Algoritmika 2020/21 sügis

Homework format and grading

Report format

Each week you will have to submit a pdf or HTML report with the solved tasks. Other formats will not be accepted (e.g. doc, Matlab, excel etc.)

You can use whatever tool to generate the report (Word etc), although if you haven't already tried it, you should experiment with LaTeX which will help you to generate especially nice looking reports, also writing formulas is also very easy with it. For online editing you could use Overleaf. There are also different tools for offline writing like Texmaker. You can also solve homework on paper and make photo snapshots to include in the final PDF report.

If you like to use Python for programming, you can use Jupyter Notebook. It allows you to write your program in a very interactive way and you can include descriptions and explanations about the tasks next to where you write your code. And later you can download it all as pdf/HTML.

Report content

Your report should comprehensively answer the following questions:

1. how did you approach and solve the problem (what did you do etc)?
2. what were the results?
3. what conclusions can you draw from the results?

These questions should not be explicitly written out, but answers should come out naturally from reading your report. Try to make your report and answers to the questions as short and concise as possible while still containing the important aspects.

The explanations should be accompanied by and based on:

• graphs, plots, tables, numbers or other types of answers that were asked from you
• code has to be provided for all coding tasks unless told otherwise (we prefer if you include your code snippets in the pdf since they should not be too long for these tasks)

All plots, graphs etc should be accompanied by an explanation of what is on them. The plots don't have to look too nice so don't spend too much time on making them pretty, but others should be able to read them and understand what is on the plot. For example, don't forget to add axis descriptions etc.

Grading

Deadline for all groups is Monday midnight (midnight from Monday to Tuesday).

The main idea is that from your explanation it should be convincing enough for us to see that you did the work and that you have thought about the outcome. They should also be specific enough to help you later study for the exam or help you remind about some topic in the future. This will be also the basis of grading. Even if you didn't get the correct outcome, if we see you have tried and worked on it, you will get the points. We will deduct points if you:

• are late with the submission
• don't have both report and code
• don't follow the submission rules (names, formats of files etc)
• don't answer to all of the questions asked
• don't explain what you did
• don't explain the outcome
• drawings and graphs are not accompanied by explanations or are not possible to follow
• you haven't included the important code parts in the report

You are allowed to discuss the tasks among yourselves, but the solutions have to be made by everyone individually.

Presentation during the session

During the session, homework tasks will be presented and discussed. Each task will be presented by a student. You can volunteer to present or otherwise you can be selected by the TA. Everyone will have to present during the course multiple times. If the report had some problems, you can increase your score for the task by presenting nicely.

During the presentation you must:

• explain the task
• explain your approach (often also explain the algorithm again etc)
• show and explain your results
• answer to questions from TA and audience

You will not have to be correct or be able to answer everything. You just have to try and think along. Don't be scared to answer incorrectly or be wrong.

Your presentation will not be graded (which doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it well) but this is an ideal environment where to practice presenting (you will have to do it in the future a lot!). So use this opportunity to practice your presenting skills in front of your co-students before having to do it before other (more scary :)) people.

Some tips for presenting:

• speak loudly and calmly so everyone can hear and follow
• look at your audience, not the blackboard
• you will be presenting mostly to your co-students, not the TA, so try to "communicate" with them during the presentation

You do not have to do any extra work for this, if you know what you have done in the homework, then just explain it in a nice way and it's all good! :)

Good that you are paying attention: to get points for EX 1 in HW1, write to your report a few sentences about what you need to do (or what you shouldn't do) to be able to get full points for the exercises.

Feedback

As a rule, there will be no individual feedback sent every week to every student. There will be a general feedback post made to Piazza forum, that includes all the comments and common mistakes. So if you lost any points and you are not personally notified about the reason, the reason was either that you didn't follow the submission rules or there was a mistake that is mentioned in the feedback post. So it is in your best interest to read the weekly feedback post and think about if you made any of the mistakes pointed out. There are often also other interesting comments made in the feedback, so read it!

The second place where you will get feedback is during the session by listening to others and asking questions.

Of course, you can at any time ask for personal feedback, and we will comment some more! :)