Writeup Guidelines#

This document contains general guidelines for all writeups submitted to fulfill homework and project assignments.

We hope they provide more clarity regarding our expectations.

In addition to the guidelines below, we have provided an example of what we consider a well-formatted submission http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ese5320/fall2018/handouts/writeup_example.pdf.

  • Handwritten documents and figures are not accepted. This includes electronic representations (e.g., scan, photograph) of handwritten documents and figures.

  • Keep answers concise. We specify a maximum number of lines for many of the questions for this purpose.

  • Use the same numbering of your answers as the numbering used in the assignment.

  • We do not expect you to repeat each question before answering it. If it helps you, feel free to do it, but be aware that we do not care.

  • Write your name, and the names of your partners, if applicable, at the top of your document.

  • Make sure that your final answer can easily be identified. Consider putting results in tables if that improves clarity.

  • Provide only the significant part of numeric results. If we ask the latency in cycles, for example, we generally do not want an answer like \(5294939\) cycles because it is hard to read and you typically do not have that level of precision in your measurement. Instead write something like \(5.3\) Mcycles.

  • Sufficient explanation must be provided for code, figures, and tables such that instructors do not have to guess what their purpose or meaning is. Consider adding references to figures in your text, naming axes of figures, and adding captions to tables, for example.

  • Screenshots of code are not accepted.

  • Code must be formatted properly. You can use Google C++ Style Guide. In Vitis, you can format a file easily by pressing \(CTRL+SHIFT+F\) in an open file.

  • Remove irrelevant comment (e.g. commented out code), and replace irrelevant code with an ellipsis.

  • Information that was not strictly asked in the assignment and long stretches of code and results (more than 1 page) must be put in an appendix.

  • Information from other sources must be identified clearly. Avoid plagiarism and credit the source properly. Provide enough information that we can look up the source. Links are also appreciated, but not required.

  • Only code and results based on code that has been tested properly will be accepted. Code that has obviously never been executed is clearly not acceptable and can be considered a violation of academic integrity. To avoid this, test your code enough that you can be confident that any remaining bugs will not affect your results and conclusions significantly.

  • Feel free to add any complaints and suggestions about assignments, partners, etc. to your submission. If complaints are time-sensitive, we suggest contacting an instructor directly. Please understand that we try to be fair to all students, so we often cannot accommodate complaints shortly before a deadline when other students may have submitted their document already. Nevertheless, all feedback is more than welcome and will be handled discretely.

  • Please run a spelling checker before submission. Microsoft Word comes with a spelling checker. In Linux, you can use ispell (or aspell).

  • Please include a statement on your final submission:

    I, *your-name-here*,  certify that I have complied with the
University of Pennsylvania's Code of Academic Integrity in
completing this final exercise.

You can review the Code of Academic Integrity here.