# Course talk:CPSC522/Markov Chains

## Contents

Critique 2001:03, 6 February 2018
Critique023:49, 5 February 2018
Authorship200:13, 18 January 2016

## Critique 2

1. This is a very comprehensive article covering the important details of the topic. It is well supported with appropriate examples and explanations including formalism. Although there is ample material, it could improve a bit on its presentation, addressing the following concerns:
1. Formatting of the formalism: many inline equations lack superscript or subscript, making it difficult to follow. All the formalism should be in Latex (as suggested by the wiki Guidelines). See here and here for references.
2. The formalism should use consistent notations: the alphabets ${\displaystyle s}$, ${\displaystyle t}$, ${\displaystyle n}$ are used interchangeably to refer to the time, at some places referring to ${\displaystyle X_{t}}$ as state at time ${\displaystyle t}$, and others referring to ${\displaystyle X_{n}}$ as state at time ${\displaystyle n}$. The notation should be as consistent as possible within its presentation context, so that it is easier to follow.
3. Some paragraphs need paraphrasing, as they seem to have duplicate points. For example, in the second paragraph it mentions: "This same transition matrix can be used to find the probability of going from state i to state j in ‘n’ steps", and then in the third paragraph it says: "It can be used to find the transitional probability after “n” time units using the power transitional matrix."; these two sentences convey the same point and thus paragraphs 2 and 3 could be paraphrased to describe the transition matrix more concisely.

### Scheme

• The topic is relevant for the course. 5
• The writing is clear and the English is good. 5
• The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds). 5
• The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand. 5
• The abstract is a concise and clear summary. 4
• There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear. 5
• There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code. 1
• It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic). 5
• It is correct. 5
• It was neither too short nor too long for the topic. 4
• It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page). 5
• It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki. 4
• The references and links to external pages are well chosen. 4
• I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic. 5
• This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate. 4
• If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 18
01:03, 6 February 2018

## Critique

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "strongly disagree" and 5 means "strongly agree"

Please change the math to latex and use periods and commas wherever required. The sentences lack structure and the math is difficult to read for first time reader.

• The topic is relevant for the course - 5
• The writing is clear and the English is good - 5
• The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds) - 5
• The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand - 5
• The abstract is a concise and clear summary - 5
• There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear - 5
• There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code - 5
• It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic). - 5
• It is correct - 5
• It was neither too short nor too long for the topic - 5
• It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page) - 4
• It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki - 5
• The references and links to external pages are well chosen - 5
• I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic - 4
• This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate - 4

If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 18

23:49, 5 February 2018

## Authorship

Looking at the history, it seems like this was claimed first by samprity, sameer, junyan. Please don't change pages maliciously; I will use the history to resolve disputes.

There are lots of related topics, such as Markov networks. You could even propose other topics such as MCMC, localization, sequential language models, speech recognition....

17:42, 16 January 2016