Policy on Collaboration

We encourage you to help each other learn the material by discussing the work before you do each assignment. For most assignments, explaining the meaning of a question or a way of approaching a solution is an interaction that we encourage. On the other hand, you should never read another student's solution or partial solution, nor have it in your possession, either electronically or on paper. You should write your homework strictly by yourself. For some problems, we may instruct you not to discuss the problem with other students at all. If you receive a significant idea from someone in the class, explicitly acknowledge that person in your solution. Not only is this a good scholarly conduct, it also protects you from accusations of theft of your colleagues' ideas.

Presenting another person's work as your own constitutes cheating, whether that person is a friend, a student in this class or a previous semester's class, or an anonymous person on the Web who happens to have solved the problem you've been asked to solve. Everything you turn in must be your own doing, and it is your responsibility to make it clear to the graders that it really is your own work. The following activities are specifically forbidden in all graded course work:

Possession (or theft) of another student's solution or partial solution in any form (electronic, handwritten, or printed). Giving a solution or partial solution to another student, even with the explicit understanding that it will not be copied. Working together to develop a single solution and then turning in copies (or modified versions) of that solution under multiple names.

Cheating on an homework or a midterm will result in a grade of zero for that assignment. Cheating on the final, or repeated offenses, will be reported and will result in an F.