Policy on Missed Midterm Exams
==============================

Generally speaking, I do not offer make-up exams as they are problematic
for many reasons.  Since the original and make-up exams are written at
different points in time, the make-up exam clearly cannot be identical
to the original exam, as this would raise serious issues with respect
to cheating.  For example, a student writing the exam at an earlier time
could communicate what questions are on the exam to the students writing
the exam at a later time.  So, for this reason, the make-up exam would
need to be different from the original exam.  Furthermore, the make-up
exam cannot simply be a modified version of the original exam with only
trivial changes.  In particular, the make-up exam cannot have all the
same types of questions as the original exam.  If the types of questions
on the two exams were the same, the student writing the make-up exam
could direct all of their exam preparation efforts at only the types
of questions that are known (in advance) to be on the exam.  This would
give a very unfair advantage to the student writing the make-up exam.

For the above reasons, the make-up exam would have to be a completely
different exam from the original exam, with completely different types
of questions.  This causes another significant practical problem, namely,
that it is impossible to set a make-up exam that has exactly the same
difficulty level as the original exam, since the two exams would have to
be completely different (i.e., the two exams cannot have any similar types
of questions).  This, in turn, raises significant fairness issues since
students writing the easier of the two exams would have a significant
advantage over the students writing the more difficult one.

To avoid all of the above problems, I simply never offer the option
of a make-up exam.  If a student misses one or more midterm exams for
legitimate reasons (such as illness/injury, severe weather events,
or travelling out of town to attend a university-sanctioned event),
I handle this situation through the granting of an academic concession.
The weight of each (legitimately) missed midterm exam is moved onto
the weight of the final exam.

For example:
Let w_f denote the weight of the final exam as a fraction of the
total course grade.
Let w_m denote the weight of the (legitimately) missed exams as a
fraction of the total course grade.
Then, the final exam would carry a weight of w_f + w_m.