Written and oral communication of scientific and technical work is important and can be difficult.

What is a writeup?
A writeup is a small essay. It should progress logically and be easy to read. It will be graded both on mathematical content and on presentation.

• Explanations should be given in complete sentences.
• Include any information (such as pictures and computations) that you think is useful.
• Label any pictures.
• You should not include straightforward computational details. For example, you may just state that if f(x)=3x⁷+25x⁴-19x²+5, then f(-2)=-87. The details of substitution and evaluation should not be shown.
• Neatness counts: your workshop report must be written legibly on standard size paper. Observe margins on all four sides. Please write on one side only. You must put your name, your section number, the workshop number, and the page number on each sheet. You must staple the pages together in the proper order.

Exposition is a skill which can be learned. The comments on your work are intended to help this process.

The rules
While you are encouraged to discuss the problem with other students and with the recitation instructor, the peer mentors, and me, the written work you hand in must be your own. Please acknowledge any quotes and reference any sources.

An example
See pages 4 through 9 here for an example of a workshop problem and a writeup, and further comments.

Grading

Each week the course lecturer will grade workshop reports from one section of the course. The recitation instructor will grade those reports that the lecturer does not grade. Generally I hope that writeups will be at most a page or two long.

Each workshop report will be graded on a scale of 0-10. Half the points are for "mathematical content" and half for "exposition". If the mathematics is illegible then you cannot get either the content points or the exposition points. "Exposition" includes the format described above, the layout of your computations, and the explanatory sentences. More words are not necessarily better! "Content" includes the mathematical appropriateness of the work you do, and the correctness of the computations (numerical and symbolic) and any diagrams and graphs you use to motivate, carry out, and report your work and your results.

Late workshops will generally not be accepted!

Roughly speaking scores are given as follows: 0 means nothing legible is there. 2 means there is some relevant work in proper format, but it makes almost no progress. 4 means the format is okay and there is some mathematical progress. 6 means format and exposition is okay and there is reasonable mathematical progress. 8 means format and exposition is okay and the mathematics is almost complete. 10 means there are essentially no errors in math or exposition. Intermediate score are intermediate: e.g. 7 is between 6 and 8.

Here's the last paragraph of the "local matter" in the text:

Writeups with more than one page should be stapled. Writeups should be legible. Spelling should be checked. Students should proofread their work. Neatness counts!

Goal
Writeups should be correct and easy to read.