There are many different things you are expected to do at home.
Studying a lesson in preparation for the next class.
Submitting questions about items you did not understand to the Class Management System (CMS) of the course, such as Classcomm or Moodle..
Udating your class journal.
Practicing your constructions.
Solving problems assigned in the Syllabus, on CMS, in the lessons.
Entering the solutions into your journal.
Submitting your solutions to CMS.
Correcting mistakes pointed out to you by your grader.
In short, you should budget 2 hours of itme for homework for each hour in class. Since all lessons are online there are no oral lectures in this course which repeat this information. A typical class session consists in answering questions you have posted online, class activities which assume your having read the lesson for the day, instructions on using our software tools, etc.
Geometry does not lend itself to solving a long list of short problems, each much like the other, in endless variations on a theme. Think of calculus. Each problems requires some deep thought, some insight, and some care in composing and illustrating the solution. So, you should think of the homework you submit as mini essays in mathematics worth doing well.
Generally, this homework is composed in LaTeX, illustrated with figures constructed in KSEG, and submitted to CMS Your grader will make comments on your .pdf file and return it to you.
There is a sample homework problem due W1 (Wednesday of week 1 by 5pm). Since the principal tool, texWins, for doing this is not ready yet, the first assignment due F1 is exempt from some of the format rules.
A complete solution to an assignment consists in
a LaTeX typeset document in .pdf format with figures created by KSEG.
the KSEG .seg file that created the figure
It is perfect if, in addition, it is also correct.
The name of a file submitted for homework must be a single word (no spaces or punctuation!) with the "author and title" readily decipherable, ending with .pdf, .seg, .png, .tex etc.
For example, if your net id is xerxes42.illinois.edu and you’re submitting the second problem due Friday of week 1, you should title the two files xerxes42F1prob2.pdf and xerxes42F1prob2.seg.
Homework is evaluated, marked up, and returned to you.
under some circumstances, homework can be redone and resubmitted.
late homework will generally not be awarded full credit
solutions to selected problems will be posted for a limited time, during which you should copy them into your journal.
You may not post solutions to the problems on any website, chatgroup, or anywhere else on the web. Posting them where webcrawlers can find them is not only unethical, it compromises the usefulness for other students to do the problem.
It is invariably better to submit a partial homework on time than none at all, or a complete homework late, but without excuse. If you have problem using the appropriate LaTeX symbol, you may use email notation to get the idea across. Since email can only contain symbols found on your keyboard, mathematicians have developed a jargon in plain text which assumes the reader is familiar with LaTeX. Thus
\int_0^x dt/t = log(x)and
integral_0^x dt/t = log xboth describe $ \int_0^x dt/t = log(x) $.
23aug09