[PW] Meta-Question: Homework Problems [was] Math question

[Nichael Cramer]

>I have a student who needs to know if 116513 is a prime number and, if
>not, what the factors are for that number.  He said the answer is in a
>book he used 45 years ago entitled, Factor table for the first ten
>millions containing the smallest factor of every number not
>divisible.... by Derrick Norman Lehmer.  I have contacted two libraries
>that own the book, but he needs an answer within 24 hours.  If any
>stumper has this book in their library, I would greatly appreciate a
>response.

Likely this has been discussed here before, but if I may butt in with a 
meta-question here:

What is the policy (or is there a policy) about answering what seem to
be (pretty clearly) homework problems?

Obviously, I don't know the details behind this gentleman's situation.
But, in general, given that "a student" needs to determine "if 116513 is a 
prime number"
"within 24 hours", this sounds very much like a homework problem.  And
if I was teaching this fellow's math class --in which we were studying 
techniques
of factorization-- I'd be pretty annoyed if he treated simply as a look-up
problem.  In fact, I'd probably consider it cheating.

(To be clear 24hrs is more than enough time to solve this problem.  If he had
a hand calculator, I'd problem award 0 pts if he couldn't solve it in well 
under an hour.)

Now, clearly there are situations in which looking up a fact is the obvious
--and appropriate-- way to determine the answer to a given question.   On 
the other
hand, there are also cases in which the "process" of arriving at the answer is
as important (or more so) than obtaining the "correct" answer.  And it would
appear that this might be such a case.

Please understand that I'm not trying to be disruptive or argumentative here.
I'm just wondering how folks handle situations like this, either individually
or in terms of a list such as this.

Thanks
Nichael

--
Nichael Cramer
Guilford VT