Some notes on the course grades

The course grades are now in — you may check them on T-Square.

In general, the projects and final were graded on a straight scale, and the midterm was curved down 5 points. This resulted in a fairly high distribution: 23 A’s, 17 B’s, 8 C’s, 6 D’s, and 2 F’s (the class averages in T-Square will seem much lower because they include students who dropped the course).

I’m pretty happy with the results, and since the distribution is high and there were ample opportunities for extra credit, I will probably not reconsider close calls except in extreme cases.

All the best to each of you, and I hope that you will take away at least a few useful ideas and techniques that you will use in your future work.

Some additional notes on the exam

Now that a draft of the exam has been completed, I can say a bit more about the format:

• The exam will have proportionally more medium-length answers than the midterm. The current draft has 10 multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions (30% of points) and 14 short-to-medium length questions (70% of points).
• Some of these short-to-medium length questions involve some calculation, but many others involve more general descriptions of the algorithms we’ve been studying.
• There will be bonus questions.
•  There will be a small number of questions covering topics from the first part of the term.

Good luck on your study sessions!

Revised study sheet for exam

I’ve posted a revised study sheet, which now includes chapters 16 and 20, as well as some revisions for chapter 15.

Notes on the Final Exam

Here are a few notes on the final exam. We’ll also discuss these in class today.

• The exam will mostly cover the second half of the term (statistical AI). There will be a few questions from the first half of the term as well (about 1/6 to 1/5 of the exam).
• The exam will be about 1.2 -1.5 times the size of the midterm, but you’ll have two hours to complete it.
• Because we won’t need the full time period from 2:50 to 5:40, I’m going to shift the start time to 3 pm. The exam will be 3-5 pm in our regular classroom.
• As before, you can bring one sheet (2 sides) of notes.
• Please bring a pen.

Review session on Friday!

There will be a review session for the exam on Friday. We’ll do the first hour, take a break, and then let anyone who wants to stick around. We’ll go for up to 2 hours.

I’ve gotten a few questions about Projects 7 & 8 as well, and so I’ll probably say a bit about them too.

Extra credit assignment

There is one more extra-credit assignment, given here. Note that you cannot get credit for this assignment if you’ve done the other extra-credit assignment.

Study sheets and lectures

To help you prepare for the final, I’ve uploaded the first of two study sheets for the exam. It covers everything except for chapters 16 & 20 (and I’ll probably add a little to chapter 15 outline).

I’ve also added my most recent lecture notes (handwritten, and of course very rough).