We know that the students enrolled have the background and ability to do well and we presume that all are interested in learning. In that sense, the grades are not curved. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. This perceptive Chinese proverb, recognizes the limited effect of lectures.
Involvement is the key to learning.
While reading and studying help learning, solving problems focuses learning on knowledge gaps and requires one to review and integrate knowledge. We wish to promote this conceptual understanding through involvement. Thus, we will assign homework problems which will be graded in the first half of the course. These challenging problems, posted on the course web-site, are intended to stimulate understanding by thinking about and analyzing material from the research literature. Problem sets will not be accepted after the day they are due.