Exercises

Exercises are to be completed individually, to help you cement your own understanding of the course material. Remember to put your name, student number, and CDF/UTOR email address on the front of your submission (which should consist of a single PDF file).

The general rule is that the exercise problems are those which you are expected to be able to solve on your own, with very little time overhead (naturally, once you have learnt the material). In other words, an exercise problem can be easily an exam question. Keep it in mind that defining a general scale of difficulty for problems is impossible, and so, we declare an exercise problem “approximately” as easy as an exam question. And, also, there are easier exam questions and harder exam questions, and hence, there are easier exercise problems and harder exercise problems.

Assignments

Assignments are to be completed in groups of no more than four students (preferably 3–4). Remember to put the name, student number, and CDF/UTOR email address of each group member on the front of your submission (which should consist of a single PDF file). Only one of the group members should submit a solution for the entire group.

You are strongly encouraged to work out the solutions together, rather than trying to split up the work so that each person is "responsible" for one or two questions only.

Here is why. Remember that the point of group assignments is to give you a chance to work on problems together, so that you each learn more than by doing it yourself. Studies have shown that stronger and weaker students both learn more when working in a group. As long as they are allowed to try problems on their own first, weaker students benefit from the explanations provided by stronger students, and stronger students benefit from having to explain the material to weaker students. You never know how well you understand something until you have to explain it to someone else.

Remember also that splitting up the work may seem to save time, but this is not true: since everyone will be expected to understand how to solve each question for the test (or exam) that follows each assignment (and is worth more than the assignment itself), you will each have to go back and review each solution anyway. More importantly, as you well know, there is a big difference between reading someone else's solution and working out a solution for yourself: you learn much more by "solving" than by "reading".

However, independent of your choice, keep in mind that you are personally responsible for ensuring that we receive a complete assignment submission bearing your name—no matter which member of your group looks after the submission. This also means that we cannot give special consideration to students who choose to work alone—this is a choice you are free to make, but you must accept the consequences of your choice. Statistics from past terms show that students who work in groups on average get much higher marks for assignments.

If you would like to work with someone but you don't know anybody who could be your partner, simply post a "request for partner" message on the appropriate section of the course bulletin board (Piazza). Also, make an effort to speak with your classmates during lectures and tutorials—you may find that there are many others in the same situation as you.

The general rule is that the assignment problems are on the average more difficult than exercise problems. This does not mean that every single assignment problem is more difficult than every single exercise problem. But, since we know you will be collaborating with your team-mates, we will use the opportunity to use more interesting (less straightforward) problems in the assignments from time to time.

Submission Instructions

All homework submissions will be done electronically, using the MarkUs system. You can login to using your CDF username and password.

Note: There are known compatibility issues between MarkUs and Internet Explorer (IE), that may make it impossible for you to submit work. The easiest way around this difficulty is simply to use a different browser (Firefox is known to work well). Alternatively, a student in another course has reported some success using IE 9 with MarkUs, by clicking the "Compatibility View" icon located inside the address bar (next to "Refresh").

To submit your work, navigate to the appropriate Exercise or Assignment page, then click on the "Submissions" tab near the top. Click "Add a New File" and either type a file name or use the "Browse" button to choose one. Then click "Submit". You can submit a new version of any file at any time (though the lateness penalty applies if you submit after the deadline)—look in the "Replace" column. For the purposes of determining the lateness penalty, the submission time is considered to be the time of your latest submission.

Remember that for assignments, you are allowed (and encouraged) to work in groups. When you do this, you must "declare" your group on MarkUs in order for everyone in your group to receive credit. To declare your group members, one of you needs to invite the others to be partners, and then the other students need to accept the invitation. Beware: this will not work if two or more students invite each other! Only one student should send invitations, which everyone else simply needs to accept.

To invite a partner, navigate to the appropriate Assignment page, find "Group Information", and click on "Invite". You will be prompted for the other student's CDF user name; enter it. To accept an invitation, find "Group Information" on the Assignment page, find the invitation listed there, and click on "Join". Remember that, when working in a group, only one person must submit solutions.

Once you have submitted, click on the file's name to check that you have submitted the correct version. Remember that every file you submit must be in PDF. Every term, some number of students submit Word documents instead of PDFs and receive no credit for their work (initially)... Be vigilant, and always remember to "export to PDF" and to submit the correct file!