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. The homework you hand in must be neat, and must be written in pen (not pencil!).I won't grade homework that is messy, that looks like it has been erased and written over, that has shreds of paper dangling from it (for example, from being ripped out of a spiral-bound notebook), or that comes apart when I turn pages.
- Work everything out on scrap paper first.
- Rewrite the solutions carefully on clean sheets of 8.5" x 11" paper, leaving enough space for me to write comments.
- Staple the sheets together, if there's more than one sheet. Do not use paper clips. Do not attach your sheets of paper simply by folding and/or tearing the corners.
I remind you that on all work submitted for credit by students at the University of Florida, the following pledge is implied:
"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 (not the original, earlier due-date) for a given problem. For example, suppose a problem is part of an assignment that was originally due Sept. 7, and I announce (in class or online) on Sept. 9 that it's due Sept. 14. Then up until my Sept. 9 announcement, you're allowed to work with each other or with tutors, look at other textbooks, ask me for help, etc. Up until the announcement, you may even look at a solution manual, although I think these manuals generally do more harm than good.
But once the homework is announced as a hand-in problem, you are on your own. Remember that you are supposed to do ALL assigned problems by the due-dates on the homework webpage. If you've been procrastinating, waiting to see which problems I was going to require you to hand in before doing all the assigned homework, you've made an unwise decision.
Anything that violates the spirit of the restrictions is above forbidden. For example, if you have a solution manual, you are not to hand-copy the manual's solution to every problem I've assigned, just so that you can later call this part of your "notes" if I happen to tell you later to hand in that problem.
Regarding solution manuals: as I said, I think these do more harm than good. One problem is that they allow you to fool yourself into thinking you understand something that you don't. For example, suppose you had trouble with exercise X, so you looked it up in the solutions manual. If you use what you find there to really learn and understand how to do exercises like X, that's great. But if I later ask you to hand in exercise X, and you find that you can't do it, and wish you could look at the manual again, that shows you that you did not learn anything from the manual the first time.