Meetings

We have lectures on Monday and Wednesdays from 2:30-4 PM in 100 Broad. I understand that you may miss a lecture from time to time, for graduate school visits, etc., but I ask that you make every effort to come to class. If you are concerned that you may out of necessity miss too many lectures, please talk with me and we can try to work out arrangements.

Lectures are a very important time for me to interface with you. As we have discussions in lecture, we both learn, and I get a good idea of how you are doing with the material. I therefore often find it distracting when students use laptops in lecture. Nonetheless, I do not what to take away your preferred method of note-taking, if that is the case, so laptops are allowed in lecture. I do ask that you use laptops and tablets strictly for note-taking purposes. Cell phones must be completely silenced and put away.

Lectures may not be recorded without my permission. If you miss a lecture, I invite you to discuss what you have missed with a classmate, your TAs, or with me.

I also strongly recommend you attend my and/or the TA office hours.

Homework

Homework will be assigned roughly weekly, typically due on Wednesdays. Homework assignments are posted on the website. The homeworks will not always have "right answers," but are always aimed at making you think about the central concepts of the course. Following are homework policies.

Homeworks are submitted in PDF or Jupyter notebook format via Canvas. If you handwrite your solution, it must be legible. You will lose points for illegible homework. Mathematical expressions must be clearly presented with all variables defined. If you write it on paper, submit a clear scan or photos collated into a single PDF document. Occasionally, you will need to write code to solve some of the homework problems. You must submit all source code with your homework.
Homework is submitted as a single file. The filename is one of

lastname_firstname_hw##.pdf: A single PDF containing your solutions. This is the most common mode of submission.
lastname_firstname_hw##.ipynb: You may submit your homework as Juypter notebooks, if you wish. This is especially convenient for problems that require coding.
lastname_firstname_hw##.zip: Sometimes you may need to submit a PDF, along with some source code. Everything should be zipped into a single file for submission.

For example, a submission for the first homework set would be submitted with a file name SkłodowskaCurie_Marie_hw01.zip containing the files SkłodowskaCurie_Marie_hw01.pdf and SkłodowskaCurie_Marie_hw01.ipynb as well as any image files used in the .ipynb document.
Homeworks have a specified due time, usually at the start of lecture on Thursdays. No late homework will be accepted with two exceptions.

If you need an extension due to health or family reasons, contact the course instructor directly. We may need to coordinate with the Dean's office or the Accessibility Services for Students office to work out the details of the extensions.
You have a total of six "grace days" you can use throughout the term. If you use grace days, your homework may be submitted late without penalty. A grace day is spent for each 24 hours, or portion thereof, that a given homework is late. For example, if a homework is due at 2:30 PM on Wednesday, but you turn it in at 5:30 PM on Friday, you spend three grace days, the first one being spent at 2:30 PM on Thursday, the second at 2:30 PM on Friday, and the third for the remaining three hours on Friday. After you spend six grace days for the term, no late homeworks will be accepted. Please note that no assignment can be turned in after Wednesday, March 15 due to the term ending.

You are encouraged to discuss the homework with your classmates, but your explanations and derivations must be your own.
You may not refer to homework problems from previous editions of this course. You also may not refer to solutions manuals, etc., for problems assigned from textbooks. In general, "homework by Google" is ill-advised. Slogging through a tough problem is often the best way to learn a concept, which is the whole point of the homework.
You are welcome, and even encouraged, to work with your classmates on your homework. Note that Ed is a valuable resource to discuss the homework with the course staff and with your classmates. If you do work with a classmate or classmates, please indicate with whom you worked in your homework submission. In all cases, the work should be substantially your own, and you should have full mastery of whatever you submit. You may not copy solutions from classmates.

Final exam

There is currently no plan for a final exam, but I reserve the right to give one. You will have at least two weeks notice before administration of the exam if we give one. It may be a written exam or an oral exam with a format similar to qualifying exams administered in many graduate programs.

Grading

Your grade in the course is based on homework (at least 70%), the final exam (at most 30%). The homeworks are all worth roughly the same number of points, but there may be some variation.

Course communications

Please use the class Ed page for questions course topics and homework. I encourage you to make your questions public so that everyone can benefit. Most of our mass communication with you will be through Ed, so be sure to set your Ed account to give you email alerts if necessary. You should use Ed for all communications except for issues of a personal nature, such as excuses for illness, in which case you should contact the course staff via email.

Ediquette

When posting on Ed, please follow these guidelines:

Your public posts should serve to help clarify concepts or ask about general directions. If you have specific questions that require showing much of your solution to a homework, make the post private, viewable only to the course staff.
We will not be writing much computer code, but if you have a question about a coding bug make every attempt to provide a minimal example that demonstrates the problem. A minimal example strips out all other details beyond what is necessary to reproduce the problem or bug. Posting error messages without code is seldom helpful.
While you are free to post anonymously to your classmates (course staff will always know who posts), we encourage you to post with your real name. This can spur discussions among students, which can be productive. This also spurs more conversation and results in faster answers to questions.