Apr 21, 2024: Critical Review Marks Released

Hello all! I hope the exam season has been going well for you :)
The grading of the critical reviews is now complete, and the marks have been released on MarkUs. Cheers!

Apr 13, 2024: Fun CSC303-Related Video

Morning all!
I hope finals are treating you well, and that you're not working too hard :)
If you're looking for a 20 minute break, Elliot Sicheri sent in a fun video looking at Wikipedia as an information network. It's good fun, and ties into a few different course concepts including connected components, giant components, and small worlds. Well worth a watch :)
https://youtu.be/JheGL6uSF-4?si=1wmbYxRuet47pcTF

Apr 8, 2024: Assignment 2 marks released

The assignment 2 marks have now been released on MarkUs. We've gone over the solutions in tutorial, but if there are any questions, please don't hesitate to let me know :)

Apr 5, 2024: Reminder: Course evals close soon!

One last reminder, please, please, please do fill out your course evaluations on Quercus (the course eval button on the left ribbon)! This is your last weekend to do so before they close.
Again, they're invaluable to future students interested in the course, helping me improve as a teacher, helping the university make hiring decisions, etc...
So good or bad, please do fill them out!

A genuine thank you to those who've already done so, and to those of you who will :)

Mar 28, 2024: Makeup Midterm Marks Released

The marks for the make up midterm have been released on MarkUs.

Mar 28, 2024: A reminder: Fill out course evals!

Hello all! Firstly, a big thank you to the 6% of students who've filled out their course evaluations
If you haven't had the chance yet, then good or bad, please do! It's useful for future students thinking of taking the course, it helps me improve as a teacher, and it helps the university. So please do fill them out :)

Thank you! :)

Mar 27, 2024: A correction to office hours

I made a mistake in office hours today: A2 Q2a and Q2d are both fine as-is.
While it's the case that unscaled PageRank is not guaranteed to converge on an arbitrary graph, it will converge on the specific graph given in the question.

Thanks for your understanding! :)

Mar 19, 2024: Mar 8 Midterm Grades Released

The grades for the March 8th midterm have now been released on MarkUs.

Mar 9, 2024: Makeup Midterm Location

For those who didn't attend the midterm yesterday, the makeup midterm will be held in our usual lecture hall (WB116) during the time allocated for the March 15 Friday tutorial (16:00-17:00).
As a reminder, if you wrote the midterm, please do not also write the makeup test - we'll just discard the grade on the second test if you do so.
For those writing the makeup, I'll see you all on Friday! :)

Mar 4, 2024: Please check A1 Q4 grading in particular, and submit regrade request if needed

We'll be going over the details today in lecture, but a mistake was made in the grading of some of the Q4 submissions. If you lost marks on A1 Q4 for only doing a proof in one direction, when you did in fact prove both directions, then please submit a remark request within a week and we will correct the grade.
Thank for your patience and understanding!

Mar 3, 2024: A1 Marks released

The A1 Marks have been released. There may have been some problems with the grading of question 4, and I will look into it. If so, then the marks will be pulled and q4 regraded.
Thanks for your patience and understanding! :)

Mar 2, 2024: Wed 6th Office hours moved to Mon 4th after lecture

A quick heads-up that, this upcoming week, the in-person Mar 6th Wed. office hours will be moved to Monday (Mar 4) at the same time and place. The online office hours are unaffected.

See you then! :)

Feb 27, 2024: A2 Released, Practice Midterm Released, CR groups & papers due this Friday

Hello all! Two announcements and one reminder:

1) Assignment 2 has been released, we will finish covering the required material next week
2) A practice midterm has been released
3) A reminder that groups and paper choices for the critical review are due this Friday.

Have fun! :)

Feb 24, 2024: Call for Volunteer Notetakers

Hi all! An important announcement below courtesy of accessibility services, who are currently looking for volunteer notetakers for the course; I hope you'll consider it! :)

Accessibility Services is seeking volunteer note takers for students in this class who are registered in Accessibility Services. By volunteering to take notes for students with disabilities, you are making a positive contribution to their academic success. By volunteering as a note-taker, you will benefit as well - It is an excellent way to improve your own note-taking skills and to maintain consistent class attendance. At the end of term, we would be happy to provide a Certificate of Appreciation for your hard work. To request a Certificate of Appreciation please fill out the form at this link: Certificate of Appreciation or email us at at as.notetaking@utoronto.ca. You may also qualify for a Co-Curricular Record by registering your volunteer work on Folio before the end of June. We also have a draw for qualifying volunteers throughout the academic year.

Steps to Register as a Volunteer :

1) Register Online as a Volunteer Note-Taker at: https://clockwork.studentlife.utoronto.ca/custom/misc/home.aspx
2) For a step-to-step guide please follow this link to the Volunteer Notetaking Portal Guide
3) Click on Volunteer Notetakers, and sign in using your UTORid
4) Select the course(s) you wish to take notes for. Please note: you do NOT need to upload sample notes or be selected as a volunteer to begin uploading your notes.
5) Start uploading notes.

Email us at as.notetaking@utoronto.ca if you have questions or require any assistance with uploading notes. If you are no longer able to upload notes for a course, please also let us know immediately.
For more information about the Accessibility Services Peer Notetaking program, please visit Student Life Volunteer Note Taking.
Thank you for your support and for making notes more accessible for our students.
AS Note-taking Team

Feb 3, 2024: Next tutorial covers practice problems, PDF compression problem resolved

Firstly, the next tutoral will be covering the weeks 1-4 practice problemset. You'll have time to work on the questions in-tutorial, but you can also work on them ahead of time :)

In an unrelated notice, a big thanks to the students who let me know they were having a problem where definition boxes in the slide PDFs were being rendered as black rectanges. The issue appears to be related to the compression I was using -- consequently I've stopped compressing the PDFs and the problem should be fixed moving forwards.

Cheers!

Feb 1, 2024: A1 Q3d Clarification

Phrasing clarification to Q3d: when a node is removed, then any edges that are no longer well-defined should also be removed.

Feb 1, 2024: In-person Feb 7 office hours moved to Feb 5

Please note that the Feb 7 in-person office hours, will be moved to Mon Feb 5th, still after lecture and in BA2272.
The week's zoom-only office hours will continue as scheduled.
Thanks for your understanding! :)

Jan 27, 2024: Critical Review Project Rubric Released

The rubric for the critical review project has been released.
Time permitting, we'll be covering the rubric in class after finishing the week 4 material.

Having said that, it's never too early to start forming groups, and to start thinking about the course content that excites you and that you'd be interested in finding a paper about! :)

Jan 26, 2024: Correction to A1 Q2d

For A1, Q2d has been corrected to read "dispersion of the edge" instead of "dispersion of an edge".

Jan 25, 2024: A1 released today, A0 due today

Two announcements:
1) A1 has been released on the course website
2) A reminder that A0 is due today!

Have fun! :)

Jan 20, 2024: Practice Questions Released

By popular demand based on the pre-term survey, I've released the year's long-form practice questions in advance. They can be found on the assignments tab of the course website.
We haven't covered most of the material required, but I've marked the practice by which weeks it corresponds to.
Have fun! :)

Jan 14, 2024: A0 Q6b Correction

Q6b of A0 has been corrected to include symmetry as part of the definition of a positive semi-definite matrix (therefore, any eigenvalues will be real). You don't need to consider complex values for this question.

Jan 12, 2024: Pre-Term Survey Closes Tomorrow

A big thank you to those who've already filled it out; if you haven't had the chance yet then please do fill out the pre-term survey on Quercus (Quizzes tab) before end of day tomorrow. It'll be a big help, and will inform when office hours will be scheduled.
Thanks! :)

Jan 1, 2024

The first tutorial will be on Fri Jan 19. On Fri Jan 12, we will instead have a lecture in WB116.

Jan 1, 2024

Some slides for the weekly lectures will usually be posted at the end of each week to Course Contents. I will also provide links to some additional relevant materials and will indicate the appropriate chapters of Easley and Kleinberg (EK). However, the Course Contents page and links therein do not replace attending lectures and tutorials. In particular, the lecture slides will not include everything discussed in the lectures.