- "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, any handouts from me, and consultation with 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, ask me for help, etc.
But once the hand-in date for a homework problem is announced, you are on your own (except that you me ask me for tips—in office hours, not by email—which I may or may not supply, depending on how much I'd be giving away). 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.
At all times, you are EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN from using online sources (other than materials I post for the class) to help you with your homework problems in any way. You are also EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN from using any other sources for this purpose, unless I give you specific permission. Any infringement of the spirit, not just the letter, of these restrictions, will be considered a violation of the Student Honor Code, and will result in your receiving a failing grade for the course (unless you drop). THIS HAPPENED TO SEVERAL STUDENTS LAST SEMESTER; IT IS NOT AN IDLE THREAT. If you're in the habit of using unauthorized sources to help you solve homework problems, this is not the course for you. If you're someone who panics because there's a homework problem that you're unable to do, or because you might not get an A, this is not the class for you.
Homework Rules
Hand-in homework must be submitted (uploaded to Canvas as a single pdf file) no later than the beginning of the regular class period on the announced hand-in day. If you have handwritten your solutions for a given assignment, scan them to a single pdf file using an app such as camscanner. Late homework will not be accepted without penalty. Homework that's more than an hour late may receive a 0. It is inadvisable to wait till the last minute to get your homework done. I will not be sympathetic if you try to submit something a few minutes before the deadline, and are unable to because of some technological glitch.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 not 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 or DARK pencil. I encourage, but do not require, you to typeset your homework in LaTeX; see below. Please do not turn in homework that is messy, has faint writing, or has anything that's been erased and written over (or written over without erasing). "Written over without erasing" includes not just superimposing a new letter on an old one, but writing something in pencil and then tracing over it in pen. (The latter practice leads to an eye-straining "double vision" effect. Please don't do it.) If you are writing on both sides of a sheet of paper, do not use paper/ink/pencil combinations for which the writing on one side of the paper shows on the other side. Anything that is difficult for me to read will receive a score of 0.
- Work everything out for yourself on scrap paper
first. Carefully rewrite (or typeset) what you're handing on clean
sheets of 8.5" x 11" white paper, leaving
at least 1.75" margins (left and
right and top and bottom) and enough other space for me
to write comments.
Do not look for creative ways to get around this (or other rules). For example, do not use smaller margins on 8.5" x 11" paper, then place that page on a larger blank background to add margins, and shrink everything down before submitting. If you squeeze words in at the bottom, sides, or top of a page, do not expect that work to be graded or to receive any credit, even if I graded such work on an earlier assignment.
To help you keep acceptable margins in handwritten work without frequently measuring with a ruler, I've created a sample page for you to print and keep next to you when you're writing: p. 6 of the pdf file produced by my LaTeX template.
- Double-space your writing, so that I can easily make short between-line corrections. (If you are writing on blank paper, interpret "Double-space your writing" as "Between consecutive lines of your writing, leave vertical space that's at least as large as the height of a line of your writing.")
-
If you are submitting a
scan of something you wrote by hand, make sure that
the scan you submit consists of DARK writing on a WHITE background
(not just a background that's less dark than your
writing). It is YOUR responsibility to write in dark
enough pencil or pen for this to be possible;
if there's not enough contrast in your pre-scanned document, your
scan may end up with a background that's too dark, or writing
that's too light. If you are having trouble getting your scans
to come out with DARK writing on a WHITE background, ask a
classmate who's figured out how to do it. (I use a flatbed
scanner, and know nothing about how to get good scans using a
scanning app on a cell phone—but most students do!)
Nothing should be blurry.
There should be NO SHADOWS or UNEVEN SHADING in your scan.
Make sure that your sheets are laid out flat before you scan them; do not scan sheets that are curled.
If you write on both sides of a page, check that your scan does not have traces of the writing on one side of a page showing on the other side. (Your scanning-device's light source may be so bright that this happens even if your hard copy doesn't look this way. The only solution may be to write on only one side of a page.)
Every page of your scan must be oriented upright. No page should be oriented sideways or upside-down.
Check your scan for all the above properties before you submit it. Since submitting scans that are unacceptable will incur penalties, and submitting homework late will incur penalties, I strongly advise you to practice scanning some work of yours long before the first hand-in homework is due (or before the first exam, if you're typing up your homework in LaTeX).
- Write in complete, unambiguous, grammatically correct, and correctly punctuated sentences, as you would find in your textbook.
- In your handed-in homework, you are not permitted to use the following symbols in place of words: \( \forall, \exists, \Longrightarrow, \Longleftarrow,\iff, \vee, \wedge,\) and any symbol for logical negation (e.g. \(\sim\)). (Note: the double-arrows \( \Longrightarrow, \Longleftarrow,\) and \(\iff\) are implication arrows. Single arrows do not represent implication, so you may not use them to substitute for the double-arrow symbols. (On your exams,, to save time you'll be allowed to use the symbols \(\forall, \exists\), \(\Longrightarrow, \Longleftarrow\), and \(\iff\), but you will be required to use them correctly. The handout Mathematical grammar and correct use of terminology, assigned as reading in Assignment 0, reviews the correct usage of these symbols. Even on exams, you will never be allowed to use the symbols \(\vee, \wedge\), or any symbol for logical negation of a statement.
- 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.
- "Learn your ABC's ": If you are hand-writing your work, make sure your upper-case letters don't look identical to your lower-case letters. For example, an 'F', printed by hand, is supposed to have a flat top; if you give it a rounded top, it looks like a lower-case 'f'. In a hand-printed "T", the vertical lines don't cross; if you let them cross, your letter looks like a lower-case 't'. Also learn how to make your lower-case 't' not look like a plus-sign. (A little upward curl at the bottom, as illustrated in the font I'm using here, does the trick.)
- If you'd like to use LaTeX to typeset your homework, here is a source-file template that includes some commands that you may or may not already know (depending on how much you've used LaTeX in the past, if at all). Rigid use of this template is not required. If you already have some version of TeX (e.g. MiKTeX, a version commonly used with Windows) installed on your computer, this template file should open automatically when you click on it; otherwise, open it with whatever you use to read a plain-text file. To use LaTeX, you'll need to install some version on your computer. (Legitimate versions of LaTeX, such as MiKTeX, are available for free. While there are some non-free text-editors that some people prefer to the one that comes with MiKTeX, I have never used them, and sites that try to sell you anything connected with LaTeX may be scams.) There is abundant documentation on the internet for how to do this; I don't have any particular website I prefer for this. If you have friends or classmates who've already installed LaTeX on their computers, they are likely to be a better source of information than I on the most convenient way to install, and the quickest way to get up to speed.
- How homework will be graded
- Assignment 0. Due date: Thursday
1/14/21.
- Assignment 1.
Due date: Friday 1/29/21.
- Assignment 2.
Due date: Friday 2/12/21.
- Assignment 3.
Due date: Friday 3/12/21.
- Assignment 4.
Due date: Monday 3/22/21.
- Assignment 5. Due date: Wednesday 4/21/21.