Worksheet with answers and context for students - School of ...

Plagiarism and Good Academic Practice Exercise Answers
You should have discussed the reasons for your judgements as to whether each excerpt does
or does not show plagiarism. Below is some further guidance that reflects the way in which
plagiarism is judged in the School of Informatics.
Coursework excerpt 1
These are random numbers that lie within a specified range (typically 0 to 1), with any one
number in the range just as likely as any other. They are, in other words, what you probably
think ‘random numbers’ are.
It should be obvious that this coursework extract has plagiarised the original source. The
material is copied verbatim without any reference to the source material or any indication that
these are not the student's own thoughts.
Coursework excerpt 2
These are random numbers that lie within a specified range (typically 0 to 1), with any one
number in the range just as likely as any other. They are, in other words, what you probably
think ‘random numbers’ are. (Press et al, 1992).
This excerpt is a little better than excerpt 1, but is still regarded as plagiarism. While the
original source has been acknowledged as a source of ideas and information, there is no
indication that the text itself has also been copied.
Coursework excerpt 3
“Uniform deviates are just random numbers that lie within a specified range (typically 0 to 1),
with any one number in the range just as likely as any other. They are, in other words, what
you probably think ‘random numbers’ are.” (Press et al, 1992, p.275).
No this is not plagiarism, since both the source of ideas (citing Press et al) and the source of
the text used (use of quotation marks and page citation) are indicated. However, a
coursework submission that included such a citation would normally be considered weak since
all the student has done is transferred material from one source to their answer. Rarely is it
important to use the exact form of words given in source material in your own work. A
stronger answer is likely to consider the ideas implied by the source within the context of the
specific coursework task.
Coursework excerpt 4
Press et al (1992) make the distinction between uniformly distributed random numbers, which
they refer to as ‘uniform deviates’, and normally distributed random numbers with a given
mean and standard deviation. This distinction is not made so clear in the Excel help files
(Microsoft, 2002), where the RAND() function is assumed to return a random number from a
uniform distribution.
There are no problems with this extract. The source material is clearly identified. It
contributes to a strong answer as it is also evaluated and contrasted with another correctly
cited reference.
V1.0 jwo 11 th Sept 2007

Coursework excerpt 5
Uniform deviates are simply random values that exist within a particular range (usually 0 to 1)
where any number is as likely as any other. Such numbers are probably what most people
consider as ‘random numbers’ (Press et al, 1992)..
This is an important extract to consider. It would normally be regarded as an example of
plagiarism. While the original assertion made by Press et al is cited correctly, there is still a
similarity in the form of text between the extract and original source. Cosmetic changes to a
few words are not sufficient to justify the impression that this is entirely the student's own
words.
Coursework excerpt 6
Uniform deviates, which are commonly ranged between 0 and 1, consist of random numbers
such that each is as likely to be generated as any other. It is this form of randomness that is
most often thought of as ‘random’. But it is useful to distinguish this from other forms of
random distribution such as a Gaussian distribution with a given mean and standard deviation
(Press et al, 1992)..
Like excerpt 5, this again would be considered plagiarism. There is evidence that the text of
the source has been used to generate the extract, with some word substitution of small parts
of it.
Coursework excerpt 7
We can distinguish between two classes of random distributions. Uniform deviates, which are
commonly ranged between 0 and 1, consist of random numbers equally probable of selection.
In contrast, a Gaussian distribution, defined by a mean and standard deviation, will have an
unequal likelihood of any given number being selected. While there is a role for both forms of
random number generation, it is the former that is usually considered as ‘random’ (Press et al,
1992)
Here the author of the extract has made a serious attempt to produce their own account of
the subject. There are still some remnants of the original sentence structure, but they are
sufficiently remote for this to be normally regarded as appropriate citation.
References:
Press, W., Teukolsky, S, Vetterling, W. and Flannery, B. (1992) Numerical Recipes in C,
2 nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521 43108 5
Microsoft (2002) RAND worksheet function, Microsoft Excel 2002 Help File.
Willmot, C. and Harrison, T. (2003) An exercise to teach bioscience students about
plagiarism, Journal of Biological Education, 37(3) pp.139-140.
V1.0 jwo 11 th Sept 2007