FAQ
We get a lot of high level questions about the course. Here are our answers to the most common ones. (We'll undoubtedly add to them as the course progresses.)
About the lectures
- Will the lectures be live-streamed?
No. There may, of course, be circumstances where the lecture will to be live-streamed but, in general, assume that the lecture will happen in the lecture hall.
- Will the lectures be recorded and made available on-line?
No. I will not record the lectures I give in the lecture halls. But the slides (which are quite explicit) will be made available online and I will also link to the lectures recorded from the 2021 course. For some lectures these will be quite similar to the lectures I deliver in-person.
About the help sessions
- Is attendance at the project help sessions mandatory?
No. You are free to book a 15 minute time slot with a TA to get advice and help about the group project and/or the homework assignments. But you are also free to not take part in these sessions. Note you must book a slot by 5pm on the Thursday before the Friday help session.
About the assignments
- Do I complete the homework/programming assignments in groups or individually?
Individually. I have no problem with you discussing the assignments with other students on the course. But each person has to write their own code and report and upload their own work to Canvas.
- Can I upload my python colab or Jupyter notebook etc as my report?
No. These submissions are usually very bloated and require me and the TAs to look through many pages to find the relevant information and graphs. You will be asked to re-submit if make such a submission. It is part of the assignment to succinctly write up (with graphs and text) the results of your work. - Are the deadlines hard for the assignment submission?
No. The deadlines are softish. If you submit by the deadline then your assignment will be approved/corrected in a timely fashion. If you submit after the deadline then we can make no such guarantees, your assignment will be corrected but when is another issue........ Also this year to take part in the Virtual Poster Session for the group project assignment every member in the group must have passed at least 3 of the 4 assignments by May 24. If your group misses this deadline then there is a chance to attend a re-exam Virtual Poster Session after the summer. - What about the bonus point submissions?
There will be a final hard deadline for the last possible submission of bonus point assignments. This will be at the end of May. Thus you can submit bonus point assignments after the "soft" deadline, however, you cannot submit them after the hard deadline in May.
About the project
- Can PhD and non-PhD students be in the same project group?
No. It will be too difficult for us to grade the project if there are PhD and non-PhD students in the same project group. - What about the bonus point submissions?
There will be a final hard deadline for the last possible submission of bonus point assignments. This will be at the end of May. Thus you can submit bonus point assignments after the "soft" deadline, however, you cannot submit them after the hard deadline in May. - Can I have more than 3 people in my group?
Yes but we prefer groups of 3. You can be four members but then of course we expect that you produce more in the project.
- Can I have fewer than 3 people in my group?
You can have groups of 2 but we would prefer it if you had groups of 3. I know many students prefer to work individually. But think of this project as an opportunity to improve working as part of a team and to also potentially learn some new skills from other students. If for some very good reason, beyond "I work better alone", then please contact me explaining why you need an exemption.
- Can I use ChatGpt/gpt-4 etc to help my group write its project report?
Yes this is fine, but there are a few ground rules. Please remember gpt-4 is just a tool. You are responsible for the veracity and accuracy of the content of your report. Thus you will need to double check carefully that whatever gpt-4 writes is accurate. Next you should acknowledge in your report that gpt-4/ChatGPT was used. Advice: ChatGPT is great at summarizing text and also "cleaning it up" so we would think this is probably the most efficient way to use it. - Can I use GPT / co-pilot to help write the code for the project?
We do not want you use GPT/co-pilot to generate code for your project. Writing the code for the project is a big part of the learning experience and using automatic code generation hinders this learning experience.
PhD version of the course
- I'm a PhD student, is there a PhD version of the course?
Yes. The course code for the PhD version of the course is FDD3424. The differences between the PhD and the non-PhD course are- The PhD course is graded only as Pass/Fail.
- There is a higher criterion for passing the project group than the non-PhD students.