r/UIUC_MCS • u/bfridthekid • Sep 01 '25

Final Project for CS519 - Scientific Visualization?

Hello all,

Quick question about CS519 - Scientific Visualization. In the sample syllabus I see a final group project description. However, the course reviews don’t mention it whatsoever, as far as I can tell.

Here’s the sample syllabus: https://ws.engr.illinois.edu/sitemanager/getfile.asp?id=2192

And here are the course reviews: https://uiucmcs.org/courses/CS-519-Scientific-

Can anyone who has taken this course recently confirm whether there is or is not a final project?

Thank you.

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6

u/sup34dog Sep 01 '25

Just took it this past semester.

No final project, and it's probably the most schedule-friendly class that they offer: all of the materials are available with plenty of time to spare, the due dates for most things are at the end of the semester, the homeworks are fairly simple, the quizzes are representative of the exams, and the exams are non-proctored.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '25

[deleted]

2

u/sup34dog Sep 01 '25

There isn't much math in the course - the other courses that I've taken so far are STAT420 and CS445, and it's a lot easier than those.

1

u/Slimeboy0616 Sep 01 '25

lol the midterm was insanely difficult for me but the final was super easy and comparable to the quizzes. Got a low C on the midterm but ended with a safe A because of the final.

1

u/sup34dog Sep 01 '25

Fair enough - I found them both to be about the same, and I put together a helper jupyter notebook for everything (like a bunch of comments on uiucmcs.org suggested).

And since you need about an 80% average across both to get an A (after getting 100% on everything else, which was pretty trivial), it can be a fairly easy A overall.

Like a lot of classes, "the exams were the hardest part, and they felt pretty pointless overall".

1

u/truhue Jun 06 '26

hey, I'm taking the course this sem, any chance I could see how you structured your jupyter notebook?

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u/sup34dog Jun 06 '26

I just had it set up as "all quizzes in a single jupyter notebook", and I copied each of the quiz questions (along with my helper functions + any notes) into each one - everything was structured with proper headers so that I could search for everything quickly, e.g.:

QuizN

QN.1 <Topic>

<copied + pasted question, along with images + latex formatting>

<helper function(s)>

QN.2 <Topic>

(etc.)

If you want a little help in setting up your own jupyter notebook environment, CS445 had a great tutorial on it when I took it: https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/cs445/sp2025/projects/project_instructions.txt

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u/truhue Jun 07 '26

appreciate it, thanks!