Don't Cheat

Some years ago, a teaching assistant brought to my attention that a problem set handed in by a student was almost an exact copy of the answer key I had handed out for that problem set in a previous year.

I asked the teaching assistant and the student to join me in front of a computer running the program on which the problem set was based.

I asked the student to show me how he would get certain parameters from the simulation.

Each of the questions I asked him were similar to those on the original problem set, and could readily be answered by someone who had actually done the problem set.

The student had no clue what to do.

I pointed out to him that the consequences of cheating were very serious.

I knew the material; the teaching assistant knew the material; but by taking a short cut, he had managed to cheat himself out of the chance to learn the material.

He became very upset at himself, and worked very hard for the rest of the semester.

You are the one who ultimately needs to be able to demonstrate that you understand the material in this course.

If you take short cuts like having someone else work on your benchmark problems, copying someone else's answers or code, copying text that someone else wrote, or having someone else write text for you on the course wiki, you are cheating yourself of the opportunity to really learn the material.

Because we will talk to you in each class as we check you off on the benchmark problems, we will have a good idea of whether you really understand the material or not, and your final grade will reflect this.

We have unfortunately repeatedly caught students who ignore these warnings.

Because all infractions must be reported, they now have permanent records of having cheated, which damages their long term prospects for getting into good medical or graduate schools, or staying in a medical school or graduate school program.

Summary:

Don't cheat; if you do, you will be cheating yourself, and we will almost certainly catch you.