Okay guys, optimization, Discrete Optimization mailbag week five, so I'm
back in the land of kangaroos, opera house coffee and footie, okay?
Stay until the end because there's some big announcement at the end.
But we're going to start with statistics as usual.
So you see this curve here is leveling off which is nice.
So this is the number of students active in the class.
We are stabilizing here around a little bit more than a thousand right now.
Okay. this is the number of submissions graded.
You see them stepping up every time so it's nice, you know, growth here.
This is also what is really interesting. So this is the number of submission per
active students. You have seen that many times but you see
this big jump coming up now. So this is really nice.
So more people are active. The students that are still active are
getting more active and you know, obviously we love that.
This is the number of On Track parts per active student.
And once again, you see these things. [SOUND] Going up every time.
So this is exactly what we want to see. So this is really good.
We are very happy. About that part as well.
this other statistic, the participation per assignment, so are at the level of
TSP, right. So look at the numbers here.
We are almost at 1000, so a little bit of effort guys and we are there.
Obviously, Warehouse Location there, Warehouse Locations there is a little bit
more work to be done there, we are halfway where we want to be.
but, you know, it's a very doable assignment, so hopefully, you know, some
of you can pick it up and push it up to a thousand there.
people have already starting working on the VRP.
It's a very healthy number there, a quarter of where we want to be roughly.
And interesting numbers on the puzzle challenge as well.
This is the life plot, okay, so you can, you know, view it on the website in real
time. So I won't go into very much detail.
The only thing that I want to show you is that at this point we are at the point
where we are basically lifting up the tail of this distribution.
In a sense, that this is nice. So you see these blue things getting
bluer and bluer and getting up and up and hopefully it's going to level at a much
higher level. That's what we are hoping now, okay?
So it's getting, this tail is in a sense getting thicker.
Every tail is a distribution. We really want a very heavy tail
distribution, okay? So that's what we have there.
so mid course survey. We want to give you some result.
We promised we would do that, okay? it's basically 10 percent of the active
students who, responded to the survey. And the first question was, how do they
find the course? And this is, this is, what it came out.
So look at this this way, right? So, it's a little bit tedious.
but it's very rewarding. It's also very time consuming.
It's also very hard, but it's also very fun, okay?
So, essentially that's the kind of things we wanted for the class, okay?
Something where you learn a lot, where it's fun to do, but obviously, you know,
we didn't want an award on the class, so it's hard, it takes time, okay?
So not very much surprise for us, but this, this is nice, okay?
This is what we wanted to see. You know mid course survey.
W-, you know? That was essentially, you know?
Trying to find out ways [INAUDIBLE] . Okay?
And you know I think, what you can see, you know?
Students, you know? satisfied learning a lot.
A little bit behind, some on track. So this is interesting, right?
So you have students there basically spread between a little bit behind and on
track, okay? And of, you know, some students are
learning moderately enough so we have to make the class harder.
Just kidding, right, so, but essentially this is, this is what you see there,
where people are at this point. this is the traditional graphics that you
want to see in this kind of survey. What is the favorite class, favorite part
of your class? And what you see in big, big, big
programming assignments lecture, okay, so this is the stuff that you guys like.
You also see, you know, constraint programming, local search, these are, you
know, high level key words that are appearing there.
Also heart, okay so interesting there. So, basically, you know?
One of the things we were surprised is how much you love the programming
assignments. If you want, we can give you even more,
right? So, once again, just kidding, right?
So you can see that I'm still completely jet lagged, right?
so what we are going to give you now is a one week extension until, August 20th.
And the reason we are doing this is because you really want to lift a little
bit this curve, a little bit more, okay? So, we think it's very fair, even the
difficulty of the class, the feedback that we that we received, okay?
So we give you one week to just, you know, work really, really hard, okay?
And so people were asking also whether class will stay open after August 20.
It was August 13 before, and the answer is yes, you can complete all the
assignments afterwards. Even if you want you can see your
results, you can do all kinds of experimentation.
People who would, you know, register for a new class would into a subsequent
session, okay. So essentially one week extension that's
good. Okay, so that gives you a lot more
opportunity to consolidate everything you have learned.
And we let the class be open after the end date anyway.
So that, you know, even if you can't complete everything.
If you still want to get some tents, and find out what it would take to, for you
to get some tents of some of the assignments, you have the opportunity to
do so. Okay?
What next? Well, you know the VRP assignment is a
difficult assignment. It's a very fun assignment.
So this is an assignment which is get you really, really close, to real problems.
So real-life problems, so one of the reason that, one of the things we
promised at the beginning of the class is that we would actually bridge the gap
between know, knowing almost nothing. To actually being able to tackle real
life problems. This is where we are at.
Okay, so some of the things that we use for polar restoration for instance, for,
you know, you know, logistic problems, are basically built on top of the VRP
that you're going to do. So this is, you know, this is like the
reward at the end of this class. You are very close to solving a real life
optimization problem, which is meaningful, and which is really, r-,
really tough, okay? So this is like the cherry on the cake at
the end. It's tough.
But I think it's really telling you how much you have learned during the class.
this, th-, these couple, these last couple of weeks.
I was about to say this semester. But this is like professional
deformation, right? once again, you know, steady progress on
the assignment, we were very happy. Keep up the good work.
You're almost there, okay. And, yeah, another announcement is also
we are working on the, the course T-shirt.
Stay tuned, we have a couple of designs that we are going to run by you very
soon. so this also, you know, something that
came out of the forum and we just wanted to let you know about this.
A lot of activities in the forums as well came up.
I don't know if I have them on the slides but I think people have really picked up.
I mentioned that last week, I'm rementioning it again, it was very nice
to see more people putting new threads and creating new threads and responding
to threads and things like this. Okay, so keep up the last, you know, keep
up the work that, on optimization. Make sure that You keep, you know,
producing the reasons that you have produced.
I think it's amazing. This is the last assignment.
It's the last mile. So, you know, hopefully you, you, you
survived that one last assignment.