1. MAS1302: General Feedback on Assignment 2 Part A (computer questions) As with Assignment 1, this was generally well done by those who made a serious effort.

2. Part A: Computer Project  General comments: Graphs: when asked to put a graph into your solutions, make sure you sort out labels for the axes, and a title. If you are asked to describe the shape of a distribution from a histogram, do not be too distracted by the tallest bar!

3. Task 1 (Estimating π)  1. This was well done apart from some poor labelling of graphs, and misinterpretation of histograms which were basically centred about π, but whose tallest bar happened not to be at π.  2. A number of people didn’t make the comparison between the plot with 500 points, and plot with 10,000 points.  3. Nevertheless, part 11. in which the accuracy of estimators based on 500 points and 10,000 points was discussed, was done well.

4. Task 2 (Birth-death processes)  Inter-arrival times are Exponential, not Poisson! Some people got confused over this.  End populations could be reported exactly by looking at the vectors b1$Size etc. in R, and reporting the last number! Some people used the graphs, and sometimes incorrectly, e.g. reporting maximum population size.  In part 9, you were expected to report the proportion of those who survived the first period which then went on to survive the second period – not the proportion of the original 20!  Part 10, asking whether the Poisson processes were homogeneous, was not generally very well done – a lot of people did not make the link with N(t).

5. Part B (standard exercises) Question 1.  (d) (iii) The number of arrivals in a time interval is Poisson, not Exponential!  (e) Make sure you can use Neave’s tables for the inverse normal cdf!  (f) When drawing a time line of events, make sure you think through what’s happening. A number of people had the 4 th job starting before it had arrived!  (g) Check you understand how to work out what will happen to a queue in the long run.

6. Question 2. Fairly well done, except for: (e) The sketch of the utility function; this should give a good idea of how the utility of money changes for this particular scenario! (f) & (g) Make sure you know how to calculate the utility of a gamble! (h) The worst answered question! People missed the link with the utility function to how they thought people behaved.

7. Question 3. Well done, except for in part (b), some people forgot x had to be an integer!