Better Informatics - 3rd year

Exams | official list

General Edit on GitHub

• Year 3 Google Drive
• mailing list archives - ug3-students
• Useful YouTube channel for MLPR / PMR / IT / IAML / DME
• Simon’s Past Paper Solution Collection
• Dump DPMT projects to Trello

ADS - Algorithms and Data Structures | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• An unofficial set of programming assignments based on the ADS material - website
• Sorting algorithms 1 - interactive
• Sorting algorithms 2 - website
• Counting sort - interactive
• A video clearly demonstrating the Counting Sort (as it’s not in the above link, and Mary’s notes don’t make it easy) - video
• Prim’s Algorithm - interactive
• Kruskal’s Algorithm - interactive
• Longest Common Subsequence - animation
• Network Flow - interactive
• Graham’s Scan - interactive
• Dynamic Programming - Tushar Roy explains a few examples really well on YouTube

AR - Automated Reasoning Edit on GitHub

• 2010 solutions on Drive
• May 2012,

CARD - Computer Architecture and Design | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• Past papers and solutions (see ‘unorganised’ folder)
• Stan’s summary - link
• All lecture slides in one pdf

CCS - Computational Cognitive Science | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• Bits And Bobs

COMN - Computer Communications and Networks | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• Textbook in shared drive here
• Video explaining CRC calculation - link
• Wiki explaining CRC calculation - link
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• https://web.archive.org/web/20081209125106/http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~courses/cn8800/solutions/Ch7.pdf

CS - Computer Security Edit on GitHub

• August 2010 answers
• May 2010 answers
• This explains BLP and AB much better than the slides: i93lbacm(org).pdf
• Some really great explanations of concepts in the course (Crypto, PK, RSA, Diffie-Hellman): http://www.youtube.com/user/ArtOfTheProblem
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• Running 2nd CW locally (on Ubuntu):
  • Copy folder /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/teaching/compsec/cw2/
  • Follow instruction at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation
  • Modify your qemu.env, the location to QEMU should be something like /usr/bin/kvm
  • Install vinagre: sudo apt install vinagre
• Iptables essentials
• Wireshark:
  • The “Packet List” pane in Wireshark (see Table 3.15. for what the lines on the side mean)
  • Convert IP addresses into hostnames (Edit - Preferences - Name Resolution)
• FTP:
  • A walkthrough through FTP passive mode, by manually reading every single packet
  • List of raw FTP commands
  • Difference between FTP active and passive mode
    • tip: read it carefully, not just the bullet points. the picture is useful too.
    • tip: for some reason, in active mode, the source data port is not 20 (in the coursework)
  • How to test FTP active mode:
    1. Run ftp alice
    2. Type alice as username, press enter, type alice as password.
    3. Type get meow.jpg
    4. meow.jpg should be downloaded & it should say “please consider using passive mode”
• Software Security
  • return-to-libc.pdf
  • Return-to-libc tutorial
  • buffer overflow attacks (computerphile)

CT - Compiling Techniques piazza | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• GitLab
• Understanding the Stack
• Your compiler is allowed to take up to ten seconds to finish.
• Wikipedia: Operator-precedence parser
• Grammar stuff:
  • C grammar, C Lex spec
  • Eliminate left recursion
• MIPS (lots of useful links here!)

EPL - Elements of Programming Languages | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

Unofficial past paper solutions can be found in the EPL folder in the Team Drive.

FNLP - Foundations of Natural Language Processing | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• (2019-20) Bora’s Notes
• See shared drive for past papers and solutions. Addtional resources on discourse coherence:
• http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/alex/papers/iwcs4.pdf
• https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~ychoi/cse507/slides/06-discourse.pdf
• All slides (2014) in one pdf
• 14/15 slides rough summary: here (Directly exported from org-mode, so algorithms and formulas are largely missing)
• Nik’s notes 2023-24

IAML - Introductory Applied Machine Learning Edit on GitHub

• See shared drive for some unofficial solutions.
• An amazing online course at Caltech by Yaser Abu-Mostafa - link
• A very detailed yet simple visual explanation of PCA, applied to a real-world scenario (on stats.stackexchange)
• Clearer (than our slides) explanation of SVMs
• Visual explanations of ML and Linear Algebra concepts
  • Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues
  • Principal Component Analysis
• A good explanation of Information Gain and Entropy
• Examinable topics summary - Having analysed IAML exam papers from 2012 to date, here is the summary of topic covered.
  • To help with the understanding of topics that come across more often than others, score = frequency of occurance, expressed as % over 12
• Student notes:
  • athiyadeviyani
  • makspll
  • mrknmc
  • georgeka98

IDB - Introduction to Databases | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

Previously named Database Systems (DBS)

• Questions and answers from the DBS textbook - link
• Normalization tool
• Revision notes by Ben Shaw
• Functional dependency closure / key finder / minimal cover / 3NF & BCNF checker tool (source)
• Relational algebra calculator / engine, example schema definition for tutorial 1
• Exam tips:
  • Don’t forget semicolons, they will knock marks off for this!
  • They want to see efficient solutions!
  • Derivation using the Armstrong’s axioms: all steps and axioms in your derivation should be clearly mentioned
    • It’s also worth understanding that there could be multiple correct proofs for a given implication so detailed explanations would make it easier for marker
  • Relational algebra questions: consider how your answer behaves when certain relations are empty (tutorial 1, question 3)
• Relational algebra FAQ:
  • Operations only return unique tuples. That means if you project on a single column, each row will be unique. This is because (definition) “Relations (tables) are sets of records of the same length”
• easily consumable stuff by b0rk:
  • sql queries don’t start with select
  • sql query steps
  • anatomy of an sql query
  • how sql joins work
• SQL to XXX FAQ (for those with experience in SQL/NoSQL)
  • Relational algebra:
    • project (pi)
      • select id, name, city from customers;
      • RethinkDB (NoSQL) people will know this as .pluck
    • select (sigma)
      • select * from customers where name = 'Alice' or name = city
      • RethinkDB (NoSQL) people will know this as .filter
  • Unknowns / NULL
    • Unknown is represented as NULL in SQL,
    • unknown = unknown is really NULL = NULL,
    • all comparisons where at least one of the arguments is NULL, evaluates to unknown (which, again, is NULL).

ILP - Informatics Large Practical learn | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• Mapbox:
  • Show a user’s location (tutorial), Showing device location (location component docs)
• User management tutorial
• Bora M. Alper’s ILP Visualiser

ITCS - Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science | drps, info, papers December exam Edit on GitHub

• ITCS concepts (from Julian’s guide!) - Here
• Tutorial notes - Here (Shared GDrive) (original page: link)
• Some useful definitions and proofs - link

IVR - Introduction to Vision and Robotics Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Collaborative answers to short questions
• Sample solution for 2011 August - link
• Sample vision MATLAB code from previous years

OS - Operating Systems | drps, info, papers April/May exam Edit on GitHub

• Useful short OS tutorial - here
• Cambridge OS course notes - here
• Revision Notes by Ben Shaw
• Revision Notes by Cem Yilmaz

Buddy system

• very brief overview
• Intuitive Walkthrough of an example

PI - Professional Issues | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Condensed slides
• Summary of DPA principles (along with their respective changes in the GDPR)
• GDPR - A Guide to Compliance

SDP - System Design Project | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• Project has changed as of 2017/18:
  • no competitiveness
  • no robots playing football, instead designing an assistive robotic device
  • more details TBC

SP - Speech Processing Edit on GitHub

Answers to multiple choice for past papers here.

ST - Software Testing | drps, info None exam Edit on GitHub

• Official exam papers and solutions
• Useful Explanation of MC/DC
• Revision Notes by Ben Shaw