My Maths Homework Book 3c Answers Pdf

[Janeth Counter]

SoI strongly suspect that one of my students is asking all their homework questions here. In particular, all the questions that user8917 has asked about probability are homework questions that I have assigned in my current course. I am using a standard text (Pitman, Probability), so coincidence is possible, but there are many problems in our textbook that I have not assigned -- it seems unlikely that a person studying the book on their own, or even a person in another class using the same book, would choose exactly the same set of problems to be handed in.

My policy on academic dishonesty is simply that students cannot copy their answers from any source, although of course with relatively simple problems this is difficult to impossible to enforce. I of course would not want to forbid my students to use sites such as this one - if they have more general questions, or questions which are not specifically "how do I do this homework problem". But I don't want people solving my students' homework questions for them! I would appreciate the community's advice on what I can do here.

This is in some respect a repeat of this question, regarding a similar anonymous user who consistently asked homework questions; the major difference is that I, the instructor, am the one who noticed this.

I say let your students gather their learning how they wish. If you want to grade them based on their abilities use in class tests. And by the way, do not let them bring their cell phones or "calculators" into the test room.

I never assign book problems in my classes. Composing my own problems is a lot more work, of course, but I feel it's necessary. It's too easy these days to find answers to text problems (especially popular texts!) on the web.

My favorite types of problems, in fact, are those where I find wrong answers on the web. I truly relish these. Over time I have found wrong proofs published in solution packs from professors in top-notch places, UC San Diego, Sanford, MIT, etc. Perhaps they're doing it on purpose, and if so... I am grateful to them.

In my quest to use original problems, Math.SE (and similar sites) creates a problem: not only does asking here spur 20-30 PhDs to vigorously compete for rep, racing to answer my students' homeworks, but it also permanently renders the problems useless. So I'm forced to find new problems every term.

I was hesitant to suggest my approach as "an answer" to your question, since adopting it requires a ton of extra work. But it's what I do, despite the fact that online forums teeming with experts is making this approach less effective with each passing semester.

The era of the internet is upon us can be thought of in another way. You may very well have students not asking questions on here because they already have a copy of the full instructors' solutions manual, because these days you can download these as PDFs on various file sharing sites. At least, I know many of my Calc 1 students had this a year ago. I caught 9/40 cheating on one homework assignment, mainly because of one question where they all had a very similar answer and used something we had not talked much about. I gave them all 0s, told the class I knew about and told them not to do it. And, still I had 2 of these same people do it again and 1 other student do it who was not caught on this assignment. This situation is worse than asking on here because it takes no effort at all. You don't have to ask any questions. You can do your entire assignment in 10 or 15 minutes of copying out of the manual. One problem though is these students don't learn anything so most will do terrible on tests.

Since then, I assign homework but never collect it. I give weekly quizzes. This encourages them to do the homework weekly and not wait until right before the test to do a month's worth of homework. I also usually don't make them all that hard so it still has the benefit of giving easy points to the students, as homework does. I even do 12 of them and drop the 2 lowest.

I thought that my Calculus professor was rather clever in this regard. He simply wrote a set of question numbers from the textbook at the end of each lecture, and each set were worth the same number of points. He told us upfront that the way the point-system was set up, we could get an A in the class without doing any homework, because the homework was only a couple points tacked on to an examination grade. He hinted that if we understood how to solve the homework problems, we would not be surprised by the examinations.

For me, this tactic changed the economics of the homework. We weren't rewarded enough for turning in a completed homework assignment for cheating to be worthwhile. The real reward in completing the homework was in the knowledge that it would prepare you for the upcoming examination. The homework was more like a pre-test for our benefit, as opposed to sadistic busywork. It simply didn't make sense to cheat on the homework.

As a result, the professor didn't have to concern himself with cheaters because they would end up failing the exams. If they were able to cheat and still pass, they really didn't need to do the homework. And students who wanted to cut corners could just not turn in the homework at all and face no penalty. Everyone saved a lot of time while reaching the same end. All that is required for this to work is that the tests be sufficiently difficult, which I would think is much easier when you can focus on them instead of making a whole lot of unique homework problems to prevent cheating there.

As much as I dislike to search for answers on the internet, I am often forced to by time constraints if I even expect to complete the homework in time for submission. (I am taking 2 other modules and writing an undergraduate thesis too).

It destroys our ability to calibrate the course difficulty. Twenty hours of homework a week is very high for a math course; higher than I would expect from any course that was not promoted as a "boot camp" style course. Either you are falling behind the rest of the class, or other people are turning in much scantier work than you are, or everyone is googling the problems. The first two situations are obvious, and your professor should be adjusting to it. The last situation is invisible. We had an analysis course at MI last year pedagogically ruined because everyone kept solving the homework problems, so the professor kept increasing his pace, until an in class test revealed that no one was actually doing the homework themselves.

It forces us to use more obscure, and often not as good, problems. There are some fields where there are computations every student should do -- and, as a result, they are written up in books and online sources everywhere. It hurts my ability to design good problem sets if I can't put this fundamental problems on the problem set. Even in fields where there are not such key problems, there are often only so many ways to set up an example so that it is doable in a reasonable amount of time. If I can't use the examples which are already online, then I need to pick larger and stranger values for my parameters, which makes the problem set harder.

I do not believe that students will learn as much from reading a solution as finding it themselves; this is probably uncontroversial. Moreover, I think that hearing a solution from a classmate with whom you have been discussing the problem together is better than hearing it from a classmate who solved it separately; hearing it from a classmate is better than hearing it from a faculty member; and hearing it from a faculty member is better than reading it in a textbook or here on math.SE. I think that the more interactive and the less polished the presentation, the more you have to engage your own understanding to process and take in the answer. This is why I almost never leave full answers to questions that look like homework here; I think it is harmful.

Homework Policy: You are welcome to consult each other provided (1) you list all people and sources who aided you, or whom you aided and (2) you write-up the solutions independently, in your own language. If you seek help from other mathematicians/math students, you should be seeking general advice, not specific solutions, and must disclose this help. I am, of course, glad to provide help!

I don't intend for you to need to consult books and papers outside your notes. If you do consult such, you should be looking for better/other understanding of the definitions and concepts, not solutions to the problems.

You MAY NOT post homework problems to internet fora seeking solutions. Although I know of cases where such fora are valuable, and I participate in some, I feel that they have a major tendency to be too explicit in their help. You may post questions asking for clarification and alternate perspectives on concepts and results we have covered.

Personal anecdote. In the late 1970's i was taking topology from Munkres, Topology: a first course. The professor was Joel Spencer, a wonderful teacher, who is up for an AMS Trustee position, see the current Notices. In particular, he made up his own assignments that might not be questions in the book, which takes extra care and work. We had gone through compactness and the more intuitive sequential compactness and limit point compactness. We did most of the proof in class, that the product of just two compact spaces was also compact. the homework was to complete the proof for compactness, and throw in proofs that the product of two sequentially compact spaces was also sequentially compact, and the product of two limit point compact spaces was also limit point compact. Two of them were easy enough, but i struggled with the limit point one for at least a couple of days. Eventually I handed in a paper saying just that "I couldn't do this one." It came back from the grader with "Excellent" written on top, because the supposed fact is false. I was mystified, I asked Prof. Spencer what was so great about it. It took years for me to understand that not being able to prove something false was exactly right.

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