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MPALG 1213-1 Algorithms, TIN092|DIT600

Opening question

1. Which university do you belong to?

43 svarande

University of Gothenburg»		4		9%
Chalmers University of Technology»		39		90%

Genomsnitt: 1.9

Your own effort

2. How many hours per week did you spend on this course?

45 svarande

At most 15 hours/week»		13		28%
Around 20 hours/week»		17		37%
Around 25 hours/week»		2		4%
Around 30 hours/week»		8		17%
At least 35 hours/week»		5		11%

Genomsnitt: 2.44

- I should have spent a lot more time. It is one of the most interesting courses I"ve taken, and well executed by the course staff. But I made som bad prioritizing. » (At most 15 hours/week)
- As I didn"t have time for the homeassignments my time was mostly spent the weeks before the exam.» (Around 20 hours/week)
- Most time was spent on weekly exercises and exam study.» (Around 30 hours/week)
- This was the only course I studied this period and it was fun» (At least 35 hours/week)

3. How large part of the teaching offered did you attend?

45 svarande

0%»		5		11%
25%»		6		13%
50%»		9		20%
75%»		7		15%
100%»		18		40%

Genomsnitt: 3.6

- I have attended the course previously.» (0%)
- Less than 25%, primarily because the lectures were at 8am and I"m not normally awake at that time. A pity because the few lectures I went to were good. I was confused by some exercise sessions though, I was expecting clear answers to assignments but many times didn"t find that, and some of the time teachers were spending a lot of time on data structures and other things that we should already know, which seems like bad use of teaching time. » (25%)
- Excellent lectures delivered by Devdatt!» (75%)
- Good lectures, when doing the home assignments reading the lectures wasn"t to much help for me though.» (100%)
- I just missed one class» (100%)

Goals and goal fulfilment

4. How understandable are the course goals?

The goals are difficult to understand»		4		9%
The goals give some guidance, but could be clearer»		12		27%
The goals clearly describe what I am supposed to learn»		28		63%

Genomsnitt: 2.54

- never read it» (?)
- More exercices to practice could be useful. » (The goals give some guidance, but could be clearer)
- better description than most other courses» (The goals give some guidance, but could be clearer)
- More example exams and solutions, the problems on the exam was of a different kind in my perspective than the previous.» (The goals give some guidance, but could be clearer)

5. Are the goals reasonable considering your background and the number of credits?

44 svarande

No, the goals are set too low»		0		0%
Yes, the goals seem reasonable»		40		90%
No, the goals are set too high»		4		9%

Genomsnitt: 2.09

- Was not covered at all: You will also know something about * Approximation algorithms: how to solve problems with exponential complexity.» (Yes, the goals seem reasonable)

6. Did the examination assess whether you have reached the goals?

No, not at all»		3		6%
To some extent»		18		40%
Yes, definitely»		22		50%
I don"t know/have not been examined yet»		1		2%

Genomsnitt: 2.47

- examination have to be clearer in the question instead of asking subjective question e.g. "Where is the best place to build resturants"» (To some extent)
- It was a very hard exam with an extremely difficult problem as first question and a very hard question about NP.» (To some extent)
- The assignments and exam were unnecessarily hard by restricting the space where we could write.» (To some extent)
- This is one of the courses where a written exam really fits. I learnt alot from studying for it.» (Yes, definitely)
- Exam was broad and tested many subjects. Hard to master them all, as it should be. No easy skipping through or quick fixes. » (Yes, definitely)
- The exam was probably one of the hardest exams I had. A lot of the exchange students told me the same, actually they didn"t choose Advanced algorithms because they thought it would be to hard/time consuming.» (Yes, definitely)

Teaching and course administration

7. To what extent have the lectures been of help for your learning?

Small extent»		7		15%
Some extent»		19		43%
Large extent»		14		31%
Great extent»		3		6%
I did not attend the lectures»		1		2%

Genomsnitt: 2.36

- The lectures follow the book very tightly, and they seem mutually replaceable. If I could have traded the lectures for two extra exercise sessions, I would have done so.» (Small extent)
- Small because I didn"t attend. The ones I saw were good. » (Small extent)
- They where good, but the slides somehow didn"t help me during studying to the exam. » (Some extent)
- The lecture notes were great.» (Large extent)

8. What was the level of difficulty of the lectures?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		4		9%
Adequate»		17		38%
High»		20		45%
Too high»		1		2%
I did not attend the lectures»		2		4%

Genomsnitt: 3.54

- To slow» (Adequate)
- Even though I studied some of the algorithms in my university in France, it is always hard to find which algorithm apply to which problem.» (High)
- I realized that studying the material before-hand made the lectures much easier to understand.» (High)
- The lecture notes were good though.» (I did not attend the lectures)

9. Further comments about the lectures?

- Everyone did a nice job. I would like more usable content in the lectures.»
- They went forwad way too slowly. There is only so much u can speak about a line.»
- more hands-on»
- Devdatt is a great teacher.»
- more theoretical»
- Too much greek and variables, too few coloured illustrations of what"s going on. Instead of describing a matrix with N rows, M columns and MN cells, draw it!»
- We was NEVER teached how to solve the problems in a step by step fashion so when I encountered a problem all I had was a dopey explanation how to sort of solve the problem.»
- I have attended some lectures in this course previous years (also LP1 - same teacher) and I thought that they were either uninspiring or lazily presented (sorry if it sounds harsh). However this years teaching was huuuge improvement - pace fit my taste, teacher took his time to explain problems and paused to allow questions from the students. VERY GOOD!»
- Too related to the book in my opinion.»
- Would be great with recoding lectures so that they can be seen at another time if needed. Both if you miss a lecture, and if you want something repeated.»

10. To what extent has the course literature and other material been of help for your learning?

Small extent»		7		16%
Some extent»		9		20%
Large extent»		17		39%
Great extent»		10		23%

Genomsnitt: 2.69

- I didn"t actually read the book. Wikipedia was the best source for taking the exam. I know others who really used the book.» (Small extent)
- Never got the book» (Some extent)
- I"ve done most of my learning from the course book and I think it is good for self-study.» (Large extent)
- Good book, good slides.» (Large extent)
- The course followed the book very closely.» (Great extent)
- What "other material"? It would be nice if the teacher/assistants provided links to some current interesting papers or articles on algorithms but beside the usual "learn yourself algorithms because it will earn you big $$$" there were none. » (Great extent)

11. To which extent did you prepare for the lectures by reading the assigned material from the course book?

Small extent»		16		36%
Some extent»		13		29%
Large extent»		7		15%
Great extent»		4		9%
I did not use the course book»		4		9%

Genomsnitt: 2.25

- I found I never had time to read beforehand.» (Small extent)
- I should have prepared better.» (Small extent)

12. What was the level of difficulty of the course book reading material?

44 svarande

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		1		2%
Adequate»		27		61%
High»		9		20%
Too high»		2		4%
I did not use the course book»		5		11%

Genomsnitt: 3.61

- Wall of text book. Colored pictures would make learning A LOT quicker.» (Low)
- It was tough, but it"s supposed to be. It"s a good book with many examples and pictures which helps. » (Adequate)
- The book used good, understandable language, but complicated things sometimes and the stucturing was not always obvious.» (Adequate)
- Very good book although it would definitely benefit from being more concise at times.» (Adequate)
- Like all Chalmers courses.» (High)

13. Did the course book contribute to you satisfying the course goals?

No, not at all»		3		6%
To some extent»		15		34%
Yes, definitely»		22		50%
I did not use the course book»		4		9%

Genomsnitt: 2.61

- Both the book and course lack, in my opinion, enough solved exercises.» (To some extent)

14. Further comments about the course book?

- american course litrature = to much word poop»
- Keep using it. My best parts were on graphs and residual graphs, and stable matching. I didn"t read everything else. »
- It"s expensive. Also the paper they use to print it on is really thin. Sometimes it feels like there are too many examples which are really verbose, and I skipped over most of these.»
- "Too American".»
- To-the-point.»
- More clean mathematical reasoning and less running text would"ve been nice, or maybe first big chunks of math followed by a big chunk of running text explaining the maths. It is hard to search for particular things that you just want to check quickly in running text.»
- Content is hardly understand»
- Relevant, wordy, well written»
- Relevant, wordy, well written»
- Too chatty, too few examples. I"m a pretty smart guy, but I still need coloured examples of what"s going on. I have a really hard time following the mathematical mumbo-jumbo in the book.»
- The book is called "Dream Book" but to me it was "Nightmare Book" . The book clearly covers the course material but does it in wordy manner, using elaborate notation and only few ugly figures. Aren"t there any other books on the market? Sedgewick, Cormen?»
- Way too wordy.»
- I think it"s good. A bit wordy at times though.»
- This is a very good book, I would recommend continued use of it.»

15. To what extent have the exercise sessions been of help for your learning?

Small extent»		6		13%
Some extent»		12		27%
Large extent»		11		25%
Great extent»		8		18%
I did not attend the exercise sessions»		7		15%

Genomsnitt: 2.95

- I have the impression the exercise sessions didn"t help me.» (Small extent)
- The part where they brought up a student submitted assignment and went through it in depth was really good. I would have liked to see that every week. » (Some extent)
- They should plan them better. Finishing the material in one session was always a struggle. Although the material covered was very helpful and good. » (Some extent)
- It was the most useful part of the course, except for the actual studying.» (Large extent)
- Here is what you learned everything» (Great extent)
- The exercise sessions always felt rushed, and the assistant never managed to finish what he planned to.» (Great extent)
- Here we actually learned something. » (Great extent)

16. What was the level of difficulty of the exercise sessions?

Too low»		1		2%
Low»		0		0%
Adequate»		24		55%
High»		8		18%
Too high»		2		4%
I did not attend the exercise sessions»		8		18%

Genomsnitt: 3.79

- Adequate or little below adequate. The exercises would be more useful if presented problems were not the solved ones - what was the point of these - the detailed solutions are already printed in the book and probably everyone can read them. » (Adequate)

17. Further comments about the exercise sessions?

- Better than the lecture»
- It would be nice to do exercices which are not corrected in the book. This way we have twice more exrcices to practice.»
- Why the heck give two identical exercise sessions on the same afternoon? Time would have been better spent by scheduling them on different days and show different problems on each session. If you can only make it to one -- no worse than the way it is now. If you can make it to both -- twice as good as now.»
- Same as above, they always felt rushed.»
- Too short. The TAs ran out of time at every session. »
- Good setup.»
- As you may know these sessions had a very high pace. To high. Two sessions are needed or take a large room so everyone can fit in there.»
- * How about, letting someone, who can write legibly lead exercise sessions?! Shouldn"t reading AND writing be prerequisite for attending a university? »
- Willard is a very good tutor.»
- Time limit was reached quite often»

18. How many assignments did you submit solutions to?

0»		7		15%
1-2»		14		31%
3-4»		6		13%
5-6»		17		38%

Genomsnitt: 2.75

19. What was the level of difficulty of the assignments?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		0		0%
Adequate»		11		25%
High»		18		41%
Too high»		11		25%
I did not try out the assignments»		3		6%

Genomsnitt: 4.13

- One or 2 problems was high» (Adequate)
- It took a lot of work and I realised too late a few times that you couldn"t just put something together on sunday night. I think this is good. » (Adequate)
- For the hidden vertex problem, I litterally spent over 10 hours trying to figure out an algorithm, but failed. I could not get more help from tutors, but failed.» (Adequate)
- Not too difficult but very time consuming for the few points they earned. Also, the space limit was "stupid" - one could avoid it by simply writing smaller text. How about "recommended length/number of words" next time. » (Adequate)
- I didn"t feel that I got enough help with them. » (High)
- I did do some of them but never submitted a solution.» (High)
- It took me a lot of time to finally have very bad marks. The programming part are very long. And we are only judged on the output of the programm. If 95% of the programm has be done, we get a 0 because the code is not checked. » (Too high)
- They required too much work considering the bonus points they are worth.» (Too high)
- Teach us to solve such problems before giving them to us.» (Too high)
- Interesting, but too time consuming in relation to the credits. Also, a contributing thing that few did the assignments is probably the deadline, 8am on Monday. Probably moving it to another day, or at least 23.59pm on Monday would have increased the number of people doing the assignment. » (Too high)
- Perhaps not too hard but definetly too time consuming.» (Too high)
- Too much work for the given reward. If a programmed assignment failed on some inputs the score was zero which was » (Too high)
- The restrictions about writing space were really annoying and made the course less than enjoyable.» (Too high)

20. Was the feedback you received for your assignment submissions useful?

No, not at all»		8		18%
To some extent»		25		56%
Yes, definitely»		3		6%
I did not try out the assignments»		8		18%

Genomsnitt: 2.25

- The feedback was too laconic, couple of times I"ve got some points deducted without any explanation at all.» (No, not at all)
- I didn"t really figure out what is "feedback" supposed to mean. Actually, we never got the correct solutions for the assignment exercises.» (No, not at all)
- I missed that you had to create an empty submission on fire and thus didn"t get any feedback. » (No, not at all)
- Really useless !!!» (No, not at all)
- Sometimes the feedback was helpful. One problem on my divide&conquer submission came back with a "0" in the margin. Never figured out what was wrong with it. I believe a simple underlining would have sufficed.» (To some extent)
- I received very little feedback. I would have wanted a lot more, and sooner. It sometimes took weeks and then all you get is a few words reply. » (To some extent)
- Sometimes good motivation something no motivation at all» (To some extent)

21. Did the assignments contribute to you satisfying the course goals?

No, not at all»		6		13%
To some extent»		17		38%
Yes, definitely»		15		34%
I did not try out the assignments»		6		13%

Genomsnitt: 2.47

- Its a good idea, but maybe some better execution would have made me doing them. Stopped after few points, after the first week. Much work without earning anything.» (To some extent)
- Wish they would ask for me to complement the exercises i had failed» (Yes, definitely)
- I learnt a lot on those assignments that I worked on. I say keep them, it is a good way of learning. » (Yes, definitely)

22. Further comments about the assignments?

- Happy with it all»
- * I would have loved to do more programmed exercises, however, after doing the first one, I quickly figured out it was not time well spent. The low bonus rewards are borderline discouraging, and for the first exercise, too much time was wasted on parsing stdin. Please provide a skeleton, it is not challenging and not time well spent. * One of my submissions came back with essentially "too elaborate". After that, another one came back with the opposite problem. I do understand the problem with overly elaborate solutions, but I don"t think you have found the sweet spot with the format in this course. I realize that grading the assignments take a lot of time. I suggest automated grading -- it"s done in lots of other courses and it works just fine. It can replace at least a subset of the current assignments.»
- Unnecessarily patronizing rules about how to hand in assignments. In particular, written assignments had to be written by hand and submitted non-electronically in order to prepare us for the exam. Whether or not to prepare in this way should be up to the individual student.»
- Make them all submittable electronically! Don"t ask for personal info when you already get it from fire! What was that about? Post them clearly on the course page, not ONLY through the calendar. The exercises were super good but not the way you handled them. »
- Having two types of assignments - programmed and written - was an unnecessary complication. Completing the programmed parts could take all weekend, for just 3/10ths of one bonus point. Making us do programming tasks did not really make the subject theory any clearer.»
- Overall - very good idea and I think You should keep assignments in similar form. Things I liked: * I really liked that you didn"t force us to do assignments in pairs. * Non mandatory - good to be able to skip some if in lack of time! * Nice mix of theory/practice/implementation. Things I didn"t like that much: * Somewhat confusing rules: some assignments are written and some programmed - different submission rules, but some of programmed assignments have written parts... * Why the space constraints? Handwritten? The motivation I"ve heard for these rules seemed artificial. Why not let everyone submit to Fire in plain TXT or PDF? Other * The two first programming assignments were much easier and more trivial compared to the Weighted Bipartite Matching. More non-trivial problems please! How about PreFlow-Push algo next year ,) »
- Interesting problems, but didn"t feel worth it when considering credits in relation to time required for solving the problems.»
- Confusing submission system, very strict rules for no apparent reason. E.g: "The file must be formatted for portrait-mode A4-paper, PDF version 1.7 compliant, and readable on the screen as-is, no rotated/tilted pages, tiny/white-on-white text, encryption, etc." Seriously? What could possibly be the reason? Why not accept it as long as you can read what it says? Also EXTREMELY irritating that you had to fit your answers into the tiny dotted box. This coupled with the fact that the first assignment seemed very time consuming (took me 5-10h) was the reasons I only did the first assignment.»
- The help given on fridays were VERY different depending on who were responsible for it. Fredrik did not give any help at all since he "did not want to give away the answer", but Willard did a lot of explanation of similar problems which was very helpful.»
- A bit strict structure in my opinion. Can surely be simplified.»
- Reward, i.e. credit does not stand in proportion to the required amount of work.»
- The assignments were useless, too hard, no help and the correctnes very strict»
- I regret to did assignments, I think it was wasting time, it would be more useful to spend time to learn lesson...»
- Not fun, because of the restriction of space where we could write.»

23. How well did the course administration, web page, handouts etc work?

Very badly»		1		2%
Rather badly»		8		18%
Rather well»		30		68%
Very well»		5		11%

Genomsnitt: 2.88

- On mondays we have lecture from 8-10, then after that we wait around 5 hours until they release the assignment so we can start do some work» (Very badly)
- Course page all in one is not my favourite structure. Assignment correction time and feedback needs a lot of improvement. Also you have a huge amount of very specific instructions for the handins, that just complicates things and creates unneeded stress. You should streamline that. My suggestion is to: -make each assignment 1 merged pdf, end this horrible url spaghetti. -make it possible to submit everything electronically -streamlined instructions for handins, the instructions are a mess and change every week(1,3,5 vs 2,4,6) -do not require things to be hand-written. that is unneccessary and when you then accept computer-written answers anyway makes the situation even worse -expand on accepted languages. python, for example (you did accept my python submission, but I had to gamble because it was not among the accepted languages) » (Rather badly)
- Very usable page except for the crucial part of "hiding" the assignments and slides in the Google calendar. It"s very useful to be able to use the browser search feature on course pages but that was not possible with the stuff in the calendar.» (Rather badly)
- Very usable page except for the crucial part of "hiding" the assignments and slides in the Google calendar. It"s very useful to be able to use the browser search feature on course pages but that was not possible with the stuff in the calendar.» (Rather badly)
- Confusing with hand-ins on paper. Better to instead allow submitting of PDF files, perhaps with a limit of words/letters.» (Rather badly)
- The course page is hard to read on a mobile device. Also to have all links to what to read, assignments etc _inside_ a Google Calender on the homepage is annoying, since the caledar does not show on all mobile devices.» (Rather badly)
- The admin was very organised. It is especially useful to have an up-to-date Google calendar which we can just subscribe to. Having two different kinds of assignments, with different submission methods, created a whole lot of extra complication for nothing. The programmed parts were so small (in terms of points), they should just be scrapped and all assignments should be written assignments.» (Rather well)
- Fire was bad though. One had to make empty submissions, I forgot almost every time.» (Rather well)
- Really like the calendar file. It makes life much easier to have everything in one place.» (Very well)

Study climate

24. How were the opportunities for asking questions and getting help?

Very poor»		1		2%
Rather poor»		6		13%
Rather good»		17		39%
Very good»		8		18%
I did not seek help»		11		25%

Genomsnitt: 3.51

- * During lectures: Rather good. * During exercises: Rather poor - I spent most time on decoding teachers illegible handwriting: "does it say "i" or "j", "h" or "n" ?" » (?)
- The teacher of lecture left directly after each courses, I had to run after him to ask some questions, If I sent some email, I receive the answer more than 1 week after.. so too late.» (Very poor)
- for some reasons i had all my questions on sunday when they couldnt help. » (Rather poor)
- It"s well below the Chalmers course average. I believe tutors should be made more available to the students. Sure, you can make appointments and email and so forth. But it takes a more sociable personality take advantage of these opportunities. Many of us just don"t want to bother you.» (Rather poor)
- Emailed some of the assistant teachers for help 6 days before exam, didn"t receive any reply at all.» (Rather poor)
- But maybe not about with the assignments.» (Rather good)
- Consultation time collided with Logic in computer science (both compulsorily to csall» (Rather good)
- The help for the assignment varied much in quality» (Rather good)
- Some consultation time, the person wasn"t there.» (Rather good)
- I attended a couple of consultations and received great help. I could also see that whenever students had questions at exercise sessions or lectures, they could receive feedback, help and answers by Devdatt or the TAs.» (Very good)
- I didn"t seek help but the staff seemed very helpful so I"m thinking they did a good job here. » (I did not seek help)

25. How well has cooperation between you and your fellow students worked?

Very poorly»		2		4%
Rather poorly»		3		6%
Rather well»		13		29%
Very well»		14		31%
I did not seek cooperation»		12		27%

Genomsnitt: 3.7

- quite sure we are not allowed to work together.» (Very poorly)
- It was hard to know how much one could help each other without cheating» (Rather well)
- The assignments should be made in groups instead.. that would have motivated me to actually do them.» (I did not seek cooperation)

26. How was the course workload?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		0		0%
Adequate»		20		45%
High»		18		40%
Too high»		6		13%

Genomsnitt: 3.68

- Higher than average and I appreciate that, you take the course very seriously. » (Adequate)
- Assignment deadline on Monday 8am in combination with student syndrome and another assignment deadline on Friday = no weekend» (Too high)

27. How was the total workload this study period?

Too low»		0		0%
Low»		0		0%
Adequate»		28		63%
High»		14		31%
Too high»		2		4%

Genomsnitt: 3.4

- Only took one course» (Adequate)

Summarizing questions

28. What is your general impression of the course?

Poor»		3		6%
Fair»		5		11%
Adequate»		7		15%
Good»		23		52%
Excellent»		6		13%

Genomsnitt: 3.54 (bidrar till totalt genomsnitt/jämförelseindex)

- Big minus for the book. It simply does not follow the appropriate approach that is expected to solving the exercises.» (Fair)
- I learnt a lot but the work load is too high in comparison to the bonus marks obtained. It put me off from taking the following course (Advanced Algorithms), even though the subject matter interests me.» (Adequate)
- I did learn alot when studying for the exam!» (Good)
- Very interesting but I need to practice more.» (Good)
- The sad thing is that it felt as I learned really a lot, but still might have failed the exam. Doesn"t make sense and really made me think about if I should continue with advanced algorithms or not.» (Good)
- One of the most interesting courses subject-wise, and well handled in most parts (excluding assignment administration)» (Excellent)
- Clearly makes it to the list of top five courses I"ve had at Chalmers! I"d like more programming assignments, and it would be great fun to have problems so large that running times on a computer well exceeds a couple of seconds, that way you can really feel your optimiziations.» (Excellent)

29. What should definitely be preserved to next year?

30. What should definitely be changed to next year?

31. Additional comments