Quote: Original post by Burnhard
Edit: Ah, I see phantom has anticipated my reply :p.

Fear my mind reading skills! [grin]

Quote: Original post by daviangel
They felt I left out too many details of my implementation unexplained, parts that I felt were self-evident so I didn't bother to go into any depth to explain them :(

This was the part I found the hardest in mine as I had to waffle about GPUs, where they came from, what they do, the APIs etc so that someone with no background could pickup what I wrote and understand it.

When you've been doing graphics programming for years and know what a GPU is with no problems its hard to 'write down' to that level at times.

Well, that's science and engineering. You have to back up/support everything.
You have to build the stuff up always from nothing. Luckily you can cite (with proper explanation) other writers/articles.

My final year project was marked based on how heavy/thick the final collection of binders was...

We wrote a paper called something like "Flexible user interface design for content based image retrieval systems", which basically boiled down to "use the client/server pattern" and we got top marks (the project documentation was several kilograms).

I'm curious did the professor not justify the grade in any way either time? I know at my school, at least if you ask the professor should explain why he got the grade he did.

I think students drastically underestimate how helpful it can be to actually talk to your professors.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
I'm curious did the professor not justify the grade in any way either time? I know at my school, at least if you ask the professor should explain why he got the grade he did.

I think students drastically underestimate how helpful it can be to actually talk to your professors.

And overestimate the "frighteningness" of the professors. During university, people should learn how to negotiate, or at least learn, that even er... Bill Gates is just a man, there's nothing to be afraid of.
There's nothing wrong in asking why he failed.

Quote: Original post by szecs
And overestimate the "frighteningness" of the professors. During university, people should learn how to negotiate, or at least learn, that even er... Bill Gates is just a man, there's nothing to be afraid of.
There's nothing wrong in asking why he failed.

to be fair, bill gates has enough money to literally crush me under it and pay off God so he never got caught if he really wanted to.

But yes. your point is right.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care

Quote: Original post by szecs
And overestimate the "frighteningness" of the professors. During university, people should learn how to negotiate, or at least learn, that even er... Bill Gates is just a man, there's nothing to be afraid of.
There's nothing wrong in asking why he failed.

to be fair, bill gates has enough money to literally crush me under it and pay off God so he never got caught if he really wanted to.

But yes. your point is right.

You can be afraid when talking to your mum too. A meteor/lightning can strike you any time. Or she suddenly shoots you in the head with a 50 cal.

After reading your replies and agreeing with all of them I decided to ask my mate for a bit more information.

It turns out that he had scored very highly on the paper but failed for one fundamental reason - In his paper he was claiming the GPU version was faster than the CPU version but did not supply a CPU version. He was relying on his literature review and his GPU implementation to provide a conclusion and didnt supply any statistical analysis.

This is where we differ I guess because my ANN was statistically intensive and provided an intereting analysis(and were backed up with a graphical representation of a vehicle driving around a track).

But an extension of my question I guess is - he's persisting through this degree to get a job as a programmer (and he's a very good programmer I should add) but is it fair that his analysis skills are holding him back?

Also, I suggested that this year he should consider doing something about the effects of memory alignment. The test bed itself shouldn't take long to implement and he can get some very interesting results from it. I also believe such a project would give him a good footing when he decided to start applying for jobs as optimization is so critical in games.

is it "fair"?

Fair exists in Fairy Tales.
I guess you know the Whiners vs Winners thing. Thinking about fairness is FAIL.

And, after all, we are responsible scientists. Coding is a small part of the whole thing (unless he wants to be just a coding monkey).

Maybe CS is not so strict as engineering (in engineering, if you are not disciplined and don't pay attention for every single elements of the design and someone dies in an accident related to the thing designed by you (or just designed a part), you can easily get jailed).

But CS is a science too, you have to do what you have to do (no matter if you think it's unfair). If you don't like it and can't accept it, do something else.