6 Academic integrity
“I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky1
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!”
– Tom Lehrer (Lehrer 1953)2
In his song Lobachevsky, first performed in Harvard’s The Physical Revue (1951–52) and later recorded, Tom Lehrer lampoons plagiarism by taking it to absurd extremes. It is a joke about bad practice, not a model to follow!
Academic integrity is central to your development in this module. Please read the University’s Academic Integrity Declaration: https://www.dundee.ac.uk/corporate-information/academic-integrity-declaration. The Code of Practice on Academic Misconduct explains procedures and penalties: https://www.dundee.ac.uk/corporate-information/code-practice-academic-misconduct-students. If you’re unsure whether something is acceptable, ask first: cite your sources, acknowledge collaboration appropriately, and submit your own work/write-up.
6.1 Our AI policy for this module
Generative AI tools are not permitted for any assessment in this module, including formative and summative work. This includes tools that generate or transform content such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and similar services.
“Use” includes asking an AI system to plan, outline, draft, solve, code, debug, translate, paraphrase, summarise, explain steps, comment on your writing, or “improve” style. If you are unsure whether a tool counts as generative AI, ask the teaching team before using it.
Why this policy
Our aim is to help you grow core abilities that you will rely on in later study and work: framing problems, choosing methods, carrying out calculations, checking results, and communicating clearly. Outsourcing these cognitive steps to a generative system prevents you from building those skills. The policy also protects fairness for all students and reduces the risk of unreliable or untraceable outputs entering your work.
What you may use
You may use standard, non-generative tools that support authentic work without creating ideas or text for you. Examples include:
- calculators, spreadsheets, plotting libraries, LaTeX compilers
- reference managers for storing and formatting citations
- basic proofreading tools that check spelling or punctuation without suggesting new sentences
- IDEs or editors with non-AI features only
If a tool “suggests” content, sentences, code, or solution steps, treat it as generative and do not use it.
The following are good habits to form that will support your development through university and beyond.
- Use office hours and discussion with peers at a conceptual level where collaboration is allowed. Write up your own work independently.
- Cite all external sources used for ideas, data, or methods.
- Keep notes of your thinking and intermediate steps. We may ask for these or for a short viva to confirm authorship.
6.2 Declaration
By submitting work for this module you confirm that it is your own, that you have not used generative AI to produce or edit the content, and that you understand the University’s policies linked above. Suspected breaches will be handled under the Code of Practice on Academic Misconduct. If in doubt, ask first.
These song lyrics, by Tom Lehrer, are an attempt at absurdist humour. Lehrer is quoted as using the name Lobachevsky “solely for prosodic reasons.” Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was a real mathematician (for a short biography, see the MacTutor archive: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lobachevsky/); there is no evidence that Lobachevsky plagarised any of his work.↩︎
In this 1950s satire lampooning plagarism, Lehrer sings in a caricatured Russian accent, typical of Cold War-era comedy. This is a period comedy device that today can read as stereotyping. Our focus is the satire of academic dishonesty; we do not endorse the accent.↩︎