Easy tips to prevent some accidental Plagiarism?

[Fasauceome]

I wrote a matlab code to graph some data, and a friend of mine showed me code they used to help me understand the Theory part of the assignment. In my opinion, the calculations are really simple and it's to the point where if I put my code side by side with the lent code, it looks a little too similar in my opinion. I'd rather retype my whole script than be expelled for plagiarism (college is expensive) so what are some things to keep in mind to change my problem solving method to be sure I'm not just copying?

[bleedblue]

Is it really that big a deal.
Lots of my classmates in university got away with cntrl + c, cntrl + v with nothing more than a "Don't do it again".

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, bleedblue said:

Is it really that big a deal.
Lots of my classmates in university got away with cntrl + c, cntrl + v with nothing more than a "Don't do it again".

As a matter of principle I'd still rather have a clear cut case of "I didn't do anything wrong." Even though I could probably actually plagiarize and get away with it, I'd rather not.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, VegetableStu said:

//comments? maybe to explain your working

Plenty of comments describing the variables and what the loops are doing. My primary concerns are thus: I want to be accessing array indices differently, I want to be iterating my data differently, etc. (I don't want to post any syntax since I'm not just allowed to up and ask for help on assignments here.)

[Fasauceome]

Well I had a graduated friend give me a once over and he said I was clean so I'll just leave it at that.

[trag1c]

8 hours ago, bleedblue said:

Is it really that big a deal.
Lots of my classmates in university got away with cntrl + c, cntrl + v with nothing more than a "Don't do it again".

I know someone who got expelled for plagiarizing their own work. They didn't properly cite an assignment that they did previously.

[Fasauceome]

3 minutes ago, trag1c said:

I know someone who got expelled for plagiarizing their own work. They didn't properly cite an assignment that they did previously.

That is an entirely different and ludicrous issue. Also, I thought you didn't need to cite preexisting knowledge? How would it be possible to plagiarize previous work if you basically count that as personal knowledge?

[trag1c]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

That is an entirely different and ludicrous issue. Also, I thought you didn't need to cite preexisting knowledge? How would it be possible to plagiarize previous work if you basically count that as personal knowledge?

Because the university technically owns your assignments.

[reniat]

4 hours ago, fasauceome said:

That is an entirely different and ludicrous issue. Also, I thought you didn't need to cite preexisting knowledge? How would it be possible to plagiarize previous work if you basically count that as personal knowledge?

Not being able to plagiarize yourself usually is just for making sure you can't just take a previous assignment and use it to compose a significant portion of a new assignment. It's a bit less clear than "It's wrong because you are using someone else's work to get your assignment done", but it still KIND OF makes sense as "It's wrong(ish) because you are using previous work to avoid significant parts of an assignment, and getting credit while not "doing" the full assignment"

 

Not saying it isn't weird, but it still kind of makes sense inside the world of academia, as long as it's not enforced to a ludicrous degree. For example, if you have to write a 10 page paper on a topic in undergrad, and later need to write a 12 page paper on a very similar topic in grad school, you shouldn't be able to just take the exact old paper, add some fluff material, and present it as new work.

 

I've never heard of this kind of stuff mattering for code assignments though.

[WiiManic]

Quote

My primary concerns are thus: I want to be accessing array indices differently, I want to be iterating my data differently, etc. (I don't want to post any syntax since I'm not just allowed to up and ask for help on assignments here.)

Honestly, for stuff like that its just a bit pointless to change and in my opinion both worse for learning code and might make you look suspicious when you are not.

 

If the code is really that simple, then almost everyone is going to have the same code. Like sure there are lots of ways to do basic things, but arguably doing them in a different way for the sake of it is worse for people learning to code, and makes it look like you were trying to distance your code because you've copied it.

 

I've done 4 years worth of programming exercises and sure I bet some of my code looked the exact same as everyone elses, but the marker would be expecting that.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Solutions to programming assignments are usually similar anyway. The only way that makes your code "yours" at this point is your styling.

 

And if anything, copying and pasting someone else's code and turning that in only hurts them since they'll likely fail tests.

[vanished]

Particularly when the problem is simple to solve, there's really only very few ways to do it, and maybe only one, so it might be unavoidable.  If you're concerned, style it differently, change variable and function names, and add comments to show you understand what it's doing.

[tikker]

18 hours ago, fasauceome said:

That is an entirely different and ludicrous issue. Also, I thought you didn't need to cite preexisting knowledge? How would it be possible to plagiarize previous work if you basically count that as personal knowledge?

(General academic note) Personal knowledge cannot count as preexisting knowledge, naturally. You'd never have to cite anything if it did. It can be a gray area, however, what can be considered  common knowledge and what not.

 

As for coding, like people have said, depending on the difficulty of the problem, it can be pretty much unavoidable to arrive at the same solution, bar any coding style maybe.