General intruction on homework (report) problems

Individual students will have different needs / motivations for this course. Homework problems are prepared so everyone can find problems appropriate for his/her own needs. You are NOT expected to work on all the problems.

It is not necessary to solve a given problem completely. Partial achievements have non-zero value.

It is not a bad idea to discuss the homework problems with your colleague, or with your instructor, before or after submitting the solutions as a report. You do not have to work on problems in your career in isolation from others, and in fact, you are usually not supposed to.

Your instructor is happy to provide more hints on how to solve the problems, if you need one. The whole point of the homework problems is not to have you struggle or evaluate your capability, but to guide you through the materials that are worth understood or experienced.

Reports are not returned. Keep a copy for yourself, if necessary.

Reports do not have to be typeset, or written neatly. Just a photo-copy of scribles is also fine. Do not waste your precious time !

Grading Scheme: Letter grading [ excellent, good, OK or fail ] based on reports.

Each homework problem is in either one of categories A, B, C, D and E, and you will pass (excellent, good or OK) if

1 x #[A] + 1.5 x #[B] + 2 x #[C] + 4 x #[D] + 9 x #[E] is 9 or larger.

[A]: just to help you barely keep up with the course
[B]: for better digestion of the materials in the course
[C]: for richer understanding of QFT
[D]: for students seeking for challenging problems
[E]: mostly reading materials for students with unlimited capacity and curiosity. Materials provided in the course web page are only meant to be samples. If you find a material on your own, that can be recognized as a substitute.

None of the homework problems posted on the course web page are in category A. Any follow-up efforts for a given lecture is regarded as solving a problem in the category A. That includes writing a brief summary of a given lecture, or compiling a list of things you did not understand clearly (in full sentences, not just a collection key words), filling gaps in derivations or solving open problems left in a lecture note.