Some General Academic Policies

• Attendance. Students are expected to attend each class. The official means of communication for this course will be in-class announcements, though every effort will be made to ensure that the course Web page is up to date.
• Homework submissions. Homework assignments are due as indicated on the homework and the Web page. Handwritten homework is fine, but it must be legible. Late homeworks will be accepted at the sole discretion of the teachning assistant(s), but in no case after a solution set has been handed out or discussed in class. Late homeworks may receive only partial credit, also at the sole discretion of the teachning assistant(s).
• Rescheduling exams. Exams may be taken other than at the scheduled time, but only under exceptional circumstances and then only if approved by the instructor well in advance of the exam. It is your responsibility to contact the instructor and justify your cause. Makeup exams will rarely be the same as the original exam and will usually be all or partly oral.
• Grading policy. Although there are no points for neatness it does tend to affect grades indirectly. Homework and exam answers should be clearly organized and not needlessly wordy. An illegible homework or exam will be given a grade of zero.
• Honesty. Your work must be your own. For anything other than exams, you are welcome to discuss general issues with other students, but the answer, the writing, and the final result that you hand in must be your own effort. Discussing or sharing answers to specific problems is considered dishonest. If you have questions about what is honest, please ask! One suggestion is never to write down anything while you're talking with someone about classwork since that will require you to come up with the result again on your own later. You are strongly encouraged to cite your sources if you received extraordinary help from any person or text (including the Web).
• Plagiarism. Plagiarism is a type of cheating and will not be tolerated in this class. For all material that you hand in, you must appropriate indicate when you are using work of others. If you use verbatim or only slightly altered text, you must clearly indicate (quotation marks, indented text,etc.) that you are quoting another source and what that source is. If you refer to work done by others, even if you do not quote it, you should include a reference to the original source. It does not matter if that work was published or not: if it is work other than your own, you are obligated to make it clear that you are using that person's work.
• Office hours. The instructor will normally be available in his office during posted office hours. Outside of those hours, or times arranged on an appointment basis, he cannot be assumed to be available for course-related matters, even if in his office.