Homework Rules and Tips

• General background information for all Rob's classes.
• General tips on writing.
• We will accept no hand-written submissions, in a pinch we will tolerate handwritten figure labels but not captions.
• We appreciate people who can write real sentences and prepare nice looking reports.
• Please take the time to organize the report clearly, and integrate the graphs, diagrams, and other results into the document, i.e., do not put all the figures at the end of the document!
• We expect lab reports in a style of writing just like a journal article or a thesis. This is scientific prose---concise, clear, accurate, to the point. If you are not very clear on what it means to write in scientific prose style, please consult with the instructor and make use of the writing web page on this site.
• If you are reporting results from a simulation or a laboratory experiment, always include some explanation for your results; did the results surprise you or do they fit into your understanding of the related physiology? Explain what the results tell you about the behavior of the preparation you are studying.
• Is it always safest to submit the reports in paper form. If this is no possible or easy, then I will also accept assignments via email as attachements. Acceptable formats in order to preference include:
  • PDF (Acrobat)
  • MS Word
  • RTF (Rich text format)
• My personal preference for preparing scientific reports and papers is L^ATEX, which you can find described in more details at my L^ATEX web page.
• Matlab does a pretty terrible job with its plotting defaults so be sure to increase font sizes, thicken lines, whatever it takes to make the output clear and readable. You can find some hints on how to do this at www.mathworks.com/company/digest/june00/export/ and www.mathworks.com/company/digest/december00/export.shtml.
• For more general assistance with Matlab, visit my Matlab web page