Academic Integrity Statement

In my class, you'll often find yourself working with other students (if you choose to do so). One of my favorite things to see is a group of students sitting around, comparing answers on quizzes, or projects, or whatever else. One of the reasons I let you do so many assessments out of class is precisely to give you these opportunities; often, you all learn better from each other than you might from me.

However, it has come to my attention over the past few years that a very small number of students are taking advantage of this policy. I've added this page to my syllabus to make clear what I assumed, incorrectly, was already clear.

You must individually do all questions on assessments to expect full credit for them.
  • Do not copy and paste work from someone else into your submissions.
  • Do not used shared documents (i.e., Google Docs) with other students.
  • Do not email your work to other people, for it makes it too easy for the recipient to copy and paste your work.
  • If a question tells you to create something (examples would be graphs, screenshots, Monte Carlo results, etc.), you must create it. You may work with someone else while you create said item, but you, yourself, must create it, independently of others.
  • Don't use any online source to do problems for you and return solutions.


If any section of an assessment appears to be an exact copy of someone else's, all parties who have the same work will receive 0 points for the assessment (not just the copied sections; the entire assessment).

Examples of what *not to do from a recent assessment.