feedback on homework
Ken Ribet
I spoke with GSI Aaron G., who graded the first homework assignment and
made some comments about it. (I'll be handing back the papers
tomorrow.) He gave generous baseline credit to students who did all
four of the assigned problems and then graded two out of the four in
detail. His main comment is that some students have used without
comment some notation and even some results that they have learned in
other courses, possibly including some given by the CS department.
Folks, if you use notation that we haven't used in the course, please
explain carefully what the notation means and make sure that you and
the person reading your assignment are on the same page. Second, Aaron
said that some of the proofs were well written but that others were not
at the right level. Please read the model solutions that I e-mailed
you last Friday and compare Aaron's proofs with your own.
A related comment is that it's generally not acceptable to use, in the
solution to a problem, theorems and other assertions that the authors
prove in sections that come after the problem. If an exercise is
included in a given section, the authors believe that it can be solved
using only the material that has been amassed up to that point in the
book. (Of course, you may need to bring in some facts from basic math
courses like freshman calculus.)
I've had lots of people come to my office hours; about a dozen came
today. I like your visits and think that it's a good way for us to get
to know each other.
Best,
Ken Ribet