✅ Assignments

Everything is submitted on Canvas. Homework, learning-check exports, activities, Live Labs, and project deliverables all go through the course Canvas site — that is also where every deadline lives. This site tells you what the work is; Canvas is where it lands and when it is due.

Open Canvas Assignments →

Each homework lives on its own private site. The link below opens it; you'll have access once that homework is released and you've been added to the course group — until then the button is gray. If a released link asks you to sign in or says you're not authorized, that's the access check doing its job, not a broken link: tell the instructor.

Due dates for every homework are on the course calendar. Each homework below links to its own calendar row.

Every chapter's Learning Checks follow the upgraded MCQ + short-justification format: pick the multiple-choice answer, then write one sentence justifying it. Format source of truth: specs/LEARNING-CHECKS.md — machine-gradeable MCQ, data-driven correct answers wherever possible, one-sentence free-text justification per check.

Each chapter page that has Learning Checks has a 📋 Export my learning-check answers button after its last check — it builds a single Markdown blob (readable for Canvas, machine-parseable for grading) with every check, plus any chosen option and justification. Export that blob and submit it.

Activities are the short things you do in class — code-it exercises, draw-it exercises, discussions, exercises, pop quizzes, and Live Labs. Every one of them is submitted on Canvas and is worth 1 point, graded on completion: turn in a genuine attempt and you get the point. Pop quizzes are the exception — those are graded on accuracy.

Every activity has its own page on this site, with the instructions written out so you can find them again after class. Browse them all on the Activities page.

A Live Lab is one kind of activity: a ~30-minute in-class exercise run against a live streaming process — watch the data arrive, detect the shift, diagnose the cause, apply a treatment, verify the fix.

• SPC Live Lab — statistical process control on a live stream: read the X̄ and S charts, name the assignable cause, treat it, and export your worksheet.

Live Labs run on the course's own server rather than on this site, so each one opens with your Cornell login and you must be enrolled in the course to get in. There is no access code and no password to type. Follow the lab link above and sign in; if you are on the roster and it still turns you away, tell the instructor.

In-person students submit an activity during or right after the class session it belongs to; distance learners get the usual distance-learning window. Your deadline is always the one shown on the Canvas assignment.

A take-home exam covering the first half of the course. It is a Canvas quiz. The exam and the Hackathon are both required — separate assignments, not a choice.

The quiz opens on the scheduled start date and stays open seven days. Take it any time in that window. Once you begin, you have a maximum of 3 hours. Submit once: your answers are final, and there are no multiple submissions.

This is take-home. A room may be available, but the exam is not proctored. The TA and the instructor can help during Friday class and usual office hours.

Closed book. You may use only (1) a calculator and (2) a formula sheet: one 8.5×11 sheet of notes, any fonts, double-sided OK. Helper materials (stat tables plus some formulas) come with the exam.

You will sign the honor code before you start.

A practice exam is posted about a week prior — see the practice midterm on the calendar. A supplemental review session is DATE/TIME TBA.

No extensions during prelim week: the 1-week window plus 3 hours is the accommodation. If you will be absent for a religious observance, reach out by September 10 to schedule a makeup.

Work on your own — no cooperation on the exam. Questions go to the TA. You’ve got this!

See the Syllabus for its weight and the deadline policy. Your exact hand-out and due moments are on the Canvas assignment.

This year’s hackathon is October 16–17, 2026. Content is still in development. You will be asked to create some kind of working dashboard or software with vibecoding. Details forthcoming.

This is a required assignment, separate from the midterm. You do both — there is no midterm-or-hackathon choice. Where it sits in the term is on the course calendar.

You don’t have to be a veteran coder. This hackathon was made for this class.

Distance learners, and anyone who absolutely cannot attend, complete the DL Challenge: a one-week hackathon-by-homework. Same general challenge, a different question, and a different time frame.

Last year’s event is on GitHub: previous year’s Six Sigma Hackathon (v2025 branch).

Signup, the flyer, the live event site, and the debrief survey: COMING SOON!

See the Syllabus for its weight in your grade.

A short one-on-one conversation with a member of the teaching team — you'll be randomly assigned to one of us — about your project and about the course so far. It runs during week 9. There is nothing to upload: the exam happens live, and the grade is entered by hand afterwards.

What we talk about. Two things, roughly half the time each. First, your project: what process your team chose, what you are measuring, what the data has shown you so far, and what you would do differently. Second, the course: we pick a couple of ideas from the material covered up to that point — a control chart you have drawn, a distribution you have fitted, a fault tree you have solved — and ask you to explain them in your own words and say when you would reach for them.

What it is worth. 10% of your final grade on the 4-credit track, and about 14.3% on the 3-credit track. It is graded on whether you can explain your own work and reason out loud with the course's tools — not on recalling formulas.

How to prepare. Re-read your own project submissions and be ready to defend the choices in them; skim the chapters and your learning checks from the first half of the course; and practice saying the main ideas out loud to a teammate. Bring nothing — no notes are needed and none are expected. If you want a warm-up, the in-class activities are close to the kind of question we ask.

Scheduling. Sign-up slots and the exact times will be announced on Canvas. No date is set yet — watch for the Canvas announcement, and once slots open, the times and any deadline for signing up will be there too.

The semester project is submitted as a ladder of ten rungs — each rung is its own Canvas assignment, each is graded on its own, and each one feeds the next. Ten rungs instead of thirteen: three pairs that were separate submissions in 2025 are now single combined submissions. In order:

1. Team & topic — form a team of 3–5 and commit to one process you can actually observe or get data about.
2. Your dataset — the actual data, plus a codebook saying what every column means, its units, and where each number came from.
3. Project charter — one page: the problem, the scope, the metric you will move, and the target.
4. VOC tree & SIPOC diagram (combined for 2026) — turn what the customer says into a measurable requirement, and bound the process.
5. Process map & literature review (combined for 2026) — the real sequence of steps, decisions and handoffs, plus what is already known about this class of failure.
6. Research design — what you measure, how often, under what conditions, and what result would change your mind about the cause.
7. Preliminary results & financial impacts (combined for 2026) — the charts, the fitted models and the intervals, reported with what the improvement is worth in money.
8. Rough draft — the whole report assembled end to end while there is still time to fix it.
9. Final report — define, measure, analyze, improve, control, ending in a recommendation somebody could actually act on. This is the deliverable the black-belt certification is judged against.
10. Poster presentation — the report compressed to what a stranger can absorb standing up, presented live to the class.

Every rung has its own full spec — what to hand in and what it is graded on — on the Projects page, which also carries the method gallery and the project-idea network to help you choose a topic.

A short self-check you can copy into your own notes before you submit. The graded rubric for each assignment is attached to its Canvas assignment.

Learning checks: MCQ correct? (Y/N)  ·  Justification demonstrates understanding? (Y/N)
Lab: submitted on time? (Y/N)  ·  Diagnosis matches the live data? (Y/N)
Project: milestone met? (Y/N)  ·  Notes: ____________________

Run through this before you submit anything.

• I exported my learning-check answers and every chosen option matches my textarea justification.
• My lab writeup names the specific evidence (chart, statistic) that drove my diagnosis.
• I submitted to the correct Canvas assignment before the deadline for my enrollment type (in-person / distance).