Reading Assignments

These instructions are a little long, but please read them carefully. It is your responsibility to know what’s written here to ensure that you receive credit!

Reading Assignments (RAs) are labeled by a week number and a day. For example, the first one is labeled “w1wed,” which is short for “Week 1 Wednesday.” The RA label appears after a “/” in the schedule and links to a section of the course content page. Each RA is due by 6:00am PT of the day indicated on its label, which is early enough in the morning that you’ll most likely want to complete it the day before! In order to complete your RA, you need to do two things:

  1. Attempt to internalize the “Core Ideas” in the linked sections.

    • In other words, read through the suggested “Possible reading” (focusing on the list of “Core Ideas”) and then attempt some of the indicated “Exercises.”

    • We’ll discuss this content in class after the RA deadline. Until then, you’re encouraged to chat with your classmates and to supplement with any other resources. (Doing that is part of the point!)

  2. Post a “Reading Question” (RQ) to our class Zulip stream.

    • The “topic” of a message that’s intended to be an RQ must contain a label matching the regex \[w(\d+)(mon|wed|fri)\], followed by something indicating what your RQ is about. For example:

      • If your RQ for Week 1 Wednesday is about exercise 3 in section 1, you might make the topic [w1wed] exercise 1.3.
      • If your RQ for Week 1 Wednesday is about quotient rings, you might make the topic [w1wed] quotient rings.

      If you’re starting a new topic for your RQ, make sure to follow these rules!

      If your RQ is a response in an existing topic that already contains a valid label, no further action is required on your part: your response will automatically count under the same label also.

      If you notice that a topic is mislabeled, you can rename the topic to correct it.

    • A very strict bot will tabulate credit for RQs. For example:

      • If you don’t follow the topic labeling instructions above precisely, the bot might not recognize your post as an RQ and you won’t get credit for it.

      • If you post even one second after the deadline, the bot will mark it late and you won’t get credit for it.

      Instructions for checking your RQ score with the bot will be made available on our Zulip stream.

    • Your RQ message should show sincere engagement with the relevant list of core ideas. Here is a non-exhaustive list of examples of such things:

      • Asking a question about something relevant that you found confusing or intriguing.
      • Asking a question about, or sharing a possible solution to, one of the relevant exercises.
      • Asking a question about, or sharing something about, how to use software to do relevant computations.
      • Responding to a relevant question that someone else posted.
      • Sharing something relevant that you found confusing at first, but then managed to figure out.

      Note that you can typeset math, upload images, and share code in Zulip messages.

      If your RQ is a question, formulate as precise a question as you can. For example, if you’re asking about an exercise, say more than just “I don’t know how to do this exercise.” Instead, share something specific about what you tried and possibly also what went wrong.

      Questions that are not about the ideas in the relevant section (eg, about class logistics) are very welcome on Zulip, but they shouldn’t carry the square-bracket RQ labels. If I react to your proposed RQ with an octopus emoji, it means your proposed RQ doesn’t demonstrate sincere engagement and won’t count for credit as an RQ.