Computer Vision

All work for this course is to be done in compliance with the standards of conduct set by Duke's Academic Integrity Council for both graduate and undergraduate students.

Using someone else's material in your work without giving credit is cheating, and will result in a failing grade in the exam or assignment involved in any case, and a failing grade in the course for more serious cases. The same holds for making materials available to others in the class: Who gives and who receives information will be treated the same way. "Using" or "making available" concerns any transfer of information, direct or otherwise. "Your work" is anything you turn in, including homework, project reports, and exams. As the sole exception, class materials, including lecture notes, handouts, slides, and homework assignments need not be cited when they are used.

The only communication allowed when working on a homework assignment is with your group peers, if you choose to work as a group (see Homework below), and with the teaching staff of this course.

Homework assignments will be posted on the homework page and announced on the class home page at least a week ahead of the due date.

All homework is to be submitted through Gradescope. Assignments will specify exactly what to submit, and what to call your files. Typically, you will submit both a PDF file and a Jupyter notebook.

Homework is to be done either individually or in pairs or in triples, and working in pairs or triples is strongly encouraged: This helps you discuss concepts and get unstuck when you encounter difficulties. It also helps us return your graded work earlier, since we'll have to read fewer papers. No other groupings are allowed.

Given the large class size, we will not be able to accommodate late homework. Please don't bother telling us reasons why you cannot submit an assignment. This includes illness, travel for interviews, anything else. To address any difficulties this policy may create, the lowest homework grade (including a zero for no assignment) will be dropped and the weight of the second lowest will be set to half that of the other homework grades.

Class participation amounts to attendance at discussion sessions and to asking and answering questions about the topic at hand, as described below. Attendance at one discussion session per week is mandatory.

Discussion sessions are via Zoom, with the meeting numbers listed on the course home page. You need to join the meeting through the Zoom account tied to a Duke email address.

A large part of each discussion session after the first involves answering questions students ask ahead of time. The rules for these questions are as follows:

Asking Questions

• You get one brownie point if you ask a new and interesting question. "New" means that the question, or any question substantively similar to that, has not been asked on Piazza before. "Interesting" means that the question is (i) relevant to the topic of the discussion and (ii) cannot just be answered by repeating parts of the class notes verbatim. The instructor determines if a question is new and interesting.
• To earn the brownie point, you must ask the question on Piazza and as a follow-up to a pinned discussion set up weekly for this purpose. Your name should visible at least to the instructor (although public signature is encouraged) and your post must be made by midnight EDT of the Tuesday just preceding the discussion. Part of Wednesday will be used to sort out questions and prepare their discussion, hence the early deadline.
• It is OK to ask more than one question per week, or to ask questions after the deadline. If possible, all questions will be answered during discussion. However, you will earn a brownie point only for the first new and interesting question you ask in any one week.
• Students are encouraged to upvote questions (by others) that they like to see discussed. Votes will be used to determine the order and extent to which questions are answered.

Answering Questions

• You earn up to three brownie points if you volunteer a substantive contribution to answering someone else's question during discussion. To earn the points, your contribution need not be correct, but it should show an honest effort to think about it, and that you have studied the materials and watched the video(s). Keep in mind that questions show up ahead of time, so you can prepare. The instructor determines if a contribution deserves all or part of the three brownie points.

Final Class Participation Score

• You stop earning brownie points when you have ten of them, although you are still welcome to contribute.
• The participation score is 10 x brownie points (out of 100).

Two percentage points of your grade come from filling out a class evaluation form at the end of the course.

For full credit, you need to fill out the course evaluation by a deadline to be specified on Piazza in due time and send Carlo (tomasi@cs.duke.edu) an email, by the same deadline, stating that you filled out the form. More instructions will be given on Piazza.

There will be a midterm exam and a final exam on the dates announced on the main course page. Both exams are open-book, open-notes, and will be administered on Gradescope. Sample exam questions will be made available in homework assignments after homework 0. These sample questions are in lieu of sample exams.

All handouts, including homework assignments and solution samples, are required reading. Only exceptions (that is, optional readings) are any materials posted in parentheses on the class syllabus page, and all appendices to the class notes.

Students are expected to be familiar with Python 3, and to install a full and up-to-date distribution of Python 3 through Anaconda on their computers. Instructions are given in Homework 0. See the resources page for pointers to tutorials.