Assignments and grading

In 2026/27, the course is assessed through homework, a project, and an exam. There is no separate essay assignment. Reading, writing, and presentation skills are assessed through homework reports, project documentation, project presentation, and exam explanations.

Assessment components

Component	Course points	Main evidence
Homework	50 or more	Weekly tasks, code, tests, concise reports, explanations
Project	20	Team project, artifact, report/poster, presentation
Exam	30	Individual exam tasks and explanations
Total	100	total may exceed 100

Homework

Homework is the main learning activity in the course. The course has 12 regular homework sets, each with up to 5 base task points. This gives 60 base homework task points, plus possible bonus points. The expected workload is approximately 5–7 hours per set for a prepared student, including implementation, analysis, and concise reporting. Individual tasks may vary in length.

The target homework component is at 50 course points. This means that there are more task points available than are needed for the full homework score. You may miss some individual tasks, or even have one difficult week because of illness or conflicting duties, and still recover enough points for an excellent homework score. By more tasks and bonuses you can ensure better grade provided the minimum threshold requirements. Also, you will learn more.

Homework starts from 0 points. Each accepted homework task point adds 1 raw point. The homework course score is:

homework_course_points = accepted_homework_task_points + accepted_bonus_points

A homework submission normally contains:

• a concise PDF or HTML report;
• code or other source files where relevant;
• tests, outputs, plots, tables, or reasoning that support your answer;
• citations for substantial help from AI tools, online sources, books, or other people.

A notebook or Google Colab link alone is not a report. The report should explain the problem, method, result, and conclusion.

Project

The project is worth 20 course points. Projects are usually done in groups of up to three students. The project should demonstrate deeper engagement with an algorithmic topic: implementation, experiment, comparison, visualisation, or another clearly algorithmic investigation.

Project assessment may include proposal, progress checkpoint, final artifact, concise report or poster, presentation, and questions from the course staff.

Exam

The exam is worth 30 course points. It is individual work. The exam checks whether you can reason about the central course topics, explain algorithms and data structures, analyse complexity, and solve tasks without relying on group work.

The exact exam format and dates will be announced later.

Passing requirements

To pass the course, you must pass the main components and receive at least 51 points in total:

• at least 30 / 50 from homework;
• at least 10 / 20 from the project;
• at least 15 / 30 from the exam;
• at least 51 / 100 total.

Final grade

Grade	Points
A	91 or more
B	81-90
C	71-80
D	61-70
E	51-60
F	0-50