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Policy on Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a kind of fraud: passing off someone else's work or ideas as your own in order to get a higher mark. Plagiarism is treated very seriously. The assignments you hand in must be your own and must not contain anyone else's ideas. Refer to the University of Ottawa's Policy on Academic Fraud for a more detailed description of plagiarism and sanctions.

Guidelines you must follow to avoid plagiarism

You may discuss assignments with friends and classmates, but only up to a point: you may discuss and compare general approaches and also how to get around particular difficulties, but you should not leave such a discussion with any written material. You should not look at another student's solution to an assignment on paper or on the computer screen, even in draft form. The actual coding of your programs, analysis of results, writing of reports and answering assignment questions must be done individually.

If you do talk with anyone about an assignment, please state this in your assignment and state the extent of your discussion. If you use another resource (such as textbooks, internet resources, etc) when solving your assignment, include the proper reference.

Note that it is also a serious offense to help someone commit plagiarism. Do not lend your assignment answers, printouts, reports or diskettes, and do not let others copy or read them. To protect yourself against people copying your work without your knowledge, retain all of your old printouts and draft notes until the assignments have been graded and returned to you. If you suspect that someone has stolen a printout or diskette, contact your instructor immediately.

Helping each other

Although you must not solve your assignments with the help of others, there are still many ways in which students can help each other. For instance, you can go over difficult lecture or tutorial material, work through exercises, or help each other understand an assignment handout. This sort of course collaboration can be done in study groups or through the discussion group.

Measures taken by us to detect plagiarism

Teaching assistants have been instructed to report any suspicious of plagiarism they find, when they mark assignments, to the professor.
Programming assignments will be screaned for similarities by a sophyticated program specially designed for this purpose. I assure you that this program is very effective!
The professor will take appropriate measures, once plagiarism is detected on part or on the whole of an assignment. Note that copying or lending are considered to be equally serious ofenses.

Your signed statement of understanding this policy

You must read carefully this web page and the links it refers to.
Then after you are done, print the contents of this web page, complete the information below and hand in to the TA at your lab, during lab time before the first assignment due date. (You may print the contents using your web browser, by saving its contents as a text file or postscript file and then printing out accordingly.)
Copy below the following statement: "I have read and understood the policy on plagiarism described in the course web page."

Name:
Student Number:
Circle your section: [Section A| Section B]
Your Statement:


Your signature: