Participant's Comments
Overall Rating
4.56 / 5
Add my review16 Comments
Participant 1, 2019-06-13 19:06:54. Rating: 5
Having access to the slides and Jupyter notebooks from my classes will be of great use in the future (as a reference).
Look forward to using the visualisation system on Graham. It would be great if you guys could add support there for Jupyter notebooks (to avoid need to make ssh tunnel to home computer - you could just use the internet on that system).
Maybe make a cheat-sheet for beginners on basic shell commands (either a hand-out or website) relevant to HPC.
I think a greater stress on not using the login nodes for general computation is required. Stagger who logs in and what they are doing. Maybe the person who is teaching the session should have their own allocation so that they can run their workshops without competing with participants for resources.
Breakfast was great.
Participant 2, 2019-06-14 08:06:46. Rating: 5
I really enjoyed the summerschool and learned a lot from it. I find it much easier now to work on my own and use graham! I am greatful that the instructors shared their codes and presentations! I am going to use them as my reference for a long time. It was also great that there were 2-3 helping instructors in every session. They were very patient and helpful. The breakfast was great as well :)
Afterall, I would like to thank the Compute Ontario for offering this summerschool for free and supporting us researchers!
Participant 3, 2019-06-14 11:06:47. Rating: 5
Overall, the facilities were good and the class I attended was interesting. Thank you to the sponsors for running this free event. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend. The breakfast & drinks were a very nice bonus.
More specific feedback...
One instructor was very quiet and difficult to hear over the noise from the hallway and ventilation system. Maybe close the door next time?
Some of the attendees in my class were very keen on finding issues with the sample code, resulting in time being spent on discussing the bugs rather than the concepts of the presentation. I think the instructor could have directed the conversation back to be more on topic.
Also, it would have been nice if the instructors gave a little more of an introduction about themselves at the start of the class and what field they work in, and maybe get an idea of what areas the attendees work in as well. This event could be a great opportunity for people to network, share ideas and learn from each other too.
Participant 4, 2019-06-14 11:06:55. Rating: 5
Pretty good! Looking forward to more information about Machine Learning.
Participant 5, 2019-06-14 15:06:02. Rating: 5
Excellent programs!! Get great suggestions to improve my research code.
Participant 6, 2019-06-14 15:06:11. Rating: 5
The courses are a great starting point for beginners!
Participant 7, 2019-06-14 15:06:49. Rating: 4 
I enjoyed the session on HPC Using Python the most as it was very helpful and the instructor explained concepts very clearly. All the staff were helpful with technical issues. A lot of the sessions were geared towards beginners.
Participant 8, 2019-06-14 15:06:39. Rating: 5
It was a very good experience for me as one who didn't have any previous knowledge regarding high-performance computing and programming. Instructors were expert in their fields and I learned lots of information enough to initiate my own codes and programs and run them in clusters. In the end, Sharcnet and CoputeCanada are really awesome! All these classes and free meals for free! Even more surprising that students can actually use graham cluster for free! Fantastic!
Participant 9, 2019-06-14 15:06:58. Rating: 4
I really enjoyed the lectures on HPC and machine learning, even though much of the coding was a bit too advanced for me as I don't have a very strong background in it. The introduction to R was nice for someone with no experience with it like me. I found the class on Spark to be very difficult to follow. I enjoyed my overall experience with the summer school, and was delightfully surprised to learn that a hot breakfast was provided each day. I haven't eaten this well since I moved out of my parents house. Thanks sharcnet!
Participant 10, 2019-06-15 21:06:17. Rating: 5
Excellent experience, Sharcnet does a terrific job showcasing their resources and providing opportunities for students and faculty to access them. The sessions were generally easy to follow and materials were comprehensive and well prepared. For users that are not very experienced in Linux or Python, I suggest to provide a short document summarizing key commands and scripts.
Participant 11, 2019-06-16 22:06:27. Rating: 4
We had good session about speeding up Python. Other than that it was a bit unfortunate that not enough computational resources were booked as when all attendee tried to connect and work with the Sharcnet, the system couldn't handel the traffic and crash. Also, some courses had long introduction sessions and not enough hands-on time. I hope the summer school gets better taking into account these points.
Participant 12, 2019-06-17 06:06:11. Rating: 5
Thank-you for a fantastic week! You guys did an awesome job of showing us how HPC can be an amazing research tool. Your expertise, organization and communication were very good.
Participant 13, 2019-06-17 10:06:13. Rating: 3
Overall the standard of teaching was great! The sessions on machine learning, Apache Spark, and R were clear and easy to understand. It was geared a little towards beginners, but I also learned a few cool things that made it worth my while. The biggest negative about the sessions was pretty much every hands on workshop that the instructors planned. There was a myriad of technical difficulties in just about every session I attended. Most of these were issues with the graham reservations. Not enough memory was reserved to accommodate everyone in the class and often we were unable to run the workshops on our computers (sometimes the instructor wasn't able to either).
Participant 14, 2019-06-17 17:06:04. Rating: 4
Nice summer school! I whished it had more lectures and less hands-on, such that one could go deeper into details.
Participant 15, 2019-06-18 14:06:38. Rating: 4
Overall really interesting and well put together. The sessions on Octave, simulations, and CUDA programming helped me to get started with some very useful tools. My only gripe is the amount of issues each student experienced while trying to use the servers.
Participant 16, 2019-06-21 16:06:11. Rating: 5
Really great week! I learned a lot of new stuff and fortified old ones. Would it be possible to issue a digital Certificate of attendance, one that can be shared and authenticated on social media (e.g. LinkedIn)?
