How To Write Up Problems
  1. All work for this course, including problem solutions and lab write ups, are intended to provide opportunity to practice professional communication habits. As such they are NOT
    1. simply a copy of the writing you did to solve the problem,
    2. first drafts,
    3. "what the teacher wants"
  2. They ARE a presentation of the problem, your thinking about how to solve it, and the steps to get to the solution. They have the following properties
    1. Problem solutions are self-documenting, stand-alone documents.
    2. They include the text of the problem, a summary of principles/concepts/tools employed, and the explicit steps used to reach the solution.
    3. They include authorship information and information about other collaborators and contributors.
    4. They include citation for materials produced by others
    5. Pages are numbered
    6. Computer generated documents usually include file name, date saved, date printed, etc.
    7. Digital documents have smart file names.
  3. They are almost always "copied over" or "re-written" after you have actually solved the problem.
  4. When we write out a sequence of mathematical equations we write them out explicitly and consistently using standard notation. We "line up our equals signs."
  5. We use paper and white space liberally.