• [2018-08-14] the second exam will be on September 28th at 9:00-10:30 in P5 2.01
• [2018-06-24] Several announcements:
  1. From now on, the lecture will start at 11:00 sharp (instead of 11:15) to improve the lunch situation.
  2. We have set up a writable directory /lecture/essays within jupyter. Students who are willing to share their essay with all other ItC students can upload them there.
  3. We will reserve some time for essay presentations in the last lecture on July 19th. This will be the last chance for giving a presentation. You must have submitted the essay before giving the presentation. This means that the topics we publish on July 5 are the very last topics that you can possibly present (note that with the July 5 topics, mathematically you will only have roughly one week between being assigned the topic and essay submission / the talk).
  4. If you don't care about presentations, the last essay topics will be published on July 19th (after the last lecture). Remember that you must have submitted and passed at least one essay in order to participate in the exam.
  5. We will offer an extra tutorial on August 1st at 9:15 in F1.110. In this tutorial, we will answer your questions. If you want us to discuss a specific homework task, please tell us beforehand via email a week before the tutorial so that we can prepare. We will only discuss exercises that were requested via email.
  6. For 4 ECTS students, the material up to (and including) ElGamal is relevant. This includes homework ex9 and the tutorials on June 25th/26th. The content of lectures/tutorials after June 26th and homework after ex9 will not be part of the 4 ECTS exam.
  7. There will be no tutorial on July 20th (and of course neither on July 23rd/24th).
• [2018-05-26] there is no lecture on May 31st because it's a holiday. The tutorials on June 1st, 4th, and 5th will also not take place.
• [2018-05-26] essay presentations are now limited to 10 minutes for all future talks (used to be 15 minutes) to ensure that we have enough time for the tutorial.
• Because of Whit Monday, there will be no tutorial on May 21st. Affected students should visit the tutorial on Friday May 18th or Tuesday May 22nd.
• [2018-05-04] there is no lecture on May 10th because it's a holiday. The tutorials on May 11th, 14th, and 15th will also not take place. There will be no homework due on Friday the 18th.
  Because of the AStA Sommerfestival, on May 17th the lecture will be in A6. It ends early at 13:00. Tutorials will take place as usual.
• [2018-04-19] we have published the essay distribution website. You got a personal password for it via email. If you haven't received a password, please contact Jan Bobolz.

Lecture

• Thursdays, 11:00 - 14:00 in D2

Tutorials

• Fridays, 09:15-10:45 in F2.211
• Mondays, 11:15-12:45 in F2.211
• Tuesdays, 11:15-12:45 in F1.110

The first tutorial will be on Friday, April 13th.

We offer two dates for a 90 minute written exam at the end of the term. The dates are going to be announced here.

• First exam date: August 13th, 9:00-10:30, Room: Lecture hall O1
• Second exam date: September 28th, 9:00-10:30, Room: P5 2.01

Allowed auxiliary material for the exam

For the exam, you may bring (blue/black) pens and one double-sided sheet of A4 paper (or two single-page sheets) with your own handwritten notes.

No additional material is allowed for the exam. In particular, you are not allowed to bring a calculator.

Exam requirements

You are required to have handed in one essay graded pass or excellent in order to participate in the exam.

Exam grade bonus

By participating in the exercises, you can gain up to two bonus grade steps (e.g., improve your grade from 2,3 to 1,7). The bonus only applies if you pass the exam.

For this, we apply a point system as follows:

• If you have gathered 2 points at the end of the course, you'll get 1 bonus grade step.
• If you have gathered 3 points at the end of the course, you'll get 2 bonus grade steps.

You can gather points as follows:

• 1 point for achieving at least 60% of all possible homework points.
• 1 additional point for achieving at least 80% of all possible homework points.
• 1 point for an excellent essay.
• 1 point for a good presentation.

You can profit at most once from each bullet point. For example, if you've already gained a point by handing in an excellent essay, you cannot gain another one by handing in a second essay. Hence there is a maximum of four points to be gained. Details on each of the possibilities to gain points can be found below.

On Thursdays, we will post homework exercise sheets about Thursday's lecture on jupyter. You will have 8 days to solve each of them, i.e. they must be submitted on or before Friday the week after release.

You can hand in solutions in groups of up to three people. To create a group account for jupyter, fill out this form.
As a result, you'll get an initial password (write it down!) and we will create an account for you (usually) within a day.

Essays

Each week, we post new essay topics corresponding to current lecture content. They are distributed via our website, where you can input your preferences. We then choose an assignment randomly. If you like, you can write multiple essays throughout the course (limited to one per week and a maximum of three overall).
An essay is 2-3 pages long (4 pages are tolerated but not expected), in a single column layout with font size 11 and reasonable margins. For LaTeX, we suggest you use our template [link]. Cite the sources you use.
When a topic is assigned to you, you have 14 days to write the essay and hand it in as a pdf.
We will then read the essay and grade it excellent, pass, or fail. Please note that our standards for excellent essays are quite high (quality should be comparable to what you'd find in a lecture script or a book).
Obviously, plagiarism is not tolerated. If we notice any hint of plagiarism in your submission, the submission will be graded "fail". In clear cases, you'll fail the course. 

Presentations

For every pass essay you write, you have the option to do a 10 minute presentation in a tutorial about the essay topic. The tutor will grade the presentation good, pass, or fail.
If you like, you can use a beamer for your presentation. Please bring your own laptop or send the presentation file (ppt, pptx, or pdf) to your tutor beforehand.
The presentation should happen at most a week after handing in the essay. In individual cases, the presentation can also be held later (talk to your tutor if you need such an exception).