Griffith's Solutions Manual: To Copy or not to Copy?

Angry Citizen

If a class has a solutions manual the way yours does, then the ethical thing is to use it as well. But it's up to you to take charge of your own education in that circumstance. Don't copy the answer. Make an honest attempt at every single problem, the way your professor wants you to. Then it's ethical to check your work with the answers and the answers alone. Find out the ones you got wrong, then try to discover what went wrong. If you're just plain stumped, peek at the solutions and find out exactly what went wrong, but never just copy.

There's no logical reason for tying one hand behind your back. It hurts your efforts to get into grad school and in the job market. But like I said, you have to be responsible about it. Get the gist of what your professor wants you to get out of the experience, and you'll be in a better position than the people who are just gaming the system. Voice of experience here. Don't just copy the manual!

ParticleGrl

First- not everyone is using the solutions manual. Everyone you do homework with might be, but I can assure you that there are at least a few people who would never have thought about googling around for problem solutions. The people I did my work with in undergrad never used a solutions manual and it never even occurred to us to look for one- at the end of the day, you should be able to look at a solution and do some test cases to check if its right (this skill will help you on the GRE- you don't have to do all the problems if you can pick out which answer is correct quickly).

When I got to grad school, the fact that groups of my students were searching on google for their problems was honestly surprising. I wish I could report that other grad students never did searches for their homework problems (or in one instance get solutions from older grad students), but thats not the case. The same people google searching now will keep doing it in grad school.

I also wish I could report that the people who searched for homework solutions/behaved in ways that aren't ethical,etc didn't move forward in science, but life is neither just nor fair and sometimes the decision that works best is the least ethical. The shadiest person I went to graduate school with has probably the best shot at a tenure track position, based on his current postdoc.

However, I can say that by the end, my command of the material was better than the people who copied, and when it came time to place into competitive theory groups, I won out at least in part because of that.

RoshanBBQ

Yes, it's true not everyone does it. But after I have the manual, I often ask people I like even a little bit whether they want it. The answer is always "Yes" or "I already have it." I have to point out also I have told most professors I have that I have the solution's manual. For one teacher, whose book for the class was his, I even reported errors in the solution's manual. They don't care, because I make rock-solid 100s on tests, projects, and problems not from the book. They also don't care, because it is a solution's manual to perhaps 10% of your grade - and it even has errors in it.

It's pretty simple: If you don't learn the material excellently, you will normally fail or get a D, C, or B-. If you simply copy, you will get these grades, and they're not stellar grades. Solution manuals help gain the A level of proficiency if used properly (i.e. with common sense). Like I said, they help greatly with doing additional problems and also with comfortably doing your homework.

Personally, I think it is the teacher's responsibility to quash these tides of unfairness by revealing all the information to everyone in an open, accepting fashion (or by undoing the problem outright). Let's take two examples:

old tests:
have an archive online of all old tests. Then, people with old tests have no advantages. Many teachers do this. You can also have them hand tests back in, taking out the problem outright.

Homework soln:
Hand out the homework solutions or make custom problems with no solutions

jtbell

Posts veering off into the general subject of "distributed blame" have been moved to General Discussion:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=610082

intwo

If using a solution manual helps you learn the material, then I don't see any problem with it. Your test or quiz scores should reflect your effort. Lots of students do this at my university and it doesn't bother me - what bothers me is when they print out and bring the entire solutions manual to an open note test. Actually, open note tests bother me, too.

moouers

The open notes tests that I've had (I haven't had many!) have usually been set up in such a way that if you must use your notes because you haven't learned the material well enough yet, there won't be enough time to finish the test. I'm sure many students have varying experiences with this sort of test.

About solutions manuals, when my professor assigns problems for grading (a rarity), she assigns even numbered problems, which are not in the student solutions manual. I usually do as many odd numbered problems as I can, then go back and check my work. If I get something wrong, I try it again. If I'm stuck, I'll either look at the solution or visit my professor in her office hours - I do this only after having spent much time on any particular problem. By the time I have done all of this, the assigned even numbered problems are easy because I've learned the material. I can't imagine just copying down the solutions -- what's the point? Why even bother going to school if you're not going to try to learn how to problem-solve?

The student solutions manual (I hope we're not talking about the teacher edition!) can be a fantastic resource if used appropriately. Unfortunately, it's also very easy to abuse if the student is more interested in getting an assignment done quickly rather than actually learning the material.

intwo

These tests were open book too, so students looked for similar problems in the textbook. They copied down the answer from the solutions manual, changing some parameters, redoing an integral, etc.