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Guidelines

Each homework entails applying what you have learned in class to analyze real (or realistic) single cell data. In some cases, you will be asked to devise new approaches to analze the data, or to adapt existing ones. In all cases, you will be asked to interpret your results in the context of the literature to which you have been exposed. Each Homework will have a Deliverables section that explicitly states what you must provide to receive full credit.

Check you submissions

All submissions must include all code necessary to replicate your results. And the must adhere to the posted guidelines for code documentation, cogent written reports, and meaningful figures (see below).

Style guide checklist

Before turning in your assignments, please consult this checklist. This will make your work easier for us to understand, so that we can grade efficiently and fairly and provide more useful feedback. Check out the style guide example (below) to see what this looks like in practice.

  • Organization:
    • The code and answers are in the same order as the questions in the assignment, OR
    • There are reasonable deviations from the prescribed order, but the first chunk provides a table of contents or clear explanation.
  • Communication:
    • Statements about data/results are in Markdown chunks, not code comments.
    • Code comments usually answer "why?" not "what?"1

  1. Our comments will often violate "why not what" because we need to convey what the code does to everyone in the class, even if they are new to Python and/or genomics. By contrast, you are writing for an audience with some experience (us), so you should follow "why not what" even if you see us breaking this rule. ↩