STAT 432 @ UIUC
Spring 2018 Dalpiaz
Email | STAT 432 | UIUC | Dalpiaz
Instead of email, consider Piazza! We’ll give this a shot this semester. Quick, non-private communication should take place there. Please do not overshare code.
- Course Link: STAT 432 @ Piazza
- Sign-up Link: STAT 432 Piazza Sign-Up
So you’d like to email your instructor or course staff? Take a couple minutes to consider the following:
- Is your question about course administration? If so, have you read the syllabus? If your questions is easily answered in the syllabus, we will either refer you to the syllabus, or ignore your email.
- Is your question about a homework exercise? First and foremost: You should ask it in class or office hours.
So you’re going to do it. You’re going to send an email. You must follow the following three rules. If you do not, your email will be considered less import than other emails which follow the rules and response time will be slower.
- All email must originate from an @illinois.edu email address or appear as sent on behalf or an @illinois.edu address.
- Depending on the situation, failure to follow this rule may make a response impossible.
- Your subject line must begin with exactly the following: [STAT 430]
- Failure to follow this step exactly may result in your email simply not being answered.
- After the above, put a single space, followed by a useful but short description of your message.
If your email is sent between 9:00 AM Monday and 11:59 PM Thursday, and you follow the above directions, we will try our best to respond within 24 hours. Homework questions sent the same day a homework is due will likely not receive a response before the homework is due. Plan accordingly.
Code
If your question is technical in nature, there are several steps you can take to insure a speedy response.
First and foremost, you should ask Google before you ask the course staff. Take the error message you obtained and search it with Google. The ability to solve problems this way is an extremely value skill, possibly one of the most important you should learn (but are not taught) during your academic career. Make a legitimate effort to solve the problem on your own. You won’t always be able to, and if you can’t, send an email. (Or better yet, stop by office hours.)
If you need to ask the course staff, include the following in your email:
- The offending line of code, as well as a few previous lines for context.
- The exact error message received.
- Attach the file containing the code, zipped with any external files needed to run the code. The easier you make it to recreate the error, the more likely course staff is to help, and find a solution. If we can’t recreate the error, we can’t fix it! (Only do this in emails to the instructor. Do not do this on Piazza.)