The examination questions will be posted on this course website tomorrow at 9:00. You will have until 23:00 on Wednesday 13 June to complete your answers and submit them to an assignment upload slot on this website. Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines published in the same document as the questions. Failure to do so will result in your submission not being assessed.

I have received some queries from students regarding preparation for the examination. I discussed most of the following details during both lectures, but provide them here for clarification.

The paper will consist of a mix of questions. Some will relate to the material covered in the slides, while other questions will deal with topics not explicitly covered during the lectures. The latter type of question will require some research on your part.

Due to the partially research-based nature of the questions, the examination will be a two-day take-home paper. This is to avoid any time-based pressures, and does not imply that a full two days will be required to complete it (it should be possible to complete the paper within one day). No program code will have to be implemented for any of the questions.

Stemming from the above details, not much preparation should be necessary for the examination. I suggest reading through the slides to familiarise yourself with the content. Other than this, your research abilities and insight will be most important for this examination.

I have uploaded the slides for the second lecture, as well as the examination paper for last year.

The specification for the assignment has been posted. Please note the submission deadline. No late submissions will be accepted. Please make sure that you follow all the submission instructions exactly.

Please note the following details regarding the assignment and the examination for MIT802:

- There will only be a single assignment that will comprise the entire semester mark.

- The first assignment will be released through the course of today.

- The due date for the first assignment will be Friday 22 June (after the examination).

- The assignment will be a practical exercise that will require you to implement a number of short R scripts to achieve several data analysis tasks. You will have to submit these scripts, as well as instructions on how to execute them. No research report will be required.

- The examination will be a written paper, and will not be practical in nature. It will therefore not be based on the assignment. The examination will be a two-day take-home paper. I will post a sample examination paper as a guide on what to expect for the examination.