Guidelines for Written Homework
- Your homework should be neat, legible, and identified
with your name and the assignment number.
Staple all sheets together before turning them in.
It's also a good idea to put your name on each page.
- It should be comprehensible.
Solutions and proofs should be like good programs: clear, concise,
well organized, complete, and most of all, well documented.
You will often need to explain, in a few complete sentences
of good English, what you are doing and why.
If the problem calls for some type of programming or
machine construction, YOU MUST DOCUMENT in order to receive
full credit, unless the solution/construction is so simple that no
explanation is needed.
- If a problem calls for an answer, program, formula, etc,
to receive full credit you must satifactorily demonstrate that your
answer is correct.
- For a proof, don't be verbose or handwavy, but state clearly what you
are going to prove, and the manner in which you will do so.
Use statements such as "to show x, we first must show that
y and z are true", to indicate the structure of your argument.
Each statement you make should assert something. There are
syntactic constructs which occur at all levels of mathematical
arguments. These include "there exists", "for all", `"such that",
"implies", etc. These phrases are the glue.
You must make sure that what you glue together are well
specified and unambiguous statements, with each variable quantified.
For example,
The last equation implies that there can be a value x such that
blah blah blah...
is not meaningful -... what does "can be a value" mean?
Either such an x exists, or it does not. Either you have
shown that such an x xists, or you haven't. Which is the case?
Does blah blah blah hold for every x?
- Interspersed with a proof you may
(and if the proof is at all nontrivial, you must provide intuitions
helping the reader understand your proof. This is the documentation.
Be sure however that your proof can stand alone and is both meaningful
and correct without the documentation and intuition.
- Make sure your proof or solution is correct for ``boundary'' conditions.
(For example, what if the set A is empty? or if x = 0 you don't
want to divide by x.) You may have to handle these cases; separately.
Some of the guidelines above are not intended as a curse, but rather
as a blessing: You will often discover in the process of developing
a careful and complete explanation that your tentative answer was
wrong. (I never learn anything well until I teach it.)
Moreover, if you make a mistake, the graders/TAs have to know what
your reasoning was in order to help you by pointing out the flaw
(and awarding partial credit).
The more clearly you express yourself, the easier and fairer the grading is.
This doesn't mean though that you should belabor the obvious to
convince us that you understand it. On the other hand, the ability to
judge what is "obvious" and can be safely glossed over and what is not
is a skill that only comes with experience.
(Also, if you are long-winded and verbose about something,
then it is usually an indication that you are unsure about it.)
Solutions to the homeworks will be distributed, which you should use to
get an idea of the general style and amount of detail that is expected.
After a couple of homework sets, you'll have a pretty good idea of how
to go about writing up your answers.
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CS 375 Course Information