Academic Integrity & Usage Policy

The Numerical Analysis Workbench is a free, open educational resource built to help students of numerical analysis understand how root-finding algorithms like bisection and false position work — not to do their coursework for them.

Legitimate uses include:

• Checking your own hand-calculated results after you have worked through a problem yourself.
• Visualising convergence behaviour and understanding why the bracket narrows.
• Exploring how different stopping criteria (tolerance vs. iteration count) affect accuracy.
• Self-study and revision outside of assessed contexts.
• Teaching demonstrations by an instructor.

Using this tool to generate answers that you then submit as your own work — without genuine understanding or independent effort — is a form of academic dishonesty. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Copying iteration tables produced by this tool directly into assignment submissions.
• Using the auto-detected bracket or computed root during a closed-book test or exam.
• Submitting screenshots or exports from this tool as evidence of your own working.
• Sharing tool outputs with other students to help them avoid doing the work themselves.

Whether an act constitutes cheating is determined by your institution's academic integrity policy, not by this tool or its creators. When in doubt, ask your instructor.

This tool is provided "as is", free of charge, for educational purposes only. The creator(s) of this workbench accept no responsibility or liability for:

• Any academic penalty, disciplinary action, or consequence arising from a user's choice to misuse this tool in an assessed context.
• Numerical results that differ from a student's expected answer due to differences in rounding conventions, function interpretation (e.g. natural log vs. base-10 log, radians vs. degrees), or floating-point precision.
• Any loss, damage, or inconvenience caused by reliance on this tool's output without independent verification.

The responsibility for how this tool is used rests entirely with the user. If you are uncertain whether using a computational aid is permitted in your course or institution, consult your instructor or academic integrity office before proceeding.

If you are an instructor and have concerns about students misusing this tool, we recommend designing assessments that require students to demonstrate understanding of the process rather than just the final answer — for example, asking students to explain their bracket choice, interpret convergence graphs, or analyse error behaviour.

This tool intentionally shows every intermediate step so that a student who simply copies output without understanding it is likely to struggle when asked to explain or extend their work in class or in an oral assessment.