Attendance

How important is attendance in this course?  I do expect you to come to class, of course, but I will not be taking attendance, nor will I deliberately write exam questions on material from class in order to "catch" you.  Nevertheless, anything that comes up in class discussions is fair game for exam questions (and/or to enrich your answers), and I tend to ask exam questions on what I think is important and tend to deal with what is important in class lectures.  In short, your presence in class will bring a reward without my explicit intervention.