Policy on MATHEMATICA Homework Collaboration

You are required to form small teams to collaborate in preparing solutions to the DEwM-based MATHEMATICA problems. No team may contain more than three members. Teams may contain two members. Teams may vary during the year; that is, if you wish to change the composition of any team, you may do so at any time--of course, while maintaining the limit of three. No other collaboration is permitted. If individuals or teams collaborate without acknowledgement, penalties will be assessed.

You may submit your solutions in one of two ways: (i) the team works together and submits one write-up with all team members listed on the front; or (ii) each team member submits his own write-up, but collaboration is acknowledged by listing the other team members on the front. I prefer the former, since it makes grading more efficient and reveals the teams more clearly. However, if the individualist inside you demands your own version, that is permissible.

You may form your teams as you wish. If you are a loner, or don't know anyone in class, I will be willing to assign students to teams. Experience has shown that students who work in teams: adjust to MATHEMATICA's syntax quicker, spend less time in seemingly hopeless dead-ends, learn more, and actually get higher grades. Participation on a team is mandatory.

NOTE: This policy commences with Problem Set B. All students are expected to do Problem Set A on their own.
The grading of Problem Set A will be informal. That grade will not count toward your Mathematica Problem Set score (of 200 points).

You will use MATHEMATICA to solve mathematical problems involving ordinary differential equations in this course. There still remains the issue of how you transmit those solutions to others, in particular in what form to hand them in for grading. You may submit your work by creating a single "Mathematica Notebook" for all the problems that you are submitting, and labeling the contents clearly at the beginning of the Notebook. (Alternatively, you may create a Notebook for each problem.) You should split up a multi-part problem into multiple cells, and label each cell appropriately. You will find the use of title, section and subsection styles to be useful. Click on a cell bracket, then use Format:Style. Finally, print that file for submission. Your answers should be presented in the order that the problems are assigned. If you use more than one sheet of paper, they should be stapled together. The top of the first page should include: your name, the names of other members of your team, and the date the assignment is due.

The above is the default method to present MATHEMATICA output in this course. There are other methods -- e.g., cutting and pasting input and output into a Microsoft Word document. If you employ this or any other alternate method, that should be noted on your submission. Various techniques and other methods of 'publishing' MATHEMATICA are discussed in Chapter 4 of DEwM.