Comment or constructive critisism:
Some of Håstads arguments really requires some afterthought. But I actually found some of his views of things made it easier for me to visualize them and work with them.
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The biggest problem was definitely lack of time. Things usually went very well until the last 10 minutes when Johan tries to prove something that needs 20 minutes proving.
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Perhaps sometimes 1 hour was too short...
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Very cursory treatment of topics. The result was that at the end of the course I was still struggling with basic concepts. Maybe more emphasis should be laid on the fundamentals before moving on to more specialized topics.
He presented his material in a good and intuitive way. The easier material was very well presented but the harder material was a little trickier to absorb fast.
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4 hours of proving that something is slow shouldn't be so much fun!
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Explanations could have been better.
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I think it is always interesting to see the relations between different fields (namely complexity theory and proof complexity). I can but encourage you to have more guest lectures!
Comments about the book:
I actually enjoyed it very much. Although It's clear that some of the material requires a mathematical background that is outside of most computer science students domain. But those areas were mostly untouched in the course.
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It was a nice book, I just didn't feel it helped me in any way to solve the homeworks.
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It's pretty detailed.
Comments about the notes:
At times it was easy to follow. Other times it felt like a summarization of a already rather difficult part of the Arora/Barak book.
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See above. It needs more pictures though, and I think some are missing.
Comment on the format, especially compared to having half as many lecture of two hours:
I actually think it was a really good compromise for the very little time that was given for lectures. It made the course very "continuous" throughout the course period.
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One hour lectures was great. It's a difficult and heavy subject, and 2 hours at once can be a bit much. That said, 15 two hour lectures would clearly be superior.
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It quite felt like we didn't have time to finish the lectures, doing the last parts next time, so that we didn't have time to finish that one either.
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More material can probably be covered this way even though the total time is the same (because the second day is a fresh day with new topics).
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I think it is better to have the opportunity to "digest" the rather dense content of a one hour lecture before going into the second one.
Comment on homeworks in general:
I don't know how it would have been with 2 or 3 larger homework sets. But having several small ones worked out really great for me and my homework partner!
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I'm not a huge fan of working in that way. Still, it worked well, and made me try harder than I probably would have with only two homeworks. My only real complaint is the last homework. Having a homework during exam week is just cruel.
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I thought feedback and discussions on the homework questions was very much lacking. Maybe hold a 15 minute session for each homework to discuss solutions.
Comments on oral presentation:
I have yet to give my oral presentation. But the idea seems very good.
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Haven't done it (yet?)
Sometimes the points given was a little less/more then expected for the intellectual challenge. However this is individual and can sometimes vary with regards to how much similar exercises one has done/seen in each research area.
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I'm not a huge fan of examination of things that aren't brought up during the lectures (and vice versa)
If yes, in what way?
No thoughts
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Hard to say when everyone associated with the course is male...
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Nothing particular.
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Nothing specifically that would be any gender issue
I know it might be a question of funding and/or number of interested students. But I really think one could make a follow-up-course from the basis of the suggested advanced topics and perhaps other topics as well. There were a lot of complexity classes we didn't touch and those might be interesting too.
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The course MUST have more lecture time. What we got was pathetic, and it was quite obvious that Johan had to leave a lot out. If weekly homeworks are used next time as well, don't have a homework during exam week.
I really looked forward to the course and I certainly was satisfied with how it turned out!
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It was an interesting and fun class. However, most of the homework problems consisted of proofs. While this sort of makes sense considering the subject, it gave me a lot of problems. I have no prior experience in making formal proofs, just proof by example. This made problems quite difficult as I had no real idea of how to approach them. I'm not blaming Johan for this, it's rather a problem with the Computer Science programme...
Denna sammanställning har genererats med ACE.