The Laws of Homework


You should work on your homework in a self-selected team of two people. We strongly encourage you to work in pairs. Learning to work with peers is critical for your professional career. Someone who doesn't understand needs to learn how to ask a team leader or co-worker. Someone who understands a problem better than his partner will learn that teaching someone else significantly improves one's own understanding.

If you decide, for whatever reason, that you should do the homework alone, please come and explain your reasoning to one of the instructorss.

If you decide to work in a pair, please choose a partner by Monday, January 24. You will work with your partner for the entire semester. If any problems come up with this arrangement or if your partner drops the course, contact the Lab Coordinator immediately. You and your partner should sign up for the same lab session.

Doing homework in teams does not mean that one of you rests and the other one works. A solid understanding of the homework material is critical for the exams. If you don't understand how to do the homeworks, you will not understand the exam material either.

  1. Solve each problem on your own. Have your peer review your solutions. Discuss differences. Turn in the best solution.

  2. When a homework asks for hand-evaluation, make sure

    Here is a sample.

  3. When a homework problem asks for a program,

    1. formulate the necessary data defininition(s)
      or point to some other problem on the same homework set
      or point to a page in the Lecture Notes.
    2. formulate a contract and header for each function
    3. show with examples what the function is expected to produce for sample inputs; you may wish to add comments that explain how to get from the input to the output;
    4. define the program
    5. include tests
    Here is a sample.

  4. When the problem asks for templates, provide them, too.

  5. Format code properly. You must read code in the book to learn when to introduce line breaks. If you use line-breaks properly, DrScheme can assist with the rest. Typing return places the cursor at the proper spot on the next line. You may also use the Indent choices under Scheme to format programs.

    Use DrScheme's block comments #| ... |# to include supplementary material, like the data analysis, program examples, contract, etc.

    Neat work is likely to be good work. Ugly work is bad work. To ensure that you acquire a proper taste for indentation and presentation, we will assign F's for ugly homeworks, i.e., homeworks that significantly deviate from the norms set by the code in the Lecture Notes.

  6. When you submit homework, put the names of all students who worked on the assignment and the time of your lab session on the front page. Staple all pages together.

To get an idea of how the graders will evaluate your homeworks, see the grading guideline.

As the course progresses, the homework and even some exam problem will be intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous. Ambiguity is an important aspect of the real world with which you will have to deal. It is critical for you

  1. to recognize ambiguity,
  2. to understand the alternatives,
  3. to discard obviously silly alternatives,
  4. to evaluate your support for (opinion on) the various alternatives, and
  5. to choose a good one.
Do not make the mistake that all alternatives (opinions) are equal. That's a rumor. You must learn in your life to analyze and to evaluate the support (argumentation). Then you can make well-informed decisions.

This page originally developed by Matthias Felleisen; modified by Kathi Fisler and Keith D. Cooper.