OPTLog | Elad Aigner-Horev

COURSE REGULATIONS

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Lectuers

Dr. Elad Aigner Horev | Office 58.3.5

Mr. Michael Trushkin | Office 58.3.8

Admission hours: by appointment

Syllabi

Honours track syllabus

Regular track syllabus

Final Grade Composition

Honours track final grade = Exam grade + bonuses (if applicable see syllabus)

Regular track final grade = Exam grade

We are nice people!

The purpose of this web page is as its name suggests: REGULATIONS. The latter are never pleasant to read as these engage concepts of duties, the final exams, and a whole array of matters that the student body has natural anxiety issues associated with. Before reading on, please know that the staff is NICE and is rooting for you to succseed in the course. Stating regulations is done in a concise way which can be construed as cold and harsh. Bear in mind that this is the nature of the text and not the nature of the staff.

Alas, this is an academic course in a research institution and we must precisely inform you of the rules in order to avoid unpleasantries down the line.

Final Exam: Structure & Rudimentary Information

Duration: 4 hours

# of questions: 4

Language of the exam: Expect heavy use of the English language.

Front page of the final exams: link

Front page of the ANswer sheets: link

Allowed material in the finals:

A physical dictionary translating the English language to any other language you wish. Electorinic dictionaries called מילונית are also allowed. Two A4 sheets (i.e. a total of 4 A4 pages = one sided); can be prepared using computers and tablets

ANSWER SHEETS:

The exam is accompanied with answer sheets only with which one is to supply one's answers to the exam.

Details pertaining to these answer sheets can be seen below.

Material to be covered by the final exams

The material for the final exam(s) consists of everything found in the:

Course booklet
Course slides
Course videos
Course handouts (e.g., solved exercises etc.)
Every material for which there is a link to in the course website.
All book references made throughout the course within the course lectures, practical sessions, course booklet, videos, slides, homework etc.
Everything said or mentioned during lectures or sessions that is not accounted for by all of the above.

Below there is a list of redactions to the list of materials specified above.

Important: The course videos and slides do not contain all the material for the finals. It is not enough just to go over those in order to get read for the finals

Material Redacted from the final exams

The topics appearing in the list below are not included in the material designated for the final exams despite these being included in the course booklet:

Any part of the booklet appearing in red on the last day of the semester.
- Red parts during the semester are meaningless as they might be dealt with eventually.
Turing machines
Proof of Dilworth's theorem (only the proof is out).
Envy-free matchings in bipartite graphs.
For redacted material in Linear Programming see below.
Material covered by bonus assignments for the honours program.
Chapter 9 in the course booklet.
Chapter 10 in the course booklet.

The "I Don't Know Rule" for the finals

In all finals of this course we observe the "I do not know rule" asserting the following:

Writing "I do not know" in the unique and exclusive writing box associated with a given question or sub-question in the answer sheets of a given final provides 20% of the credits assigned to that specific sub-question.
- Writing "I do not know" in a writing box that is not associated with the targeted question is not permitted.
The same rule applies if one leaves a given writing box completely empty.
On appeal one cannot ask to change the status of a question from "answered" to "I do not know" and vice versa. You are to make every effort to avoid having writing boxes that contain both text and the phrase "I do not know". If you cannot avoid this, then it is your strict responsibility to make sure to properly erase the text in the writing box and make sure you convey to the grader that you meant to write "I do not know". If this is not observed then the defualt is that the text would be graded in full and this will not be reversible on appeal.

Past course instances and past final exams

Absolutely nothing is to be deduced about this course and its final exams from any previous course instance or any previous final exam.

Recommendation: Do not memorise final exams!

Linear Programming

In this listing we clarify what is expected of the student body regarding the topic of Linear Programming.

In the final exams you will be excepted to know:

How to state any problem given to you in ILP and LP + prove correctness.
How to relax an ILP into an LP.
How to manipulate LPs into standard equational form or translate to other forms.
How to prove the weak-duality theorem.
State the strong duality theorem without proof.
How to employ various LP rounding techniques in order to devise algorithms.
All that appears in the slides and video regarding this topic on the main page of the website.

You will not be asked to:

Take the dual of an LP.
- Whenever taking a dual is involved it will be provided to you through the question.
Know the proofs appearing in the booklet regarding LP theory unless these appear in the slides and/or video regarding LP.

CALIBRATING EXPECTATIONS FOR THE FINAL EXAMS

Answer Sheets

RULES OF CONDUCT

In all finals associated with this course instance you are to deliver your answers through a pre-prepared answer sheet that will be supplied to you with the questionnaire of the final exams. Sample answer sheets can be seen in the Sample Final Exam Page. In this listing, we provide the regulations surrounding the use of these answer sheets during the final exams.

You will receive a draft notebook. This notebook is not scanned nor is it delivered to the course staff for grading.
Only the answer sheet is scanned and delivered to the course staff for grading. Any text you have outside the answer sheets will not be read nor will it be delivered to the course staff.
Within the answer sheets, you are to respect the space allocated for each question through its designated answer box and not write outside the designated writing box; such text will be ignored.
- Infractions of up to 2-3 lines outside a given box will be ignored in your favour.
- One must write the answer of a given question only within the box associated with that specific question and it alone. Writing your answer in the answer sheets but in the space of another question is forbidden so do pay attention to this.
Emergency Spaces. The answer sheets arrive with spaces designated for emergencies. In order to use an emergency slot you must provide an accurate reference to the grader that the answer (or part of it) has been relocated to the emergency box and which one precisely. In addition, using an emergency slot means that the exact amount of space used in the emergency box is to be removed from the originalwriting box where the emergency occired.
In our finals there is no concept of asking for an additional exam form. You will receive a single form and will not be able to ask for another one from the examiners. Make sure that this is clear to you prior to attending the finals. If an examiner for some reason allows this in his or her class they are monitoring this is their affair and is unrelated to the academic staff.

Final exams

CALIBRATING EXPECTAIONS

The sole similarity between final exams associated with the course is that all have a 4 hour duration and 4 questions.
The calibration of the difficulty level of each final is at the hands of the course staff alone without equivication.
All other parameters by which one wishes to compare different finals are not applicable in our course.
- GPAs can differ.
- Passing percentile may differ.
- Connections between questions may differ.
- The credits assigned to each question may differ in amount.
- Factor bonuses may differ. One final may receive a factor while another may not.
- Number of subsections per question.
- Total number of subsections across all questions.
The topics covered by the different finals can differ substantially from one another. The fact that any finals covered a given topic poses no obligation that any other final would cover the same topic.
Nothing can be deduced on a given final exam from any other final exam. The sole consistency that will be observed is the basic structure of 4 questions for 4 hours.
The finals for the honours track and the regular track may differ substantially. Whether these will or will not differ is to be revealed on the day of the exam. It is possible that one of the finals is the same across these two courses and others different; absolutely nothing can be deduced on this matter from past instances of the course.
All matters of gradings may differ between the regular track course and the honours version of the course. This holds also in the case that finals are completely identical to one another.
Be prepared for a massive use of the English language in the final exams.
The final formulation of the instructions page will be set on the last day of the semester.
Be ready to cope with long texts in English in the finals and then to be asked to analyse these.
- It may be that one final exam contains texts and another does not.
- No announcements to the student body will go out stating that a given final contains a text to read and analyse. The announcement that this is possible is done here.
- It is possible that one final will contain a text to read and analyse and another will not.
Be ready for questions that you have never met before and be asked to analyse and answer these using methods from the course or the amalgamation of various ideas and notions from the course.
Significant emphasis is put on creativity in the finals; this entails meeting definitions that we have never met during the course and this is by design. Aim is to tackle new notions using experience gained throughout the course.
Be ready to reproduce every piece of material set for the finals.
Be ready to generalise every piece of material set for the finals.
We will make an effort to publish solutions for the finals but are not obligated to do so.
If a solution or a sketch of it is published and you did not receive comments on your answer in the graded exam then you are to consult the solution (sketch) to understand what was the problem.
Answers deemed unreadable by the staff will receive the grade of zero.
Different finals may cover different topics. The topics covered in one final do not form a binding contract for any other final. One should not deduce anything about one final from another even if these are within the same course instance.

Submitting Appeals: Regulations

Appeals must be substantive. Appeals that simply ask for more points without a substantive purely mathematical argument or claim will not receive any consideration.
Appeals that contain any sensitive personal information of medical, economical, or sociological nature will be rejected without consideration. Divulging information of personal nature that has no mathematical baring disqualifies the appeal.

Interviews in the course

A key grading tool used in the course is that of the Personal Interview. This tool is more heavily used in the honours track of the course as all bonuses are to be defended in an interview format. In this listing we specify the rules of conduct that we shall observe regarding this tool in this course.

Personal interviews are as their name suggests: personal. In that, no two interviews can be expected to have any similarity of any kind and across any parameter. The personal interview is a reactionary tool that fits the personality and answers provided by the interviewee. Hence, no expectation for any kind of uniformity between different interviews will be observed, honoured, or attempted.
If group interviews are performed, the grades these fetch are individual and it is quite possible and will occur that the members of the same team interviewed together will receive different grades.
During an interview you should expect the following:
- Be examined on all material of the course up until the date of the interview; this unless explicitly stated otherwise by the lecturers which will then provide a focus for the material of the interview.
- Be ready to solve problems in writing and then defend them.
- Be ready to solve on the board.
- Be ready to receive a text to read and then be asked about it.
- Be ready to defend anything you ever submitted to the staff.
- Be ready to tackle completely new problems never seen before and use methods from the course in order to solve them.
There is no appeal system for interviews.

Course Booklet

On the course booklet

The course is accompanied with a course booklet containing all material presented in the lectures and the TA-sessions and well beyond.

If you feel that this booklet "is not for you", so to speak, for whatever reason you are free to find whatever source that satisfies your needs. In such an event it is your responsibility to make sure that whatever alternative sources you use match the course booklet in terms of scope and mathematical rigour.

The staff does not engage in examining and approving alternative texts for the course.

The booklet is written using British spelling and not American; so you will encounter words such as "generalise" instead of "generalize"; this is perfectly fine.