About the grades

15 fevereiro 2025, 23:23 • Mário Alexandre Teles de Figueiredo

Dear Students, 

The grades are now published. I apologize for the huge delay. 

I would like to clarify the grading criteria briefly. First, I believe that grades in PhD-level courses are not very relevant. I see these courses more as an opportunity to learn and study than to obtain a grade. Given the very diverse backgrounds and prior knowledge about machine learning of the students taking the course, it's almost impossible to use a uniform objective criterion. Furthermore, the high diversity of styles and types of reports makes assessing and grading them necessarily rather subjective. 

Having said that, I gave quite high grades to all the students who submitted a report. 

In grading the reports, I valued most those that showed a significant effort to do something that fits well with the nature and topics of the course. I valued somewhat less those reports that were simply done in another context, especially if they were far from the topics of the course. I also valued intrinsic aspects of the work, such as clarity, pedagogical value, technical level, rigor, etc…

I will be glad to discuss the grades with any student who so wishes.

In a few days, I will register the grades.

Finally, I want to thank you all for taking this course and attending the lectures, and I apologize again for the delay in grading the projects. 

Best regards, 

Mário Figueiredo.