How do I get 10 points on an assignment?

The grading flowchart says that to get 10 points on an assignment, it has to be “better than our answer key.” Please elaborate on how we would achieve this. Assuming we accomplish all of the baseline expectatons, what steps could we take to go above and beyond to get a 10?

So. First off, you should know that we consider a 9 and a 10 /literally/ considered the same value. Y’know how you can get an A, and also an A+, where the latter amounts to an A with a kudos on it? It’s like that.

As to a definition, h’bout “Perfect, and also in a way that makes me find my own best solutions deficient.” That’s a pretty good bright-line for what that’s meant. I want to be able to really say “great job!” really meaningfully when appropriate.

Some assignments this’d be more difficult than others; I’ll be honest the early ones are in one sense elementary enough that it’s tough to definitively improve them. But as we go forward there’ll be some things where I only have a so-so solution, or it seems like something’s still not quite right about how to phrase the question, or what have you.

It almost feels like one of those logical paradoxes. If I could tell you ahead of time how to do better than our answer key, I would use that knowledge and improve our answer key.

Pedagogy, I wanted to do a 10 point scale and even though we’re computer scientists it feels weird to do that 0-9. So, I put an extra number on there. Perhaps I should have gone 1-11.