Course Grading and Exams

Course grading will follow preferentially a modality comprising in-itinere assignments and a final oral exam. In-itinere assignments waive the final project.

In-itinere assigments

There are two types of short assigments

• Laboratory assignment - These are short programming exercises to be solved in-classroom during the laboratory lectures. They will typically have to do with the application of a methodology/model discussed during lectures and lab tutorials, on a benchmark dataset provided by the instructors. We foresee a total of 4 laboratory assignments: each will be scored with a maximum of 3 points.
• Methodology quiz - These are short quiz concerning the contect of the methodological lectures (e.g. multiple choice questions; simple calculations based on an algorithm). They will be solve in-classroom during the methodology lecture. These a closed-book examinations, lasting about 10 minutes and performed “on paper” (electronic devices not allowed). They will be presented in randomly selected lectures and come unannounced so in-person participation to lectures will be paramount. We foresee a total of 4 methodology quizzes: each will be scored with a maximum of 1 point (fraction of the point are possibile).

Both laboratory assignments and methodology quizzes will roughly be scheduled every 3/4 weeks.

Oral exam

The oral examination will test knowledge of the course contents: models, algorithms and their implementation.  Lectures whose content is not relevant for the final exam will be clearly marked as such

Exam grading (preferential way)

The final exam grade is given by the formula below, which combines the total score on lab assigments \( 𝐺_{𝑙𝑎𝑏} \in [0,12] \), the total score on methodology quizzes \( 𝐺_{quiz} \in [0,4] \) and the score achieved during the oral exam \( 𝐺_{oral} \in [0,18] \)

\( Final grade = min (𝐺_{𝑙𝑎𝑏}+ 𝐺_{𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑧}+ 𝐺_{oral}, 30 cum laude) \)

Note that students are admitted to the oral exam only if \( 𝐺_{𝑙𝑎𝑏}+ 𝐺_{𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑧} > 8 \)

Alternative Exam Modality (No in-itinere/ Non attending students)

Part-time students, those not attending lectures, those who have failed in-itinere assignments or simply do not wish to do them, can complete the course by delivering a final project and an oral exam.  Final project topics will be released in the final weeks of the course.

The final project concerns a coding project on a topic of interest for the course. It entails preparing and submitting: 

• the code to solve the project
• a 10 pages report describing the project methodology and its validation
• a 10/15 slides presentation. 

The content of the final project will be discussed in front of the instructors and anybody interested during the oral examination. Students are expected to prepare slides for a 15 minutes presentation which should summarize the problem, solution and results in the report. 

Grade for this exam modality is determined as

 \( G = 0.5 \cdot (G_P + G_O) \)

where \( G_P \in [1,30] \) is the project grade and \( G_O \in [1,32] \) is the oral grade