We will encourage more student participation on Piazza rather than answering right away, that is, we will wait until other students step up and answer questions.
Of course, we will still provide clarifications on logistics, typos, subtle points, etc.
We want to make sure that you are helping each other out, and having instructors give away the answers isn’t the most beneficial for your education either.
We’ve created individual posts for each problem from homework. Please ask questions, discuss problems, or help out in those posts only. Before asking a question, read through (or search) the whole post to see if your question has been answered.
Please don’t give away the answer on Piazza. You can explain things in a way that still lets other students figure out the essence of the problem on their own, but don’t spoil the problem. For example, don’t point to a useful YouTube link that works out essentially what the problem is asking about.
While not violating Rule 2, try to make your questions public, because others might have the same question and we don’t need to answer them multiple times.
If you think your questions may take more than 5 minutes to answer, please come to office hours or homework parties instead.
Please do not post questions of the form:
Please do not use Piazza as a medium to ask instructors to check your homework in advance. We simply cannot check every student’s homework through Piazza.
Feel free to ask questions of clarification, or ask questions about the course content to achieve a deeper understanding, but at a certain point, you must apply your knowledge, give it your best shot, and submit your answers with confidence.
Your question should be self-contained. The TAs (and other responders) should not have to scan through PDFs to even figure out what the question is. Ask yourself: am I referring to some lecture slide/lecture note/HW solution/discussion solution/past exam?
If the answer is yes, post a screenshot of the relevant part.
**Please email these concerns to sp22@eecs70.org. Piazza is reserved for content questions and clarifications. **
Don’t post one line saying:
At step n, I get XYZ, and I’m now confused.
This forces the TAs to guess:
What happened in steps 1, 2, …, n - 1?
Most likely, the TAs will guess wrong, and we run into a mess of followup questions trying to figure out what steps 1, 2, …, n - 1 were.
Instead, post:
Starting out, we have: …. Then, I do …, and I get … Next, I do …, and I get … Next, I do …, and I get … Now, I get $&%&#(, and this makes no sense.
Then, the TA can respond:
The mistake is at step 3, you’re not allowed to apply ABC to XYZ because …