Policies

Printable syllabus

Assignment policy

I expect you to complete the assigned reading before class on the day for which it is assigned.

Homework will be due by 11:59 PM on the due date. You will turn in homework to Brightspace.

General instructions for reading assignments

• Do the assigned reading before you come to class on the date for which it is assigned. If you have questions or find the ideas presented in the readings confusing, I encourage you to ask questions in class.

• Questions in the “Reading Notes” sections of the assignments are for you to think about to make sure you understand the material, but you do not have to write up your answers or turn them in.

  You are responsible for all the assigned readings, but topics I have highlighted in the reading notes are particularly important.

• In addition to the questions I ask in the reading notes, look over the “Conclusions” section at the end of each chapter to check whether you understand the key facts and concepts from the chapter.

Honor Code:

This course, like all courses at Vanderbilt, is conducted under the Honor Code.

Studying:

As you study for this class, I encourage you to to seek help from me or from other classmates or friends.

Homework Assignments:

I encourage working together on homework assignments: you may talk with your friends and classmates about homework assignments, compare notes on how you are working a problem, and you may look at your classmates’ work on homework assignments. But you must work through the problems yourself in the work you turn in: Even if you have discussed the solution with others you must work through the steps yourself and express the answers in your own words. You may not simply copy someone else’s answer.

Team Assignment:

On some assignments, in which I explicitly direct you to work with others. These team assignments will contain instructions how the honor code applies.

Research Project:

The research project assignment will contain details about how the honor code applies to the research project.

Use of Artificial Intelligence:

We are still in the early days of understanding how new generative AI tools affect learning and research. Especially, there is disagreement about how to manage the use of AI tools for generating computer code in the context of learning and homework assignments.

In conversations with experienced researchers I respect, I see a lot of disagreement about how useful generative AI tools will be for writing code for scientific computational models. Moreover, the use of generative AI within agent-based models to drive agent behavior is a new and exciting field of research.

Three important concerns related to this course are:

1. Research suggests that using generative AI tools for writing, including writing code actively hurts learning outcomes and critical thinking. Be careful that you do not use AI tools as shortcuts that will harm your ability to learn the material and gain proficiency at computational scientific modeling.

   Many employers, especially in the tech and financial sectors, are now reporting that they are changing their hiring practices because so many prospective employees who relied on generative AI tools in their education cannot do the work, and relying too much on AI tools in your studies may harm your career prospects after you graduate.

2. Some experienced scientific model developers report that while generative AI tools are very effective for writing routine code, they are not trustworthy for scientific computing. Scientific code produced by AI tools often contains subtle errors that are difficult to identify and correct, and the effort of closely reading the code to find errors can be greater than the effort of writing the code by hand.

3. There is a growing body of research which finds that using generative AI tools in writing can subtly change a person’s thinking and political or moral values, without the writer being aware of it. Using AI tools can measurably shift a person’s political and moral thinking to bring it in line with the hidden biases of the material the AI tool was trained on.

This research is in early stages, and it’s worth taking it with a grain of salt, but it does raise important concerns to keep in mind when using AI tools.

Because of the great uncertainty and the lack of established best practices, I do not maintain a formal policy of regulating the use of AI tools in your work.

However, I do require that you disclose any use of AI tools. If you use AI tools in your homework or your class projects, you must say what tools you used and how you used them. If you also include comments about your experience (were they helpful or not? did you encounter problems usint them? etc.), that can be helpful to your reflections on your learning and my understanding of how AI tools may best be used in a course like this.

Summary

If you ever have questions about how the Honor Code applies to your work in this course, please ask me. Uncertainty about the Honor Code does not excuse a violation.

Final Note:

I have made every effort to plan a busy, exciting, and instructive semester. I may find during the term that I need to revise the syllabus to give more time to some subjects or to pass more quickly over others rather than covering them in depth. Thus, while I will attempt to follow this syllabus as closely as I can, you should realize that it is subject to change during the semester.