CS/ECE 374 A (Spring 2020): Homework Policies

The course staff must critically examine close to ten thousand pages of homework submissions this semester! We desperately need your help to make sure homeworks are graded and returned quickly. If you have any questions or concerns about these policies, please don't hesitate to ask in lecture, during office hours, or on Piazza.

• Homework Logistics: How to submit
• Form: How to write
• Content: What to write
• Absolutely no late homework.
• Don't plagiarize!
• Avoid the Three Deadly Sins.

I apologize in advance for the length of this document. Most of this stuff is obvious to almost everybody, but after teaching this class for many years, I've seen a lot of strange things.

Homework Logistics: How to submit

• All homework solutions must be submitted electronically via Gradescope. Please enroll yourself on Gradescope using the entry code M6722X. Submit one PDF file for each numbered homework problem. Gradescope will not accept other file formats such as plain text, HTML, LaTeX source, or Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx).
• You can register with Gradescope using any name and email address you like. If you are using an alias or a non-university email address on Gradescope, please fill in this form to tell us who you are so we can give you credit for your homework. If you are not logging into Gradescope with your real name or university email address, do not include your real name or your university email address in your homework solutions.
• Homework solutions may be submitted by groups of at most three students. We strongly encourage (but will not require) every student to work in a group with at least one other student. Students are are responsible for forming their own homework groups. Groups may be different for each numbered homework problem.
  • For group solutions, exactly one member of each group submits the solution to each problem. Even if the groups are identical, the submitter may be different for each numbered homework problem.
  • Whoever submits any group solution must also submit the names of the other group members via Gradescope. Gradescope will then automatically apply the grade for that submission to all group members. If this information is not entered correctly, the other group members' grades will be delayed or possibly lost entirely.
  • If you discover that your name was omitted from a group homework submission, please submit a regrade request.
• As error correction, each submitted homework solution should include the following information at the top of the first page:
  • Your GradeScope name
  • Your Gradescope email address
  • The problem number (of the form "X.Y")
  For group solutions, include the Gradescope name and email address of every group member. If you are typesetting your solutions with LaTeX, please use our solution template (see pdf).
• We will not accept late homework for any reason. To offset this rather draconian policy, we will count only the homework problems you actually submit toward your final course grade. Specifically:
  • If you submit more than 27 24 homework problems, only your highest 27 24 problem scores count. (If you submit everything, this this is equivalent to dropping almost two three complete homework sets.)
  • If you submit fewer than 27 24 homework problems, your exams will have (slightly) larger weight in the final grade calculation. Clarification (4/17): when we say "(slightly)", we do mean slightly: the exams may be worth a total of 72%+x and HWs a total of 28%-x, for some 1% <= x <= 2% the exact value of which is up to the discretion of the instructors.
  • You must submit at least half the homework to pass the class.
  • Update (3/26): due to the COVID-19 situation, we have decided to relax the policy and count your highest 24 problem scores instead of 27.
  We may forgive coursework under extreme circumstances, such as documented illness or injury. Forgiving homework requires a serious long-term issue that prevents submission of multiple homework sets; the regular homework policies already allow missing a few submissions without serious penalty. “Extreme circumstances” for exams do not include travel for job interviews. We will compute your final course grade as if your forgiven work simply do not exist; your other work will have more weight. Please ask the instructor for details.

• Write everything in your own words, and properly cite every outside source you use. We strongly encourge you to use any outside source at your disposal, provided you use your sources properly and give them proper credit. If you get an idea from an outside source, citing that source will not lower your grade. Failing to properly cite an outside source—thereby taking credit for ideas that are not your own—is plagiarism. The only sources that you are not required to cite are the official course materials (lectures, lecture notes, homework and exam solutions from this semester) and sources for prerequisite material (which we assume you already know by heart).
• List everyone you worked with on each homework problem. Again, we strongly encourage you to work together, but you must give everyone proper credit. If you work in a group of 20 students, then all 20 names should appear on your homework solution. If someone was particularly helpful, describe their contribution. Be generous; if you're not sure whether someone should be included in your list of collaborators, include them. For discussions in class, in section, or in office hours, where collecting names is impractical, it's okay to write something like "discussions in class".
• Please see our academic integrity policy for more details.

Be Clear

• Write legibly. If we can't read your solution, we can't give you credit for it. If you have sloppy handwriting, use LaTeX. Please don't submit your first draft. Writing legibly also helps you think more clearly.
  • We strongly recommend typesetting your homework using LaTeX. (In particular, we recommend TeXShop for Mac OS X, TeX Live for Linux (already included in most distributions), and MiKTeX for Windows.) We provide a LaTeX template for homework solutions.
  • You are welcome to submit scans of hand-written homework solutions, but please write clearly using a black pen on plain white unlined paper, and please use a high-quality scanning app (or an actual high-quality scanner). We recommend printing your scanned document to check for readability before submitting.
• Write sensibly. You will lose points for poor spelling, grammar, punctuation, arithmetic, algebra, logic, and so on. This rule is especially important for students whose first language is not English. Writing sensibly also helps you think sensibly.
• Write carefully. We can only grade what you actually write, not what you mean. We will not attempt to read your mind. If your answer is ambiguous, the graders are explicitly isntructed to choose an interpretation that makes it wrong. Writing carefully also helps you think carefully.
• Avoid the Three Deadly Sins:
  1. Write complete solutions, not just examples. Don't describe algorithms by showing the first two or three iterations and then writing "and so on". Similarly, don't try to prove something by demonstrating it for a few small examples and then writing “do the same thing for all $n$”. Any solution that includes phrases like “and so on”, “etc.”, “do this for all $n$”, or “repeat this process” may get a score of zero. Those phrases indicate precisely where you should have used iteration, recursion, or induction but didn’t.
  2. Declare all your variables. Whenever you use a new variable or non-standard symbol for the first time, you must specify both its type and its meaning, in English. Similarly, when you describe any algorithm, you must first describe in English precisely what the algorithm is supposed to do (not just how it works). Any solution that contains undeclared variables may get a score of zero, unless it is otherwise perfect. This rule is especially important for dynamic programming problems.
  3. Short complete answers are better than longer answers. Unnecessarily long answers (which by definition are not perfect) may get a score of zero. See below.
• State your assumptions. If a problem statement is ambiguous, explicitly state any additional assumptions that your solution requires. (Please also ask for clarification in class, in office hours, or on Piazza!) For example, if the performance of your algorithm depends on how the input is represented, tell us exactly what representation you require.
• Don't submit code. Describe your algorithms using clean, human-readable pseudocode. Your description should allow a bright student in CS 225 to easily implement your algorithm in their favorite language.
• Don't submit your first draft. Revise, revise, revise. After you figure out the solution, then think about the right way to present it, and only then start writing what you plan to submit. Yes, even on exams; do your initial scratch work on the back of the page.

"I Don't Know"

• For any homework problem or subproblem (except for bonus questions), you can write IDK ("I Don't Know") and get 25% of the points for that problem or subproblem. You would get the points if and only if IDK is the only content of your answer. Any answer containing "IDK" anywhere and any additional text would immediately get a zero.

  Note, however, that readable, correct, but suboptimal solutions are always worth more than 25%. Reasonable progress toward a correct solution will receive partial credit, which could easily exceed 25%.