• When you write up your homework, you want to show all work involved in your solutions. There are several reasons for this. One is that, since most answers are in the back of the book, we will be grading the homework based on the work you show. If no work is shown, no credit will be given. Second, you should write all the work to convince yourself that you know what you are doing. Third, by including all work, you can use the homework to study for exams and quizzes.
• To keep your work neat, don't write in multiple columns. That is, the problems should run down the page, one after another, not jump side to side. This might take a little more paper, but it will be much easier for the grader to read, and for you to read later.
• The problems should appear in your homework in numerical order so that the grader knows where to find the problems they will grade. If a problem is not in its proper numerical place, make a note to the grader letting them know where to find it.
• Don't worry about using more paper. Conservation is a good thing, but education is also. You can buy recycled paper to compensate a little.
• Very often, homework problems will involve sketching graphs and figures. For this reason, I strongly recommend you use graph paper for these problems. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea to use graph paper for all homework in this class. It will really help you create more useful sketches and graphs.
• When turning your homework in: be sure to know your quiz section (AA, AB, AC, or AD) and write it on your homework along with the course number, your name, and the date. This will ensure that your work ends up in the right place, and that you'll know how to file it when it is returned to you. Keep all returned work for the duration of the quarter!! It will be useful for studying, and also will act as a backup record of your scores.
• Be sure to staple your work together before you turn it in. I won't have a stapler at the lecture, so staple it before you get there, or bring your own stapler. Paperclips really aren't sufficient for the hundreds of pages that have to be dealt with each week. It is your responsibility to make sure that your pages do not get separated.
• You may use pen or pencil to write your homework solutions. Pen has the advantage of legibility and permanence, while the pencil has the advantage of erasability.
• A question that often come up is how the homework solutions should be written. People often ask if they need to write a lot of words, or write in a formal mathematical way. The answer is that you don't need to include verbs (or most other types of words), although you are welcome to. It can be a very helpful thing to do: verbalizing your thought process is a good way to get the process out there where you can analyze it and make sure it makes sense. The same thing happens when you talk to people about what you are doing. In fact, talking about mathematics causes different parts of your brain to come into play, and you can really improve your understanding this way.
  
  Also, including some words in your write-ups is also a good way to help them make sense when you read them later while studying for exams. Think: will this solution make sense eight weeks from now when I'm studying for the final? If not, maybe a few words could improve that.
• An important aspect of the work you do in this class is the accuracy of your answers. Very often you will working with fractions and decimals, and it is important that we make sure that we are doing what we reasonably can to keep our answers as accurate as possible. When using decimal expressions for fractional quantities, the result is often an approximation (e.g., 1/3 is approximately 0.33333), and the fewer decimals you use, the more error you are introducing with the approximation. So, you should use lots of decimals in your representations. I would suggest using at least 4 or 5 digits in your decimal representations. For instance, the fraction 1/782 can be reasonably accurately represented with the decimal 0.0012788.
  
  Note that it actually requires less writing to use 1/782, and by using the fraction you won't be introducing any error.
  
  If you round too much (i.e., if you don't use plenty of digits) in your calculations, your answers will be inaccurate, and you may lose points on homework and exams.
• So, use exact values as much as possible! For instance, the square root of two takes only two symbols to write, but a good approximation takes a bunch: 1.414213562... . When we carry the quantity around as the square root of two we avoid issues with rounding, and don't lose accuracy as the calculation proceeeds. Also, you stand much less than of transcribing the value incorrectly (e.g., missing a digit, or changing a one to a seven).
• Regarding grading of homework: We have a course grader who will grade the homework. The grader will be grading three problems per homework assignment (which works out to one problem per chapter). I choose the problems the grader grades each week.
  
  The three problems are graded out of a possible 4 points. In addition, up to 4 points are assigned for "completion": if the assignment looks mostly complete, you get 4 points; not so complete, fewer points. Thus, each assignment is worth a maximum of 16 points.
  
  The intent is that, with all of the course resources - lecture, quiz section, my office hours, your TAs office hours, the MSC, CLUE, the discussion board - you should be able to solve and write up a complete solution to every problem. As a result, a grading a sampling of the problems turned in is sufficient.
  
  From a practical point of view, another reason for only grading a few problems per assignment is that grading is extremely time consuming, and we only have so much money to pay the graders in this course.
• The homework that is due the week before exams will most likely not be returned to you before the exam. It might be helpful for you to photocopy your work and keep the photocopy to study from.

If you have any other questions about homework, feel free to ask.