SOFT6001 Assessment Results

I have put the results of the group work and last week's exam online. You can find your result using the last four digits of your ID number (unless it starts with zero(s)).

If you do not know your student ID number, I am not prepared to find it for you.

There are some students for whom I do not have ID numbers because they have not yet signed up for the class.  I am not prepared to give those student their results by some other means.

CMOD6001 Class 19

I hadn't made it clear enough that today's class was a tutorial. More students came than might have, had they known.


We settled on 2000 words for the paper.

Seeing as we were all here anyway I met with the (video) groups.

HEA report on drop out rates

A HEA report on dropout levels found that only 73% of students who start computing courses progress to second year. Of all the courses in the country computing courses fare the worst.

A success rate of 73% at CIT would be considered a very good year. Our retention rates are much lower. The report does compare the university sector with the IOT sector, but does not compare individual institutes. This is probably wise.

The report found that there was a correlation between the number of points required to get onto a course, and the retention rate.  Retention rates in medicine are much higher. But it would be crazy, of course, to conclude that computing is more difficult than medicine. One can conclude that students with higher points in the leaving cert do better than those who have low points. But we didn't need a HEA report to tell us that.

SOFT6001 Assessment

We will have an in-class exam on 02 December at 1815.

If you know you can't make this, please let me know well in advance and I will try to find you an alternative.

SOFT6001 Week 07

I explained why I haven't corrected the exams from last week yet.

This week's exercise was the the same as the exam, but just Part B.

This was tougher than it looks. The devil is in the detail.

COMP6021 Class 18

We had a tutorial.

We went over
Interpolation
Dithering (with numbers)
Huffman coding

There was a question about whether arithmetic coding could come up in the exam. You cannot rule it out, but if it comes up it will be smaller than the example we did in class.

GIF is mentioned a lot in the sample questions. We will see GIF in class soon.

Huffman's original paper is here for anyone who is interested.

CMOD6001 Tomorrow's class is a tutorial

Class on Friday 28 will be a tutorial.  I will use that time to help students with any difficulties they are having with the assessments.

I will not take attendance.

CMOD6001 Deadlines

Draft of Paper - 13 November (sooner if you expect decent feedback)

Final Paper - 20 November


Presentations:
12 November - Online Reputation
18 November - Gold Farming, Monotizing Music in the Digital Age
19 November - RFID & Privacy, Prediction Markets

Each student in the group must speak, but students need not speak for equal lengths of time.
Every student must attend every presentation. If a student misses a presentation, it will affect both their individual mark and their group's mark.

Videos are due 25 November at 0900.
Every student must attend this class. If a student misses a presentation, it will affect both their individual mark and their group's mark.

Any student that misses a required class because of illness, should provide a cert from a doctor.

CMOD6001 Class 18

I gave tips for giving presentations.

We set dates for the various assessments.

COMP6021 Tutorial Reminder

This is just a reminder that today's class is s tutorial. Attendance is not required.

Come with questions or specific issues.

CMOD6001 Class 17

I spoke very briefly about the feedback I left in TurnItIn on the drafts of the introductions to the paper. I talked about the structure the paper might take.

I gave out a handout on common mistakes.

We agreed that another opportunity for feedback would be good. Drafts can be submitted to "Draft 2" up to 22 November. Submit draft early for early feedback.

The final paper is due on 20 November.

I met with some students about their introduction drafts.

I asked students to hold project meetings. One group already met today. Another group just refused.

I now have the URL for each group's blog. All meetings should be documented in the blog.

COMP6021 Class 17

I talked briefly about what the results of the assessment mean. I asked students if there was anything I should be doing differently.

I showed another way to solve the dithering question, that was a bit less abstract.

Students continued working on the image compression assignment.

COMP6021 Class 16 - Exam

There was an in-class assessment.

The results are here sorted by the last 4 digits of student ID number. They were not very good and suggest that some students need to modify their study strategies for this module if they are to be successful in it. They were marked out of 10. Student that got 0/10 would likely have picked up a few marks were it marked out of 100.

Suggested solutions below:

CMOD6001 Paper Introductions corected

I have read all the introductions that were submitted. Students can read individual comments by logging back into TurnItIn.

Some general point that came up:
I believe I made the plagiarism point very clearly. I certainly made it repeatedly. But I probably won't make it again.

Some students didn't get organized enough to submit anything. Other students just threw something together. I don't know which is worse. But both classes of student have lost a valuable opportunity for some early feedback.

We will talk about style and tone in class some day soon. For this kind of writing it is best not to talk about "I" "me" nor "the reader". Also stuff like "in this paper I will talk about ..." is best avoided.

Make your point. What are you saying? Just say it. There is no need for big words nor flowery language. Thinking clearly and writing clearly is what matters most.

Some students took this exercise seriously. They got feedback, some of it harsh, all of it useful. Well done to them.

SOFT6001 Week 06

We had an in-class exam.  However there was a surprise fire drill and we had to evacuate the building. We continued the exam on our return.

I don't yet know if the exam is valid or not. As soon as I know I will be post to the blog.

COMP6021 Class 15

We looked at how 3-D images are displayed. We saw some anaglyphs and watched a Bjork music video in 3-D.

CMOD6001 Class 16

We discussed the project. I spoke about holding meetings.

Students should have their groups formed by the end of class and set up the blogs fairly soon. Meetings must be documented on the blog, as must individual student contributions.

Meetings:

• Agenda
• Attendance and location time
• Review of last meeting.
• What happened since. Who did what.
• What decisions.
• Action Items. Who will do what
• Set time and place for the next meeting

CMOD6001 Class 15

This was an optional class. 3 students came along to discuss the project.

Some things that came up

Need to pick group fairly soon
any song
doesn't need to be one take

CMOD6001 Class un-cancelled

The thing that would have cause me to miss today's class did not come to pass. However, having cancelled the class I am not now going to un-cancel it.

I will be in the room though ans any students or groups that want to meet with me to discuss the assessments and projects can do so.

COMP6021 Class 14

I showed students what they needed to do in Photoshop to complete the assignment. I gave out images, but students are also free to choose their own.

CMOD6001 Class cancelled 20 Oct 2010

This Wednesday's class is cancelled. Apologies for the short notice.

COMP6021 Class 13

We fixed the in-class assessment date for next week. 1200 26 Oct 2010. B229.

We looked at color lookup tables (CLUTs) and dithering. We put some numbers on dithering and saw two examples. Check the podcast feed for more examples.

COMP6021 Colour Blind?

If you are colour blind you should probably let Colin know.

COMP6021 Assignment

Image compression requires a trade-off between image quality and file size. If the compression ratio is set too high the image quality becomes unacceptable. If it is set too low, bits are wasted. Finding the right point on the cost-quality curve can be a challenge.

Take three very different high resolution images of dimensions greater than 600 x 800 pixels.

For each image:

• Resize (or crop if you must) the image to size 600 x 800.
• Save the image with increasingly fewer colors, with and without dithering, until you believe you have found the best settings for the image.
• Demonstrate that pushing the compression ration further would produce poor results
• Graph the size of the image against the number of colors, with and without dithering on the same graph

Write a report outlining your results. The report should contain sample images.

I will bring images to the lab.

Put the report online and e-mail the URL to Colin before noon on Friday 05 November

CMOD6001 Project Groups & Blogs

Groups for the final project seem to have formed already.

Each student should join a group this week. Each group should start a blog (at blogger.com. I can help you with this the next time we are in a computer lab) to document the progress of the project and to store the minutes of each meeting. This blog should also reflect the individual contributions of each member.

E-mail the URL of the blog to Colin

CMOD6001 Class 14

The projector wouldn't talk to my laptop.

I asked student to form groups where no two students are writing the same paper topic, and asked each student to explain the background of the area to everyone else in the group.

Students must upload a first draft of the introduction to the paper to Turnitin by noon on Fri 22 October.

I gave out handouts on the comma.

I was impressed with the discussions students had. I feel like students have bought into this module and I appreciate it. It was a big ask.

audio:
cmod6001-14-20101015.m4a

SOFT6001 Exam in Week 06

We will have an in-class assessment on 21 October.

This will be an individual assessment, not a group exercise.

It will be worth 10/100 of your overall mark.

The in class group exercises that you do every week contribute 30/100. The remaining 60/100 comes from the exam at the end-ish if the semester.

So if you do well in it you will have almost passed the module.

If you have work commitments on that night and can't make the exam, please let me know and I will try to find an alternative plan for you.

SOFT6001 Week 05

All groups did very well on tonight's problem. I am very pleased.

I did feel though that not everybody had read the comments I posted on last week problem.

SOFT6001 Week 05 - tonight's problem

Tonight's problem is here is you are keen to make a start

COMP6021 Class 12

We looked at image sub-sampling, pixel resizing, and interpolation.

I thought today's class was especially dull, but maybe it was just me.

Homework:
A row of pure black pixels, is followed by a missing row, that is followed by pure red (R:255 G:255: B:255) pixels. If the missing row is interpolated what RGB values would you expect the missing pixels to have?

COMP6021 Class now full

This class is now full. No more students will be permitted to register.

If you wanted to take this class and missed out please e-mail me and I will let you know when it is next offered.

CMOD6001 Class canceled 2010-11-17

There will be no CMOD6001 class on 17 November.

COMP6021 Class Canceled 2010-11-17

There will be no COMP6021 class on Nov 17

CMOD6001 Class 13

I asked student to think about cyber etiquette and to come up with a list of recommendations that could server as a guide.

One group still has to send me a list.

audio:
cmod6001-13-20101014.m4a

CMOD6001 Class 12

I gave out handouts on note taking.

We discussed the marking of Assessment 1.

We talked about the project and decided on a Lip Dub video. We will discuss more about that in a later class.

Students researched their papers. I met with each student to discuss how they were getting on with the paper.

audio
cmod6001-12-20101013.m4a

COMP6021 Class 11

Students worked on fax coding for the first half of the class.

We looked at digital color. HSB, RGB, Lab, CMYK

I gave students a color safari exercise.

COMP6021 Class 10

We looked at coding 1-bit images and fax machines.

Fax machines use run-length encoding, a modified Huffman code, and sometimes even a form of difference coding.

Deana the amazing human fax machine was the first to decode the image of the happy face
 with a goatee.

Homework:
Code an image on a 12x12 grid. Add it as a comment to the blog.

CMOD6001 Assessment 1 results available

I have completed grading student submissions for Assessment 1. Most student should be able to see their marks out of 10 by logging into turnitin again.

Each student's mark was based both on the student's ability to discuss the job in class and the student's submission to turnitin. The ability to discuss the job in class counted for a lot.

CMOD6001 Class 11

We completed our look at the jobs.

Students should upload their submission to TurnItIn over the weekend. By Monday it will be too late.

Audio
cmod6001-11-20101008

SOFT6001 Week 04

IF & Flowcharts

Problem:
Write a program that inputs three numbers and outputs the smallest of the three

Some solutions

COMP6021 Class 09

We discussed how perception in part reality, part biology, and part culture.

We saw the Gorilla video on YouTube. Some people don't even see the gorilla, but everyone in this claims claims that they did.

We looked at the physics of light, and the biology of vision. The I asked why there are 7 colours in the rainbow and argued that it is just because somebody made that up.

I fantasized about being the leader of North Korea and changing the way everybody names colours.

The way we think about color is very cultural. Irish has no word for pink. This interesting article from Wikipedia on the Japanese color 青  and this article on distinguishing blue from green across cultures make the same point quite well.

CMOD6001 Class 10

We talked a little bit about the free choice. I explained how pass by compensation works and discussed the appeals process.

The we looked at some more jobs.

I showed students a lip dub YouTube and asked if they were up to making one of their own as a project. No one seemed that convinced so we might do something more boring.

audio:
cmod6001-10-20101007.m4a

CMOD6001 Class 09

We looked at some of the job specifications from earlier in the semester. Some students have not completed this task to my satisfaction.


I randomly distributed  topics for the upcoming writing exercise. More on that in future classes.

audio
cmod6001-09-20101006.m4a

COMP6021 Class 08

We looked at how Blanck & White images can be digitized.

main themes:

• Sample rate - dots per inch
• Quantization levels - pixel depth

We saw examples of the same image with different sample rates and different quantization levels

Students used Photoshop to alter the pixel depth of a grayscale image

COMP6021 Class 07

We looked at how audio might be coded.

The main points were

• analog audio technology - electrical analog for compressed air
• sub-sampling
• quantization level reduction
• relative encoding

Modern audio coding techniques are much more complex in reality

CMOD6001 Assessment 1 Due

All students should submit Assessment 1 using turnitin.com

The course code and password will be set to you by e-mail.

Students will also be expected to discuss their submission in class next week. Failure to turn up to class may result in a student getting zero for this assessment. If you are sick you should get a sick cert from your doctor.

CMOD6001 Class 08

We continued working through the process of writing a paper. Having brainstormed yesterday, today we looked at how to structure all the ideas along various themes. I gave out copies of the white boards from yesterday, and students worked in groups at putting a structure on everything.

We devised a possible outline for a paper.

cmod6001-08-20101001.m4a