IFT 6135 - Representation Learning

Frequently Asked Questions

Here’s a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ). If you have any questions that you think somebody else might have already asked, go through the list, and maybe you will find an answer here.

About Submission:

  • Q: Do we need to write separate reports for the practical part? Or it’s OK if we write reports in the notebook and then export a pdf.

A: Submit your "solutions to the theory part", the "report" and the "code" for the programming part to Gradescope, separately.


Miscellaneous Assignment Questions:

  • Q: In one of the questions of the theoretical part, the operation e^(-x) is not defined when x is a n-dimensional vector?

A: Conventionally, that means “apply the function elementwise”. Same thing applies to activation functions (such as logistic sigmoid).


  • Q: Would that be possible to have an extension for assignment x so that we can use an extra week-end?

A: Generally we will closely follow the assignment policy: no extension for the theory part & 4-day prorated penalty for the programming part. Contact one of the TAs or the lecturer for special cases.


  • Q: Is it a must that we submit the reports in Latex format?

A: Yes, otherwise a penalty will be imposed.


  • Q: Do we have any bonus question among the questions in theoretical or practical part?

A: Unless it is specified, no.


  • Q: The office hours do not work for everyone that is taking “some classes” as they must be at “somewhere else” at this time.

A: It is very hard (impossible actually) to find a time that did not conflict somewhat for someone. We're sorry for the conflict, and we're also available online (maybe Slack) to answer questions. Feel free to ping the TAs if you want to schedule a meeting other than the official office hours.


  • Q: When the assignment asks us to use SGD, should we use the exact SGD (one data point at a time) or we can use sgd with mini-batch?

A: Unless it is specified, you can and are encouraged to use mini-batch.


  • Q: What library should we use? Are we allowed to use higher level wrappers (like Keras for exemple) or only either Tensorflow or PyTorch?

A: You are only allowed to use PyTorch (except when it's specified otherwise).