MA 1023 Lab Report Information C '97

Schedule

There will be five labs common to all sections of the course.

LAB DATES and DUE DATES

Lab #1 on January 22-23 is due at the start of lab on January 29-30

Lab #2 on January 29-30 is due at the start of lab on February 5-6

Lab #3 on February 5-6 is due at the start of lab on February 12-13

Lab #4 on February 12-13 is due at the start of class on February 20

Lab #5 on February 26-27 is due at start of class on March 4

Labs will be posted in the MA 1023 WWW home page and will also be available at the SGA office. Printing copies of the lab sheet(s) in SH 306 is not permitted.

Lab Report Teams

Lab reports are to be done in teams, each team consisting of exactly two students. In particular, single author or three author lab reports will receive a zero unless prior approval has been obtained from your instructor or IA.

No cooperation or discussion among teams is permitted. A submitted lab report should be the exclusive work of those listed as its authors. Your lab partner should be enrolled in the same MA 1023 section that you are in. You may change lab partners during the term.

Lab Report Format

Each lab report will have two sections. The first section is a short summary of the nature of the lab. The second section contains your pertinent Maple work, your explanation of the meaning of that work and the conclusions that follow from the work.

Your summary should be one paragraph that describes the major points/goals of the lab and the mathematical concepts addressed. Note that this should be in your own words and not simply a rewrite of the lab description. This section should be short and concise. Three to five sentences should be enough.

All Maple commands used for the lab should be included in the second section. Problem numbers should be included in this section to indicate which commands were used for which problems. Equations or plots that are needed for the solutions must be clearly labeled. You are also responsible for ensuring that the Maple commands are consistent with your answers. At the end of your Maple work for each problem, include a short paragraph that explains the role of the Maple work, identifies the solution of the problem, and draws any conclusions that need to be made. Your explanation and conclusion for a given exercise must immediately follow the pertinent Maple work for that exercise. Label plots to show the scale of the plot. Identify answers with the appropriate units (feet, meters per second, square inches, etc.) and, of course, all of your comments should be given in full sentences.

Lab reports must be typed. Lab reports that are due at the time of the subsequent lab must be printed out before the start of that lab.

The Maple work that is in the lab report should only contain material that is directly pertinent to the exercises. False starts on problems, mistyped commands that produce extraneous output and other such errors must be deleted from the worksheet.

Grading of Lab Reports

The reports for all sections of this course will be graded by the Instructor's Associates (IA's) for the course, Sean Anderson and Roxanne Tisch. Approximately 10% of your grade will be based on Section I, Lab Summary, while the other 90% will be based on Section II, Maple printout with comments. The major portion of your grade will be determined by the correctness of your mathematical work. However, your report grade could suffer if you have misspelled words, incomplete sentences, and/or other grammatical errors. Your grade will also suffer if you do not adhere to the format for lab reports (as described above).

Labs will be graded on a 20 point basis. That is, the top grade for a lab will be a 20.

Most likely, there will be little cause to appeal a lab grade. However, if there is an appeal, it must be made to the IA who graded the lab within one week of the day the lab is available to be returned. After that week, no appeal will be accepted. Note that the appeal period starts on the day a paper is available, not on the day it is actually picked up.

Late Labs

The rule is simple and direct: No late labs will be accepted.


Sean Anderson < soa@wpi.edu>
Last modified: Thu Jan 16 12:51:51 EST 1997