6.041/6.431 Probabilistic Systems Analysis
Spring 2014
Instructor: Babak Ayazifar
TAs: Aliaa Atwi, Shashank Shekhar Dwivedi, Ehimwenma Nosakhare
Lecture:
MW 12noon
(34-101)
Recitation 1: TR 10am
(36-155)
Recitation 2: TR 11am
(36-155)
Recitation 3: TR 1pm
(26-310)
Information:
Tutorials: TA
:
Time
(location)
Aliaa : 10am-11am, 12-1pm
(24-308)
Ehi :
11am-12noon, 12-1pm
(24-310)
Shashank: 1-2pm,
2-3pm
(24-316)
Babak OHs: Thursdays 4:30-6pm (34-302)
Aliaa OHs: Fridays 11am-12noon, 1-1:30pm (24-308)
Ehi OHs: Thursdays 12-1:30pm (24-312)
Shashank OHs: Thursdays 2-3:30pm (24-312)
Announcements
TIME-SENSITIVE: Your Final Course Grade
Your Midterm 3 scores were released earlier. Assuming we've clicked the correct buttons on Stellar and Gradebook, you should now be able to see your course grades.
Please make sure you read the document titled "Your Final Course Grade" which you can access at 6041-S14-Final-Grade-Announcement.pdf before you write to any of us; it's filed in the General section of the Resources folder on Stellar. That document outlines the options before you, and it includes a grade histogram.
Cheers,
Babak.
Announced on 19 May 2014 10:30 a.m. by Babak Ayazifar
Thank you!
We're not just head and shoulders above, but in fact head, shoulders, and torso above any course with an enrollment greater than 10 students. Our yield as of this writing is a whopping 95%!!!! Wooo hooo!
Kudos to you.
Much obliged.
Cheers,
Babak.
Announced on 14 May 2014 12:14 p.m. by Babak Ayazifar
Final Reminder and Plea: Deadline for you to take action: Noon TODAY!
Hi folks,
Sorry for the spamming, but as of this writing 13 out of 83 registered students, and 11 out of 13 listeners, have *not* yet filled out the course survey.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a high yield in course evaluations. It's an essential part of what makes the feedback meaningful as a whole. Please, please, please take some time to fill out the online evaluation for our course. I've provided the link below.
As a final reminder, we'll add 5 points to the lower of your last two midterm scores if you complete the online course evaluation survey for 6.041/6.431 (whichever one applies to your registration status). Even if you feel that you don't need the 5 points, please fill out the survey.
This is honor system driven. We do not have even an iota of desire to police this.
We ask of you the following.
(a) That you NOT go on a "clicking spree" to complete the survey;
(b) That you give each question on the survey due consideration and provide answers to the best of your knowledge; and
(c) That you provide as much freestyle answers and comments on the survey as you are able to and to not let the radio buttons or multiple choice answers suffice. These freestyle comments provide the most valuable feedback to us. We received fantastic feedback from our students in 6.041/6.431 in the past, both praise and critique.
To be unequivocal, please know that you should feel free to discuss the beautiful, the good, the neutral, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the course.
We give you the 5 points because your opinion matters to us. It's as simple as that, really.
Great teaching is a process of continual refinement, and it cannot happen without feedback. You're singularly positioned to provide the essential feedback that we need to improve and fine-tune our teaching.
For your convenience, here's the link to the online MIT course survey:
http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation
To claim your 5 points, you must to send us an e-mail---by no later than noon on Wednesday, 14 May 2014 , affirming that you have completed the survey. Needless to say, you may only send us an e-mail AFTER you have completed the survey. It is NOT sufficient that you merely INTEND to complete the survey.
If you have already completed the survey, thank you. Please follow the instructions below to clinch the five points for yourself.
After, and only after, you've completed the MIT course survey for 6.041/6.431, please
CLICK HERE click here to send us an e-mail indicating that you have completed it.
Please be sure to complete the subject line with your first and last names , in that order; do not leave the subject line devoid of your official name as it appears on your school records (no nicknames please).
For example, if your name is John Doe, then your subject line
should be
[6041-S14-Course-Survey] John Doe
The body of your message must contain the following (if you use the hyperlinks above, this content should automatically appear in the body of your e-mail):
On my honor, I affirm that
(a) I have submitted an online course evaluation for 6.041/6.431 for fall 2013; and
(b) I have given each question due consideration and filled out the survey to the best of my knowledge. I understand that giving "due consideration" did not, in any way, restrict how favorable or unfavorable my overall review was for the course.
TypeYourNameHere
IMPORTANT: Please do NOT show us the content of your survey
selections and comments. We insist that the content of your
online course survey submissions be anonymous to us.
Please do NOT mix this task with your self-evaluation e-mail.
They should be two separate e-mails. We can't keep track
otherwise.
Last spring and fall we had a whopping 93% response yield for 6.041/6.431's course surveys. And the comments were fabulously helpful, including those that were critiques.
Make us proud. Let's get an even higher yield this
semester.
Cheers,
Babak.
Announced on 14 May 2014 2:23 a.m. by Babak Ayazifar
TIME-SENSITIVE: Your Self-Evaluations. Deadline: 10 am, Thursday, 15 May 2014
TIME-SENSITIVE: Your Self-Evaluations. Deadline: 10 am, Thursday, 15 May 2014
Hello folks,
We'll assign your final course grades on Thursday morning this
week, which is why this e-mail is time-sensitive.
At the start of the semester I had promised to give you an
opportunity to evaluate yourselves. Now is the time.
It's critical that you follow these instructions carefully, or
you risk causing your e-mail to remain unread.
I want to receive from each of you who is so inclined (i.e., this
is entirely voluntary), a crisp, on-point e-mail
of no longer than two
paragraphs of REASONABLE LENGTH, stating what
your fairest assessment is of the course letter grade that you have
earned in 6.041/6.431 this semester, and why.
You may also use the opportunity to inform your friendly teaching
staff of any extenuating circumstances that may have affected your
performance adversely, if you want us to take such information into
account.
But everything you write
must fit within two paragraphs of REASONABLE length.
We don't have the bandwidth to read a manifesto.
Please direct your self-evaluation e-mails to me.
Deadline for
submission:
10 am, Thursday, 15 May
2014
(we
regret that we cannot consider any late submission).
IMPORTANT: It's
essential that you start your subject line with the following
(
including the square brackets
and the exact text within it, as shown below
)
:
If you are registered for 6.041 (regardless of which recitation
section you attend), please use the format below:
[6041-S14-Grade] YourFirstName YourLastName
FairAssessmentofYourEarnedCourseGrade
Example of a valid subject line:
[6041-S14-Grade] Bugs Bunny A+
If you are registered for 6.431 (regardless of which recitation
section you attend), use the format below:
[6431-S14-Grade] YourFirstName YourLastName
FairAssessmentofYourEarnedCourseGrade
Example of a valid subject line:
[6431-S14-Grade] Pink Panther A+
The text within the square brackets MUST be exactly as I have typed
above; it should NOT be filled with the grade that you assert you
have earned. The hyphens must be there. If my e-mail
filter does not detect the start of the subject line exactly as
shown above, it will refuse to place your self-evaluation note in
the appropriate folder.
If your e-mail does not conform to these specs, it will end up
unread in the ether somewhere. I promise you. I ga-ron-tee
it! Have I emphasized this point enough already?
The following are
NOT
valid
subject lines:
[A+] Bugs Bunny
[6.041-Grade A+] Bugs Bunny
[6431-S14-A-] Bugs Bunny A- (What's wrong with this
subject line?
To make it easy for you, I've provided two hyperlinks
below. If Stellar doesn't mangle the hyperlinks, you
should be able to click on the appropriate one to get a
correctly-formatted skeleton of the subject line.
If you are a 6.041 student,
click here
.
If you are a 6.431 student,
click
here
.
Sending me these paragraphs is particularly important if you feel
that you might be at, or near, a letter-grade boundary. Yes,
you have incomplete information as you make a best
determination.
Statistics I collected in fall 2006 in my large Signals and Systems
course at Berkeley indicate that the biggest subset of students
pinpointed their grade correctly, with the second largest subset
over-estimating their grade by 1/3 of a letter grade. On
average, students overestimated their performance by 1/6 of a
letter grade in fall 2006, and this is a fantastic result. I
expect nothing less here at MIT.
Please give me something solid to cling to.
If you have non-anonymous feedback for the course, I'd be
delighted to hear it, but you
must
wait until AFTER we have
assigned your final course grades to give me those. Your
personal feedback will carry much more weight after we have
determined the final course grades.
Why are you still here? Go work on your paragraphs.
:)
Cheers,
Babak.
Announced on 13 May 2014 2:42 p.m. by Babak Ayazifar
REMINDER: Course Surveys
Hi folks,
This is a reminder that we will add 5 points to the lower of your
last two midterm scores if you complete the online course
evaluation survey for 6.041/6.431 (whichever one applies to your
registration status).
This is honor system driven. We do not have even an iota of
desire to police this.
We ask of you the following.
(a) That you NOT go on a "clicking spree" to complete the
survey;
(b) That you give each question on the survey due consideration and
provide answers to the best of your knowledge; and
(c) That you provide as much freestyle answers and comments on the
survey as you are able to and to not let the radio buttons or
multiple choice answers suffice. These freestyle comments
provide the most valuable feedback to us. We received
fantastic feedback from our students in 6.041/6.431 in the past,
both praise and critique.
To be unequivocal, please know that you should feel free to discuss
the beautiful, the good, the neutral, the bad, and the ugly aspects
of the course.
We give you the 5 points because your opinion matters to us.
It's as simple as that, really.
Great teaching is a process of continual refinement, and it cannot
happen without feedback. You're singularly positioned to
provide the essential feedback that we need to improve and
fine-tune our teaching.
For your convenience, here's the link to the online MIT course survey.
http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation
To claim your 5 points, you must to send us an e-mail---by no later
than
noon on Wednesday, 14 May 2014
, affirming that you have completed the survey. Needless to
say, you may only send us an e-mail AFTER you have completed the
survey. It is NOT sufficient that you merely INTEND to
complete the survey.
If you have already completed the survey, thank you. Please
follow the instructions below to clinch the five points for
yourself.
After, and only after, you've completed the MIT course survey for 6.041/6.431, please click here to send us an e-mail indicating that you have completed it.
Please be sure to complete the subject line with your first and
last names
, in that order; do not leave the subject line devoid of your
official name as it appears on your school records (no nicknames
please).
For example, if your name is John Doe, then your subject line should be
[6041-S14-Course-Survey] John Doe
The body of your message must contain the following (if you use the hyperlinks above, this content should automatically appear in the body of your e-mail):
On my honor, I affirm that
(a) I have submitted an online course evaluation for 6.041/6.431 for fall 2013; and
(b) I have given each question due consideration and filled out the survey to the best of my knowledge. I understand that giving "due consideration" did not, in any way, restrict how favorable or unfavorable my overall review was for the course.
TypeYourNameHere
IMPORTANT: Please do NOT show us the content of your survey selections and comments. We insist that the content of your online course survey submissions be anonymous to us.
Please do NOT mix this task with your self-evaluation e-mail.
They should be two separate e-mails. We can't keep track
otherwise.
Also, please note that to receive the five-point credit you must do
this by the deadline we've given above. We need time to
incorporate the points into the Excel file that we'll use for
our final grading session next Thursday or Friday. So, even though
MIT allows you to fill out the course surveys until later, if you
do this beyond OUR deadline, you will miss out on the five
points. Please get to it by then.
Last spring and fall we had a whopping 93% response yield for 6.041/6.431's course surveys. And the comments were fabulously helpful, including those that were critiques.
Make us proud. Let's get an even higher yield this
semester.
Cheers,
Babak.
Announced on 12 May 2014 3:33 p.m. by Babak Ayazifar
