FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Recommended Good Study Habits
How to Write Assignment Reports
Feedback and Marking
Policy on Re-Marking Marked Assignment Reports
Policy on Missed Midterm Test

Recommended Good Study Habits:

Be a genuine student: study to learn, eagerly honestly and diligently.

Regular lecture attendance is essential. Past experience shows that habbitual non-attendance results in poor student performance.
Study the course material regularly, early, and often.
Don’t fall behind; you will have hard time catching up.

Start to read & work on the assignments as soon as they are posted

Some assignment questions may challenge your intelect and require concentrated effort.
Give yourself plenty of time to avoid last minute frantics.
Time manage all your courses and other duties.

Be engaged, attentive, and enthusiastic in your study.

Deepen your insight on the subject mater: grasp the big picture then absorb the details.
Act as your own adversary by asking self-probing questions.
Take notes, draw figures, pause & rethink.
Organize & summarize, gather intuition, stay inspired.
Imagine by mental pictures, formulate & test conjectures, work out examples, tackle special cases, ... generalize.
Double-check everything.

Make a genuine effort to resolve the questions you may have on the course material, before searching for an "easy" answer from an external source.

Use the internet as an on-line library, a source for genuine research & study, not a readily accessible source to copy from without proper understanding.
Do you have a good grasp of the material now? Can you explain it to a friend without any more aid?
Seek help from your instructor during office hours.

Your instructor is eager to help you, but you must be willing to help yourself first.

How to Write Assignment Reports:

Group study is encouraged, but avoid plagiarism. (For a tutorial on academic integrity at York University click here .)
Each student should submit their own individual assignment report.
Include a cover page with your name, student I.D. number, E-mail address, course number, assignment number, instructor's name, etc.
Your assignment reports should be succinct, precise, complete, and legible. Long reports are not necessarily good!
How to describe your algorithms:

Avoid obvious details, but be sure to explain the non-obvious steps of your algorithm.
Describe any data structures that you use.
Probably the best way to explain your algorithm is to first give an overall account of how it works and the main ideas behind the algorithm. When necessary, include examples and figures to illustrate and illuminate particularly subtle points of the algorithm. Then give a more detailed description in pseudo-code (mixture of computerese, math and English) similar to the way algorithms are stated in class.
You should prove the correctness of your algorithm when it is not obvious. A proof gives certitude, deepens insight, and increases understanding.
Do a proper time analysis of your algorithms.
Other styles are acceptable so long as they are understandable by the marker/TA, without requiring excessive imagination or guess work!

No late report without prior acceptable and documentable reason is accepted. No report is accepted after the solutions are posted.
Any references used, published or otherwise, should be fully cited (including author names, titles, publisher, publication date, page number, or URL, etc.) in such a way that your marker can easily access the source. Failure to properly acknowledge others' results is considered plagiarism. You should cite the reference at the point of use in your report. You should express your answers in your own words, according to your own understanding. Your answers should not be a mere duplication of the source material. You should view such references as sources for genuine learning and study, similar to the way you use the text book, lecture notes and other sources provided in the course. You should not use the references (or the internet) for an easy source of answers, without giving much genuine thought to find the answers yourself independently.

Feedback and Marking:

The instructor posts model solutions on the course web page.
Assignments for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year undergraduate courses are marked by the Teaching Assistant(s).
The Midterm Test and the Final Exam are marked by the instructor.

Policy on Re-Marking Marked Assignment Reports:

First compare your solutions to the posted solution set. That may resolve most of the questions.
If you still have concerns,

make a short note on the cover page, indicating what part of the report you wish re-marked, and give the entire report back to your instructor.

Do not make any alterations on the remaining pages of your report.
If you intend your assignment report to be re-marked, you should do this within one week from the date the marked assignment reports are returned to class.

Policy on Missed Midterm Test:

On the condition that you provide the instructor an acceptable and documentable reason for your missed Midterm Test, you may choose one of the following two options:

Option 1: You decide to write a Makeup Midterm Test arranged by your instructor, or
Option 2: You decide not to write a Makeup Midterm Test. In that case your midterm grade will be your final exam grade (out of 100) minus 10 points.

Rationale:

You are given 2 options in fairness to you.
The 10 marks deduction in Option 2 is in fairness to all other students who made the effort and wrote the test.
Students are supposed to be tested on all subjects covered in the course. The midterm covers one part, and the final exam covers mostly the remaining part with somewhat lesser emphasis on the material covered prior to the midterm.
You are trusted to do your best in your studies and carry out your fair share of responsibilities.