Homework will be collected in person (not electronically) 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.I have a general rule that has many corollaries. The general rule is, "Don't make your homework unnecessarily difficult or unpleasant for me to grade." Some of the corollaries (you may thank past students for having proved these) are:
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.
- The homework you hand in must be neat, and must be written in pen (not pencil!), or typed. I encourage, but do not require, you to typeset your homework in LaTeX; see below.
- Work everything out on scrap paper first.
- Carefully rewrite (or typeset) 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. Typesetting your homework in LaTeX should automatically give you ample margins (as well as prevent problems with neatness, overwriting, etc.), unless you deliberately override LaTeX's default margins and replace them with smaller margins.
- If you are writing on both sides of a sheet of paper, do not use paper/ink combinations for which the writing on one side of the paper shows on the other side.
- Staple your sheets together, if there's more than one sheet. 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.)
- I won't grade homework that is messy, or that looks like it has been erased and written over (or written over without being erased). Crossing-out is okay. Over-writing is not.
Note: "written over without being erased" 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.
- I won't grade homework 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.
- I will not grade scans, photographs, etc.
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."
If you have a friend or friends in this class with whom you'd like to work on homework, see me. What I'm most interested in is that you learn, and that you enjoy the process. This class is not a competition. I will probably be willing to authorize some collaborative efforts, but not unless I know about them in advance.