Homework for CS 466/666 Spring 2024
Assignments will consist of $n$ problems where usually $n \sim 10$.
Assignment due dates: Tentative
- May 21st
- May 31st
- June 26th
- July 15th
Assignments will be due at 10 PM (Waterloo time) on the dates above.
Instructions for Assignments
Your written solutions will be judged not only for correctness but also for the quality of your presentation and explanations. In questions that involve designing an algorithm:
- describe the main idea first,
- give details at a level mimicking the style of the lectures or the model solutions,
- give a correctness proof/argument if it is not immediately obvious, and
- include an analysis (of the running time, error probability, approximation factor, etc.).
The problems are designed so that the solutions should not be long, thus being concise will also be taken into consideration (i.e., clarity of exposition)
Collaboration policy: Students are allowed and encouraged to collaborate with other students on the homework assignments. You may discuss the assignment questions with others, but you should come away from these discussions without a fully written solution of the problem that you discussed. The discussions should be about the ideas necessary to solve the problem. If you collaborate with other students, you must clearly indicate your collaborators for each problem. The homework LaTeX template will have a field for each problem for you to fill in. Marks will be deducted if you fail to do so.
After collaboration, the work you hand in must be your own. The value of the assignment is in writing your solution yourself (as you must do on tests and exams). Acknowledge any other sources (human or non-human) you have used. If you use an electronic source, again, read it, then close it, then compose your solution and acknowledge your source. Write your solutions in your own words, from your own head. Any assistance received (from human or nonhuman sources) that is not given proper citation may be considered a violation of the university policies.
Searching for solutions is considered plagiarism. If you happen to find the solution of a problem while reading from some external sources, you must give a proper citation of the source, failing to cite the source properly is considered plagiarism.
Submission: Assignments will be submitted as pdf files (each question as a separate pdf). We strongly encourage you to submit your solutions using LaTeX. LaTeX templates for each problem will be provided.
If you are handwriting your solution, make sure it is clearly legible. Illegible handwritten submissions will receive a zero mark.
We will use Crowdmark to submit assignments this term. Before the submission deadline (usually the weekend before the deadline), we will send a submission link to your uwaterloo email and make an announcement on piazza. If you didn’t get the link or have any question about the submission, you can contact the TA on Piazza. If you need any help for submitting via Crowdmark, you can find instructions here.
Late Policy: Assignments are due at 10 PM (Waterloo time) on the dates above. For each late day that you take to submit, we will deduct 25% of your final mark for that homework.
Regrading Requests: All regrade requests must be made within one week of the date of the return of the graded assignment. Your request should be submitted to the TA who marked the question in writing as a Piazza private post to the instructors. Only if the problem is still unresolved should you then bring the case to the instructor’s attention.