COMP9517: Computer Vision
Sample Exam Paper
The exam is worth 40% of the total course marks
Time allowed: 24 hours (see details below)

STUDENT DECLARATION
By starting this exam as a student at the University of New South Wales, you declare that you have
not seen any part of the examination paper for the above course prior to attempting this exam, nor
that any details of the exam’s contents have been communicated to you. In addition, you will not
disclose to anyone any information contained in this exam for a period of 24 hours after the exam.
Violation of this agreement is considered Academic Misconduct and penalties may apply.

FIT TO SIT
By sitting or submitting an assessment on the scheduled exam date, you are declaring that you are
fit to do so and cannot later apply for Special Consideration. If, during the online exam you feel
unwell to the point that you cannot continue with the exam, you must take the following steps:
1. Stop working on the exam and take note of the time.
2. Contact the Course Coordinator immediately via email or chat and advise them that you are
unwell and unable to continue with the exam.
3. Immediately submit a Special Consideration application saying that you felt ill during the exam
and were unable to continue.
4. Provide a medical certificate dated within 24 hours of the exam, along with screenshots of the
conversation you have had with your Course Coordinator.

TECHNICAL ISSUES
If you experience a technical issue that is beyond your control and that impacts on your ability to
complete the exam, you must submit a Special Consideration application (either immediately, at the
conclusion of the exam, or at the latest within 3 working days of the exam) and upload relevant
documentation that clearly demonstrates your circumstances and their impact:
1. Take screenshots of as many of the following as possible:
• Error messages.
• Screen not loading.
• Time-stamped speed tests.
• Power outage maps.
• Messages or information from your internet provider regarding the issues experienced.
All screenshots must include the date and time the issue occurred.
2. Contact the Course Coordinator via email or chat as soon as possible to advise that you are
experiencing a technical issue.
3. Submit a Special Consideration application immediately at the conclusion of your assessment
and upload your screenshots.

EXAM TASK
The exam consists of reading an assigned scientific paper and writing a commentary on it based on
the instructions below. Note that each student is randomly and independently assigned a paper
from a pool of different papers. You must submit your commentary as a PDF-file on Moodle via the
link labelled “Final Exam Submission via Turnitin” by the deadline, XX:XX:XX AM AEST, XX XXXX
20XX. Do not use the file upload box within the Moodle quiz.
You will be allowed unlimited submissions up to the deadline. Upon each submission, Turnitin
automatically calculates a similarity score indicating the amount of overlap with published
literature, online resources, and commentaries submitted by other students. Please note the
following: 1) as the system is processing many submissions, it may take a while (hours) for the
similarity score to be shown; 2) as students are submitting at different times, the final similarity
score may change; 3) after your third submission, the similarity score will not be recalculated until
after the exam finishes. For these reasons, the course admin is unable to tell you the final similarity
score during the exam, and it is also undoable to email every student their final similarity score after
the exam. Therefore, please do NOT contact the course admin about this. As long as you write an
original commentary in your own words, there is no need to worry about the similarity score. Also
note that a high score does not automatically impact your mark or imply plagiarism. Each
commentary and corresponding similarity score will be carefully reviewed separately.
Unlike other assessment items in this course, the exam submission deadline is hard and there is no
possibility to submit late (unless of course you have been granted special consideration). Also, note
again that the submission link is NOT the same as the exam paper link.
Write your commentary on the given scientific paper using the template provided (the same
template is provided in different file formats; just pick the one that works best for you). Specifically,
your commentary must have the indicated four sections, covering the following:
1. Introduction: Summarise the overall problem addressed in the paper. Discuss which aspects of
the problem the authors aim to solve and why these are important. Also discuss who will benefit if
the problem can indeed be solved and how this may change the current practice in the field.
2. Methods: Summarise the methods used in the paper. Describe the reasons why these methods
were chosen and discuss what the strengths and weaknesses of the methods are. Also, based on
what you have learned in the course, discuss whether you think the authors made the right choices,
and suggest other methods that may have worked better.
3. Results: Summarise the experimental results presented in the paper. Discuss the used evaluation
strategy and the implications of the main findings. Also, comment on whether and why you think
these findings will convince potential users to adopt the proposed method, and suggest other
experiments that could have been conducted to make a more convincing case.
4. Conclusions: Discuss what you believe are the main strengths and weaknesses of the presented
work as a whole (not just the proposed methods discussed above). Also, discuss the remaining
technical issues that still need to be addressed before the problem stated in the introduction can be
considered solved, and suggest recommendations for future research.
References: List the literature references you have used in writing your commentary. This section is
not mandatory and will not attract points, but if you have used other works to better understand the
problem and come up with possible alternative solutions, and especially if you rely on them in
making any claims in your commentary, you should list those works and cite them in the text.
ASSESSMENT
Sections 1-4 (not including the references section) are worth 8, 10, 10, and 8 marks, respectively,
adding up to 36 marks. The remaining 4 marks of the total 40 marks for the exam are for overall
quality of the presentation, such as readability and adhering to the guidelines (see below).
Note that this exam is not just a writing exercise. The goal is to assess to what extent you truly
understand computer vision problems, methods, and experiments, and are able to critically discuss
them and suggest ways to do things differently/better based on what you have learned. Thus, more
points will be given when you go beyond the paper and clearly bring your knowledge to the table. In
particular, when you are asked to discuss, comment on, or suggest things, we expect you to do more
than just repeating/summarising what can be easily found in the paper.

GUIDELINES
• Make sure your writing is easy to read and understand. Write in clear English, avoid long and
complex sentences, and clarify any terminology not used in the paper or in the course. At the
very least, run a spelling and grammar checker before submitting your commentary.
• Use the provided template and nothing else. Specifically, do not change the given section
headings, page or column margins, font type (Times New Roman), font size (10 points for the
main text), etc. To facilitate marking, it is important that you use the format provided.
• Respect the limits indicated in the template regarding the length of the individual sections as
well as the complete commentary. The sections are not required to be all of the same length.
Some sections may be longer than others, provided each section is at least half a column, and
the entire commentary (excluding the references) is no longer than 2 pages. Anything over the
limit will not be assessed. Notice that while the indicated limits in principle allow you to submit a
commentary of just 1 page, it is unlikely that you can cover all important points in such little
space. Use the available space wisely.
• Given the mentioned space limits, the use of subsections is discouraged. Subsection headings
can take up quite some space that could probably be used more effectively. Rather, organize
each section as a series of coherent paragraphs.
• Each paragraph should include a topic sentence stating its main point. It is advisable to put the
topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph so that it is immediately clear what will be
discussed in that paragraph. The remainder of the paragraph should then elaborate on this using
facts, arguments, analyses, examples, or any other useful information, and conclude by
connecting back to the main point.
• Write an original commentary. Do not copy material from the paper or any other source. Your
submission will be checked for plagiarism from published and online material as well as among
students, so any overlap will be detected. Please be reminded of the Plagiarism Policy and
principles of Academic Integrity stated in the COMP9517 Course Outline on WebCMS3.
• You may include original illustrations (produced by you, not copied from other sources) to
support your comments, but this is not a requirement. Illustrations will not attract extra marks.
Also, whether you include illustrations or not, the page limit remains the same. So carefully
consider whether it is worth the effort.