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Workload is heavy for the ones that want the top grades. But it is fairly moderate if you’d be satisfied with a average grade. The thing is that all lab classes are mandatory, you neeed to submit several checkpoints, and workload is weekly from day one. The positive thing is that if you complete everything within the course, no exames are needed to finish it and all checkpoints will determine your evaluation.

Very hands on course for the project, as you have a checkpoint every week for one of the lab classes. The project is very open since you pick your theme and your data, where you will have to come up with questions for your dataset and provide a visual application to answer those questions. In general very fulfilling since you see your progress every week. You will also have to report on the development of your project each week, but mainly 2 page reports, so nothing too stressful.

The classes are sort of obsolete and are very theorethical, they won't help you much in making the project but...

Be prepared for a heavy weekly workload. This course has deliveries basically every single week (checkpoints with submissions and reports...), so it constantly feels like you’re working for it. Even when each task isn’t individually hard, the fact that there’s always something due makes it pretty time-consuming.

Expect to lose at least 1–2 full days every week just doing checkpoints and lab stuff. The annoying part is that many of these deliveries are worth very little in the final grade, so it can feel like a lot of effort for only 1–2 points. On the bright side, if you keep up with...

The workload is heavy, you'll have weekly quizzes and weekly project deliveries, meaning you'll have to attend the lab classes and one of the week lectures to make the quiz. The concepts aren't difficult but it's very time consuming. The exam is not mandatory.

This is a very time consuming course. Every week, prepare to lose 1-2 full days just making the Checkpoints. EVERY WEEK. A lot of work for "checkpoints" that are only worth 1-2 points out of 20. A positive aspect is that if you do them well enough, not that much work will have to be put in the actual project delivery. Classes are a no go. If you like the content, sure, but otherwise, you can pass this course without paying attention to one single theoretical class. The only theoretical classes that one must absolutely go to are the ones with the weekly MAPs. These tests are very easy,...

This course is a bit different from what I was used to - but not necessarily in a good way.

Theory

The theoretical teacher, prof. Daniel Gonçalves, brags about being different and offering more “practical” theoretical classes. In practice, this means he provides 10-minute videos to watch before class. I found those videos only useful for preparing for the quizzes. The classes themselves aren’t particularly practical: they tend to be boring and a bit cringy, much like the professor’s attempts at humor. Expect strange things during lectures (teacher trying to be funny, some...

Theoretical classes are mandatory because evaluation is done by quizes that happen once a week and there is no exam.

Project is very time consuming since you have deliveries every week. However, the last delivery is just wrapping what you have built during the course.

Content

The subject of this course is quite interesting. Having a lot of visual and interactive elements makes it very intuitive to grasp. Some of the principles covered feel a bit arbitrary, but you just have to accept them. I think this course gives you a really useful set of skills and intuition that complement pretty much any other field....

Daniel Gonçalves:

I'm very interested in data and data visualization, and this course focuses on these topics, so I'm a bit biased. Take my feedback with a grain of salt.

Assessment

The course follows a continuous evaluation system, consisting of homeworks and a project.

The homeworks assignments are given every 2 weeks, and focus on practical application of the theoretical contents. One of them was summarizing a paper, and the other was creating a visualization for a topic of your choice. Nothing too complicated and it's fun.

Project

The Project...