Princeton University Computer Science Department

Computer Science 341 Discrete Mathematics Rob Schapire

Fall 2006

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General Information | Schedule & Readings | Assignments & Exams | Precepts

Here are statistics for the homeworks and exams that have been graded so far.

What you will be graded on

Your written exercises and problems will be graded on your answers and proofs being correct, mathematically rigorous and well justified.  Your proofs may refer to course material and to earlier homeworks in the semester; except for this, all results you use must be proved explicitly.  Your grade will also depend on the presentation, which should be clear, concise, precise and unambiguous.

You are not required to type your solutions, but if you choose to do so, be sure to use a word processor capable of producing all of the required math notation (subscripts, superscripts, special symbols, Greek letters, etc.).  Handwritten solutions must be done neatly and legibly, and preferably printed rather than in cursive.  Solutions that are too messy to be graded will not receive credit.

Turning in assignments

All work should be turned in at the end of class, or put in the envelope outside of room 001C in the basement of the CS building.

Please submit hard copy only.

Late policy

All assignments are due at 11:59pm on the due date.

Each student will be allotted seven free days which can be used to turn in homework assignments late without penalty.  For instance, you might choose to turn in HW#1 two days late, HW#4  three days late and HW#8 two days late.  Once your free days are used up, late homeworks will be penalized 25% per day.  (For instance, a homework turned in two days late will receive only 50% credit.)  Homeworks will not be accepted more than three days past the deadline, whether or not free days are being used.  Exceptions to these rules will of course be made for serious illness or other genuine emergency circumstances, and free late days should not be used for these purposes; in these cases, please contact me as soon as you are aware of the problem.

A weekend, that is, Saturday and Sunday together, count as a single late "day".  For instance, a homework that is due on Friday but turned in on Monday would be considered two days late, rather than three.

Take-home exams cannot be turned in late, nor can written material be turned in beyond "Dean's Date" without a dean's permission.

If you are turning in a late homework after hours when no one is around to accept it, please indicate at the top that it is late, and clearly mark the day and time when it was turned in.  Failure to do so may result in the TA's considering the homework to be submitted at the time when it was picked it up (which might be many hours, or even a day or two after when you actually submitted it).

Collaboration

The collaboration policy for this course is based on the overarching objective of maximizing your educational experience, that is, what you gain in knowledge, understanding and the ability to solve problems.  Obviously, you do not learn anything by copying someone else's solution.  On the other hand, forbidding any and all discussion of course material may deprive you of the opportunity to learn from fellow students.  The middle ground between these two extremes also needs to be defined with this basic principle in mind.  Before working with another student, you should ask yourself if you would gain more or less by working together or individually, and then act accordingly.  Here are some specific guidelines based on this principle:

• Before working with someone else, you should first spend a substantial amount of time trying to arrive at a solution by yourself.  Some of the problems are easier and should be solved individually from start to finish.

• You should limit the number of other students that you work with on any particular problem to only one or two, and these work groups should generally remain disjoint.  You should not be working with anyone who already knows the solution, with students who took the course in previous years, etc.

• Discussing and solving harder problems with fellow students (who have not already solved it) is allowed and encouraged to the extent that it leads all participants to a better understanding of the problem and the material.  The discussions should be limited to ideas only; this includes explaining the meaning of a question, discussing a way of approaching a solution, or collaboratively exploring how to solve a problem.

• Following such discussions, you should only take away your understanding of the problem; you should not take notes, particularly on anything that might have been written down. This is meant to ensure that you understand the discussion well enough to reproduce its conclusions on your own.  For a similar reason, you should avoid discussing problems via email.  In all cases, you should always note on your solution who you worked with.  This is for your own protection, as a matter of scholarly integrity, and to avoid any suspicion of disallowed collaboration.

• Needless to say, simply telling the solution to someone else is prohibited, as is showing someone a written solution.  Copying of any sort is not allowed. You may not use or look at solutions taken from any student, from the web, from prior year solutions, or from any other source.

• The final writing of the problem set must be done individually and strictly on your own.

• If you happen to have already seen one of the assigned problems elsewhere, please indicate this when you write up your solution; we won't take off credit, we just would like to know.  Although background reading is certainly allowed, you should not attempt to "solve" these problems by looking for the solutions in a book, on the web or anywhere else.  Try to solve the problems on your own, or ask me or the TA's or fellow students for help if you can't.

• No collaboration of any kind is allowed on take-home or in-class exams.