Homework Rules
Homework will be collected at the beginning of the period on the announced hand-in day, and must be completed and stapled together before the start of the class period. Even when homework is well-written, reading and grading it is very time-consuming and physically difficult for your instructor. In order that this process note be more burdensome than it intrinsically needs to be:- The homework you hand in must be neat, and must either be typed or written in pen (not pencil!). Please do not turn in homework that is messy or that has anything that's been erased and written over (or written over without erasing), making it harder to read. (Note: "written over without erasing" includes not just superimposing one letter written in ink on another, but writing something in pencil and then tracing over it in pen. The latter practice leads to an eye-straining "double vision" effect. Don't do it.) If you are writing on both sides of a sheet of paper, do not use paper/ink combinations for which the ink bleeds through from one side of the paper to the other. Anything that is difficult for me to read will be returned to you ungraded.
- Work everything out for yourself on scrap paper
first. Carefully rewrite what you're handing on clean sheets of 8.5" x
11" white paper, leaving wide margins (left and
right and top and bottom) and enough other space for me
to write comments.
- Staple the sheets together in the upper left-hand corner. Any other means of attachment makes more work for me. The staple should be close enough to the corner that when I turn pages, nothing that you've written is obscured. (If you have trouble stapling this way, you haven't left wide enough margins at the left side and/or top of the page, and should rewrite your homework.) Also, don't use paper that's been ripped out of a spiral-bound notebook; it will make a mess on my floor.
- Write in complete, unambiguous, grammatically correct, and correctly punctuated sentences, just as you would find in your textbook.
- Warn me about partial proofs. If a problem is of the form "Prove this" and you've been unable to produce a complete proof, but want to show me how far you got, tell me at the very start of the problem that your proof is not complete (before you start writing any part of your attempted proof). Do not just start writing a proof, and at some point say "This is as far as I got." Otherwise, when I start reading I will assume that you think you've written a complete and correct proof, and spend too long thinking about, and writing comments on, false statements and approaches or steps that were doomed to go nowhere.
- "On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized
aid in doing this assignment."
For purposes of preparing your hand-in homework, no aid that involves anything but your own brain, your textbook, your notes, and any handouts from me, is authorized. The "no aid" restriction doesn't apply until I have announced the hand-in date for a given problem. Up until that announcement, you're allowed to work with each other, look at other textbooks, ask me for help, etc.
But once the hand-in date for a homework problem is announced, you are on your own. Remember that you are supposed to do ALL assigned problems. It is very unwise to procrastinate, waiting to see which problems I'm going to require you to hand in, before deciding which problems to work on.
- How homework will be graded
- Assignment 0. Due date: Friday 8/26/16, but
try to complete it sooner. There is nothing to hand in.
Answers to the proof-writing quiz are posted here. - Assignment 1. Due date: Friday 9/2/16 (postponed to Wed. 9/7/16 because of storm).
- Assignment 2. Due date: Friday 9/23/16.
- Assignment 3. Due date: Wednesday 10/12/16.
- Assignment 4. Due date: Friday 10/28/16.
- Assignment 5. Due date: Monday 11/14/16.
- Assignment 6. Due date: Friday 12/2/16.
- Assignment 7 Due date: treat as Friday, 12/9/16.(There are no hand-in problems. See instructions on Assignment 7 page.)