Pre Assessment
A preliminary assessment of prerequisite skills is not performed in this course.
Formative Assessment
The formative assessment of this course teaching and learning process is performed through class participation during lessons:
- A) students may be asked to answer questions about topics dealt with at lesson; students may ask instructor questions during lessons both about the very topic dealt with at lesson and about correlated topics they are particularly interested in.
- B) summary of previous week lessons: a student is randomly selected to sum up topics dealt with in the previous sessions, actually introducing extant session;
- C) short seminars: students are required to apply their skills in Calculus, Stochastic Calculus, Numerical Analysis and Mathematical Statistics to specific problems in finance, proposing their own solutions previously prepared as homeworks.
Summative Assessment
The summative assessment of this course is performed through
- A) Written tests:
- i) during the semester module a mid term and a final test at the end of the semester are given for students attending lessons;
- ii) a comprehensive test is given in ordinary exam sessions for students not attending lessons and for attending students that do not pass mid term and final semester tests;
- B) Homeworks and take home projects: some compulsory homeworks are given on specific topics to let students delve into the subject at her/his own pace; some optional take home projects are suggested to students particularly interested in applying quantitative methods of their choice to finance problems.
- C) Oral exams: after achieving at least an average pass grade in written tests during the semester or, as an alternative, an equivalent valuation on a comprehensive written test in an ordinary exam session, students are required to take an oral exam made up of:
- 1) questions about mistakes in written tests;
- 2) one's choice topic question.
aims and formative purposes
students are evaluated with respect to three different dimensions of learning:
- A) Baseline theoretical knowledge provided through lessons and suggested reading list: tested through open questions to be answered through short essays;
- B) Problem solving involving symbolic calculus and stochastic calculus capabilities: tested through questions about model building and algorithms tuning for specific formal problems;
- C) Programming capabilities: tested through small (large) problems in class (at home) assignments to be programmed in a high level language, e.g. MatLab, Gauss, Ox, Scilab.
Evaluation criteria
- final numerical results achievement;
- style:
- 2.1) in modelling – possibly new – solutions in a symbolic layout;
- 2.2) in writing codes for extant models;
- 2.3) in prose for short essays questions.
Assessment breakdown
Formative and Summative Assessment towards the definition of a final grade weights on the final grade:
- In class participation 5%;
- Summary of previous week lessons 10%;
- Short seminars (if given, else the weight is given to class participation) 5%;
- In Class written tests 50%;
- Home assignments (homeworks and take home projects) 25%;
- Oral Exam 5%.
