5 Late Policy

The deadline is set so that you can finish work in the evening, turn in your material, and still get a good night’s sleep so you are awake and alert for class.

Our times are always based on the current time in Providence, RI, USA.

If you have SEAS Accommodations, please inform us about them as soon as possible. The policy below is in addition to any formal accommodations you have.

Brown has a policy on religious observance, but this doesn’t apply to this course because we have no exams. We have also carefully scheduled assignments around certain major religious holidays. Nevertheless, if you have a critical religious obligation that prevents you from doing an assignment at all, please inform us before the first weekend of the semester so we can try to find an accommodation.

As a general rule, we do not accept late handins, for several reasons:
  • Some lectures are designed to exploit the fact that you’ve just finished an assignment and may show you the solution right afterwards. Once we’ve shown the solution, there may not be much left for you to do.

  • Because assignments are back-to-back, a late handin will cause work to overlap with subsequent assignments, making it difficult to catch up.

  • Dealing with late homeworks fragments the time of the course staff, which affects our other responsibilities; or, we have to put off all grading until the late assignments come in, which is unfair to the students who turned in on time.

Nevertheless, we understand things can go wrong. Therefore, we have adopted the following late policy. It applies only to assignments that have been designated as permitting late days.

Over the course of the semester, you can use up to three late days. These can be allocated however you want (all to one assignment, one to each of three assignments, etc.). We strongly prefer you not use more than one per assignment, because it disrupts grading; nevertheless, if you do need to take more than a day on an assignment, you can.

Don’t ask for permission, nor tell us your reason: any time you miss the submission deadline, we will assume you are using a late day. Each part of a day that you are late counts as a full day. However, if you take more than one day, you must inform us (post a private message on the forum) so we can keep track of your submission.

No other exceptions will be granted unless you have a Dean’s Note indicating a family or health emergency. Even then, we cannot grant extensions on assignments that don’t permit a late day.

The course has enough homeworks that missing one or two is not going to make an enormous difference to your course grade. It also has so many that you do not want to fall behind. Therefore, if you miss a deadline, you may be best off catching up with the content (through class or talking to course staff) and moving on.