Administrative Details
Homework
Homework assignments will be given out roughly once a week.
Typically, there will be a homework given out each Monday and a deadline
will be posted prominently at the top of the homework. This deadline
will usually be 10pm sharp the following Monday, but please do not
count on that. All homework is to be submitted electronically
using the homework submission form on the course website.
A few important notes on the homework assignments:
- Start early. I cannot emphasize this enough.
- On non-programming problems, where you simply have to write an
answer in English or mathematical notation, be concise. Needless long
or complex answer will lose credit, even if correct.
- On programming problems, follow the input/output descriptions to
the letter. Your program's output may be checked by a script, and
scripts tend to be unforgiving of mistakes.
- On programming problems, make sure your code is clean and
readable. Follow good programming practices: use layout well, name
variables meaningfully, and write explanatory comments whenever your
code seems to be getting complex.
Late Submission Policy
Homework submitted after the published deadline (found at the top of
the homework) is deemed late and will incur a penalty as follows: it
will be graded as usual, and your score will then be multiplied by a
penalty factor PF(x), where x is the number of
minutes by which the submission is late (rounded down to an integer).
The formula for this penalty factor is PF(x) = min{0.95,
exp(-x/4320)}. Thus, the value of a late homework submission
decays exponentially, with a half-life of just over two days, but with a
minimum of a 5% penalty. Examples: work turned in five minutes late gets
95% credit, one hour late gets 95% credit, six hours late gets 92.0%
credit, one day late gets 71.7% credit, three days late gets 36.8%, and
one week late gets 9.7%.
Working Together and the Honor Principle
- Students are encouraged to discuss homework problems, but such
discussion must be limited to an exchange of ideas. Under no
circumstances must you give/receive any code (whether a complete program
or just a code fragment) to/from another student. Further, every
piece of code you turn in must be entirely your work, with no portions
copied from any external sources (such as websites, or books other than
the textbook).
- It is acceptable to consult manuals, textbooks and websites for the
sole purpose of learning some aspect(s) of a programming language. If
you did so, please acknowledge the relevant sources in your submission.
- Students may not consult the notes or homework solutions of
another student or any solutions to homework problems in another course,
including past offerings of this course.
- Thus, what you turn in as a homework solution is to be your own
work, entirely.
- The honor principle applies to quizzes and exams as follows.
Students may not give/receive assistance of any kind on an exam
to/from any person, including the professor.
- If an exam is closed-book, consulting any source at all is a
violation of the honor code.
Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities enrolled in this course and who may need
disability-related classroom accommodations are encouraged to make an
appointment with the professor to discuss the matter, by Apr 17, 2009.
All discussions will remain confidential, although the Student
Accessibility Services office may be consulted to discuss appropriate
implementation of any accommodation requested.
