Elements of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

Dear students,

you can now find the seat that has been assigned to you for the upcoming exam on your personal status page in the CMS.

Regarding hygiene regulations during the exam, please note the following:

• As the precondition to enter Saarland University is to comply with the 3G rule, this is also the precondition to participate in the exam. This may be checked by the University’s security service.
• The 3G rule means to be completely vaccinated or recovered or having a negative antigen rapid test (valid 24 hours) or a negative PCR test certificate (valid 48 hours).
• Please note: If you fail to provide the proof of your G status upon request your name will be recorded and you must leave the campus immediately. Your exam will be rated as “failed”.
• A medical mouth-nose-protection mask (surgical mask or FFP2/KN95/N95 mask) must be worn during the entire exam.
• Students who have the typical symptoms of SARS-Cov2 disease will not be allowed to take exams. This does not include students who have a negative daytime test result.
• Students who have had close contact with a Corona-positive person may only participate in examinations and courses in attendance if they can show sufficient vaccination protection (basic immunization not longer than 3 months or booster vaccination) or convalescent status (not older than 3 months) or vaccination protection after recovery and are asymptomatic (see § 4 b Ordinance on Corona Pandemic (VO-CP).
• Students who are unable to take an examination due to segregation (isolation or quarantine) in accordance with the Ordinance on the Control of the Corona Pandemic (VO-CP) may effectively withdraw from the examinations without receiving a failed attempt. The regulations for withdrawal from examinations of the respective valid examination regulations apply. Proof of the withdrawal must be submitted without culpable hesitation.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

you can now find a txt file containing the exam relevant content for all lectures in the Materials section (in the category 'Additional Materials').

Also, we decided to extend the duration of the office hour on Friday to 15:00, as many students reported to us that the upcoming MFI I exam ends at 13:00 and poses a scheduling issue. The additional hour should hopefully give you enough time to attend.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

we have a couple of announcements to make:

1. The upcoming pre-exam office hour will take place on Friday, the 18th of February at 12:00-14:00 instead, due to scheduling constraints on our side. Please be aware of the changed date. We strongly advise you to visit us if you have any remaining questions.
2. The upcoming exercise sheet 11 contains exam-relevant content, but it is not mandatory for exam admission. However, you may earn up to 8 bonus points if you need them. Since exercise sheet 10 and 11 will not be discussed in the tutorials anymore, we will provide you with solutions.
3. Please be aware that the registration deadline for HISPOS and CMS (CMS only for students which cannot register in official systems) for the upcoming exam is on the 17th of February. Please be aware of this deadline, otherwise you are not allowed to participate in the exam.
4. For the exam, you will be allowed to bring two double-sided A4 page of hand-written notes. Printouts and electronics are not allowed and the latter must be turned off. Additionally, we advise you to bring a non-programmable calculator. The exam duration is two hours.

Finally, you will be informed about the hygiene regulations for the upcoming exam soon.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

we notice that the tutorial visits and submissions are decreasing as the semester comes to end and the exam comes closer. Therefore, we decided that starting next week, we will:

1. Merge the Monday tutorial into the Tuesday tutorial
2. Merge the two Friday tutorials (into HS 002)
3. Remove the office hour, as the interest seems to be almost non-existent. Please use the forum or ask your tutor directly if you have questions.

Also, note that there will be no tutorials during the week before the exam. Note that this means exercise sheet 10 and 11 will not be discussed in the tutorials. We will however post solutions to the sheets. The related lecture content is relevant for the exam.

However, we will host an office hour on Discord on February 17 during the usual lecture slot (12:15) in which you can ask the tutors any final questions you may have before the exam. Please consider making use of this opportunity.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

we would appreciate it if you participate in the online course evaluation of this this year's iteration of EDSAI. Please take 5-10 minutes of your time and fill out the following course evaluation surveys for the lecture and tutorials respectively:

Lecture: https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=131612&p=xe8qpc

Tutorials: https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=1316121&p=bvv14v

The surveys can be completed until February 3.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Hi all,

see the information below. We will later upload a text file to CMS containing similar info for all lectures.

best regards and good luck with the rest of the course,

Jörg Hoffmann

[corrected version]

#14-15 AlphaGo Part 1 (JH): Slides 15--34 are exam relevant. Questions may be asked about all the concepts and algorithms explained on these slides. There may be exercises asking to execute pseudo-code on examples.

15-17 AlphaGo Part 2 (JH): Slides 16--35 and 40--41 are exam relevant. Questions may be asked about all the concepts and algorithms explained on these slides. There may be exercises asking to execute the algorithms on examples.

17-18 AlphaGo Part 3 (JH): Slides 9--17 and 21--23 are exam relevant. Questions may be asked about all the concepts and algorithms explained on these slides. There may be exercises asking to execute pseudo-code on examples.

Dear Students,

as you probably expected, given the COVID situation the AlphaGo lectures also will be online only.

The lecture will be in zoom (see the link in the lecture Timetable). I'll respond to your questions in the zoom chat. The lecture will also be streamed to YouTube of course (the YouTube link will be posted into the chat at the start of each lecture).

There is the hypothetical possibility that we can move back to hybrid teaching in January (first lecture of the new year is on January 6). I'll send around another news item beforehand.

See you on Monday,

best regards,

Jörg Hoffmann

Dear students,

due to new COVID regulations, we are required to allocate larger rooms for the tutorials held in presence. Therefore, starting next week, the tutorials will be held in the lecture halls of building E1.3. Please take a look at your personal status page to make sure you know where the location of your tutorial has been moved to.

During the tutorial, you need to keep your mask on at all times. Also, you may only occupy the seats in the lecture hall marked with green dots.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

due to popular request, the submission phase for exercise sheets has been moved from Thursday 14:00 - Wednesday 23:59 to Friday 12:00 - Thursday 23:59. Note that the office hour (Fr 16) is a great opportunity to look at the exercise sheet and ask questions if something is unclear.

Ironically, the submission instructions for assignment 02 incorrectly stated that the submission deadline is today instead of yesterday. we therefore allow you to still submit this assignment until today, 23:59.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

due to the lack of content that could be discussed in the tutorials, the tutorials next week will be cancelled. This does not affect the office hour, so feel free to visit us on Friday.

Also note that the solutions of the Lab notebooks are now available in the CMS Materials section.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

due to Prof. Jens Dittrich being ill, we decided to give the Python lectures on Thursday (04.11.21) and on Monday (08.11.21) as inverted classrooms.
This means, you will be given all the necessary materials (recording of the lecture from last year, notebooks, screencasts) beforehand, which serve as a basis for your self-study. We expect you to study this material at your own pace and prepare yourself for two online meetings on Discord at the usual lecture slots on Thursday 12:15 - 14:00 and on Monday 10:15 - 12:00. In these meetings, the so-called LAB, you will be working on hands-on exercises in small study groups under supervision of the tutors. Furthermore, you can use the LAB to ask any questions regarding the underlying material. Of course, you can also use the forum to ask questions while working on the material.

Best regards,
Joris

Dear students,

the tutorials have been distributed. In case you are not happy with your assignment, please make a post in the forum to offer a tutorial exchange. We do not accept requests to change tutorials without an exchange partner, as the workload on our tutors needs to be balanced.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Dear students,

the tutorial preference selection has been updated with the respective language modes of the tutorials (English/German). We offer two tutorials in English, while three will be held in German. Please re-evaluate your tutorial preferences taking this change into account until Saturday, 23:59 at the latest. This affects the online tutorial and one of the Friday tutorials (both English). The tutorials will be distributed by Sunday evening.

Note that next Monday is a public holiday (Allerheiligen), so neither a lecture nor the first Monday tutorial will take place. All other tutorials plus the office hour will take place for the first time next week. If you are looking for people to submit the exercise sheets with, this might be an opportunity to meet people.

Regards, Thorsten Klößner

Hi all,

as there have been several requests to do the lectures in English, and as Programmierung1 is already given in English, we have decided to put this question -- should the EDSAI lectures be given in German or in English? -- to your vote:

https://strawpoll.com/u61dx47pz

Please enter your preference. The vote will remain open until tomorrow (Thursday, Oct 27) evening. The lectures will be given in whichever language takes the majority in this vote. (You have to enter your name in the poll so that we can check the vote against the registration list in CMS; but of course we will keep this data private)

Unless a clear majority for German emerges within today, the lecture tomorrow (Introduction to AI) will be held in English. You can use this as a trial run to see whether or nor you like English EDSAI lectures.

Note: this is only about the language used in the lectures, not about the tutorials. If there is a need, both German and English tutorials will be offered.

best regards,

Jörg Hoffmann

Dear students,

the first lecture of Elements of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence will be held tomorrow (21st of October) at 12:15 by Prof. Jens Dittrich. Like all of Prof. Dittrich's lectures, it will be streamed to Youtube only, i.e. the lecture is fully online. The links to the Youtube streams of the lectures can always be found in the materials section or in the respective timetable entry shortly before the lecture. The organization of the lectures is also documented on the organization page of the course.

Furthermore, you are now able to set your tutorial preferences on your personal status page in the CMS. The deadline for changing your preferences is the 28th of October, 23:59. Shortly after, you will be assigned a tutorial.