Collaboration and the use of "bibles"

Scientists and engineers work by collaborating with others and by taking advantage of reference materials. On the other hand, scientists are expected not to take credit for work they didn't do, and not to claim ideas that are not their own. In light of these somewhat conflicting goals, we are imposing the following guidelines for collaboration andfor the use of previous year's course material (the nefarious "bibles").

If you collaborate with someone else on a problem set or project, you must clearly disclose that collaboration. (Consider the collaboration between you, your lab partners, and your final project partners to be automatically disclosed.) Because the point of problem sets is to guide the development of your intuition, it is expected that everyone who takes part in a collaboration will, at its completion, be able to approach the problem individually. The results of such a collaboration must be transcribed individually by all collaborators (i.e., no photocopying a single copy of a problem set solution).

Some problems may be declared to be for individual work only. For these problems, collaboration is not allowed. If you have a question about such a declaration, please ask your TA or the instructor.

Good problem set questions are difficult to create. Sometimes questions are re-used from year to year, if only because a particular problem works very well at getting a particular concept across. The use of a bible to find the exact solution to such a problem defeats the purpose of the exercise and, to a smaller extent, of taking the course at all. Bibles do, however, provide some insight into how other people approach solving problems - this property is certainly valuable.

Our policy on bibles follows the collaboration policy. If you use a bible (or any other reference source, for that matter), you must disclose its use, including the author and date of the information used. You are expected to respect a "no bibles" declaration on a problem set or other question. You are also expected to use a bible only as a reference tool, and not simply as a source of answers to problems. You should be able to approach the problem without the use of a bible. Verbatim transcription of material from a bible is easy to spot, and is not acceptable.

Be forewarned that the course structure and material has changed significantly compared to past years; bibles might not have the same literal value as they had at other times.

The use of any material, published or unpublished, without credit is a failure of your obligation as a scientist, academician, MIT student, and reasonable human being. We trust that these expectations and your desire to excel as scientists, academicians, MIT students, and reasonable human beings will be enough to preclude any unseemly behavior. In the event that it is not, infractions will be dealt with harshly. Again, we use the "real world" as a guide: plagiarism is a career-damaging offense in almost all professional fields.