In-class Checkpoints

Six times in the term, in class, you answer ten questions drawn at random from the weeks you have already finished. Every one of them comes from material you have seen before: the after-class self-checks and the weekly take-homes. It takes 15 minutes and it is worth 15 points, 2.5 points per checkpoint.

The dates are below, and they were set before the term started. You always know when the next one is coming and exactly which weeks it can reach.

Nothing on a checkpoint is new. The self-checks sit on this site with their answers and explanations, and you can retry them as often as you like. What a checkpoint adds is that you answer unaided, in the room.

How a checkpoint runs

1. You open a quiz in Canvas, in Respondus LockDown Browser, in the second half of that Wednesday’s session. You have 15 minutes.
2. Canvas draws ten questions at random from a pool covering every week the course has finished. Your draw is not the same as the person’s next to you.
3. You answer them unaided, with the calculator built into Canvas. Multiple choice, select-all, and numeric entry: the same formats the self-checks use. You won’t need Excel and you won’t be able to open it.
4. Most of it grades itself, so you know where you stand quickly.

AI use. Tier 0: unaided. No AI during a checkpoint, and nothing from a checkpoint goes into a chatbot afterward. See Using AI.

What the questions are drawn from

The pool is cumulative. A checkpoint can reach back to any week already finished, not just the current one, and two sources feed it.

• The after-class self-checks. Every question you can practise on the week pages is eligible, as written. Retry them freely; that is what they are there for.
• The weekly take-homes. The models you built, asked as short questions: what a shadow price meant, which constraint turned out not to bind, what moved when the smoothing constant changed.

Because the pool grows all term, the strategy that works is the ordinary one. Keep up, and go back through the self-checks for any week that has gone fuzzy.

When they happen

All six dates are fixed and public. Each one reaches back over every week the course has finished, so the pool grows as the term does.

Each runs in the second half of that Wednesday’s session. A checkpoint never reaches into the week it sits in, so Week 4’s checkpoint covers Weeks 1 to 3 and nothing newer. None lands in Week 16, which is the synthesis presentations and the last week of classes.

What you need on the day

• Respondus LockDown Browser, installed and working. Checkpoints run in it, through Canvas. Install it before the term starts rather than in the five minutes before one; see Software & setup.
• Your laptop. This is a software course, so bring it to every session.

That is the whole list. A checkpoint doesn’t open your workbook, so you need no file with you, and whether you submitted that week’s take-home has no bearing on it.

If you miss one

Checkpoints are in-class work and cannot be made up, like the group practices. The only exceptions are an approved AES accommodation or a religious observance arranged in advance. The 3-3-3 rule covers absences generally, but a free absence waives the attendance penalty; it does not restore the points for an item you weren’t there to earn.

Why the checkpoints look like this

A checkpoint asks one question: can you do this yourself, on the spot, with no help? Not whether you can write it up well, and not whether you used AI to get a workbook running.

That is what lets the rest of the course be generous about tools. Nothing here is hidden from you: the dates are set, the pool is the work you have already done, and the self-checks come with their answers. If you worked through the material, a checkpoint costs you nothing. If you handed the thinking to a chatbot all term, this is where that shows, and knowing the date in advance does not help, because what it asks for is fifteen minutes of doing it yourself.