.

We encourage you to form "lab partnerships" of two or three persons to work together on the lab reports. Partnerships can turn in a single lab report, signed by all members.

You can save yourself quite a bit of time in doing your lab reports by using a computer spreadsheet like Microsoft  Excel. We will make the data from your experiment group available in the form of an Excel file as well as in the form of a text file. For those who have not used a spreadsheet before, we will offer a tutorial on the use of spreadsheets in one of the first few lectures of the semester (see the class schedule for the precise date of this lecture). If you have never used a spreadsheet before, this is a good time to learn a skill that you are likely to find useful for many years. If you already know how to use a spreadsheet, you can probably afford to miss this lecture. If you insist on not using a spreadsheet, the next best thing is a calculator.

Exams

There will be three exams, all of which will take place during regular class meetings. The dates and coverage of these exams are listed in the class schedule. You must bring a #2 soft lead pencil to each of the exams. You may bring a simple (i.e., non-graphing) calculator to the exams, but not one that is able to store and display text. No make-up exams will be given.

Grades

Grade Distribution

It is expected that the grade distribution for the course will be roughly as follows: 25% A's, 35% B's, 30% C's, and 10% D's or F's.  Overall course grades will be assigned using +/- grading (i.e., A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc.).

Determinants of Course Grade

You can miss one experiment without it lowering your attendance grade.
You can miss one lab report without it lowering your lab reports grade.
Three exams, each counting for 30% of your total course grade.

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