Announcements Page

Catch back up on quizzes over reading week!

Hi all,

As we head into reading week, about half of you have been diligently doing the quizzes once a week as you’re supposed to, and the other half… haven’t been. 😅 Now would be an excellent time to catch up. If you leave them all until week 12, i.e. at around the same time as the SEP deadline, you’re going to have a bad time - not just a few rough days finishing the quizzes, but also in trying to properly understand the unit in time for the exam. Some of you now have 3-5 reminder emails sitting in your inboxes, one per missing quiz - imagine if there were ten of them, and they all had to be done urgently. Remember, this is 10% of your unit mark that you can either have in the bag before the exam even starts or just throw away!

Part of the reason I’m writing this announcement is that completion rates are much lower than right now than last year at the same point in term - I don’t want to fail a bunch of people, but I’m also not going to make the exam easier than last year based on fewer people having done the quizzes. I’m writing the exam now, so consider my steering wheel thrown out of the window in this multi-party game of chicken…

Best wishes,

John

Drop-in rooms and times confirmed

Hi all,

We now have rooms, times and TAs for all the drop-in sessions, so these are now running! The times and locations should show up in your timetables - they are:

Monday 5pm-6pm in MVB 4.01
Tuesday 1pm-2pm in Queens 1.59
Thursday noon-1pm in Queens F.05
Friday 4pm-5pm Queens F.05

These are completely optional sessions where you can ask a TA for one-on-one help with the unit. The unit team is also now open for business, so please do ask questions there.

Best wishes,

John

Welcome!

Hi all,

Welcome to the algorithms half of Algorithms and Data! Our main unit page is hosted on GitHub Pages here. The first video gives a much more detailed introduction, but in short, this unit will cover material on a rolling basis. For example, for Week 13, I’ve just released video lectures today (Friday evening), we’ll have there’s a Blackboard quiz on the material you should get done by the following Friday, then we’ll have a 90-minute in-person problem class on it the same day. These problem classes are half-lecture half-lab, and will be focusing on explaining how to apply the material in the video lectures to solve unfamiliar problems - you should definitely come, and you should come having already studied the video lectures. Afterwards we’ll release problem sheet solutions and the following week’s material, then on the following Monday (January 26th) we’ll have a wrap-up Q&A on week 1.

The weekly quizzes do count towards your unit mark, and are essentially free marks - don’t let them slip by! Again, you should get the first quiz done by the problem class on Friday January 23rd.

I hope you all enjoy the unit, and see you on Friday for the first problem class!

Best wishes,

John