All students are expected to be familiar with, and to comply with, the University Policy on Cheating and Plagiarism.
Any work submitted as a homework assignment or examination must be entirely your own and may not be derived from the work of others, whether a published or unpublished source, the worldwide web, another student, other textbooks, materials from another course (including prior semesters of this course), or any other person or program. You may not copy, examine, or alter anyone else's homework assignment or computer program, or use a computer program to transcribe or otherwise modify or copy anyone else's files.
To facilitate cooperative learning, it is permissible to discuss a homework assignment with other students, provided that the following whiteboard policy is respected. A discussion may take place at the whiteboard (or using scrap paper, etc.), but no one is allowed to take notes or record the discussion or what is written on the board, and you must allow four hours to lapse after any discussion before working on the assignment. The fact that you can recreate the solution from memory is taken as proof that you actually understood it.
We may sometimes run automatic code comparison programs (such as MOSS). These programs are very good at detecting similarity between code, even code that has been purposefully obfuscated. Such programs can compare a submitted assignment against all other submitted assignments, against all known previous solutions of a problem, etc. The signal-to-noise ratio of such comparisons is usually very distinctive, making it very clear what code is a student's original creative work and what code is merely transcribed from some other source.
Homeworks are due each week on Monday at 11:59PM U.S. Eastern Time unless otherwise noted on the assignment (the first assignment is due on a Tuesday since Monday is labor day).
Late homeworks will be considered 1 day late until Tuesday at 11:59PM and 2 days late until Wednesday at 10:30AM (before the first recitation). You are permitted a budget of FOUR (4) late days per semester at no grade penalty (e.g. you might use 2 on 1 assignment, and 1 each on two other assignments). If you have used up these four late days, your score will be reduced by 25% off of the tolal (not your score) per late day. Except in extraordinary circumstances, no late homework will be accepted beyond the late date.
The development of this course was supported in part by generous gifts from Intel's Higher Education Program, Microsoft Research, and IBM Research.