The Centre for Software Reliability

School of Science and Technology

City, University of London
Northampton Square
London
EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

18/01/2023
Dear Temitope Victor Oyedeji,
RE: FEEDBACK FROM PHD STUDENTSHIP INTERVIEW
Thank you for attending the PhD studentship interview, and for proposing solutions to the
optimisation tasks. It was a pleasure meeting you. We have now completed the selection process
and, unfortunately, we are unable to offer you the studentship at this time. Nevertheless, you left a
good impression on the panel, and I hope you find the following feedback useful.
On the non-technical part of the interview, some of your answers could have been more informative.
For example, when asked to talk about your undergraduate thesis, your answer did not effectively
communicate why the work you did was useful/interesting, whether it was you or your supervisor
who proposed it, and how the work adds to work done by others (e.g. if it’s related to work your
supervisor has done). It would have been nice to hear some detail about what mathematical
techniques you learned while working on your thesis. And you could have said more about your
supervisor, his field of expertise, and perhaps some of the mathematical techniques he might have
taught you.
On the technical part of the interview, some of your proposed solutions were quite good and I enjoyed
reading them, but you were not sufficiently careful. For example, your proposed solution to the first
question is mostly correct, but some of the statements are not precise enough. At one point you
write: “Also, 𝑦𝑦 ∈ [0,1), 𝑥𝑥 ∈ [0,1). So, (1 − 𝑦𝑦) ≤ (1 − 𝑥𝑥)”. This is not a true statement, in general (e.g.
what if 𝑦𝑦 < 𝑥𝑥?), but it is true in the function’s domain. Another example is when you write
1−𝑦𝑦 𝑛𝑛 1−𝑦𝑦
lim � � = 0; but this does not hold if � � = 1 (a possibility you allow two lines before this line
𝑛𝑛→∞ 1−𝑥𝑥 1−𝑥𝑥
in your solutions). More than once it was clear what you meant to write, but didn’t write.
Your application and interpretation of multivariable Calculus ideas could have been better. The
objective function has continuous partial derivatives, and the sign of the partial derivative w.r.t. x is
negative at any point in the interior of the function’s domain. So, starting at any value of x for a point
in the interior of the function’s domain, we can always make the objective function smaller by making
x bigger (keeping everything else fixed). The largest value of x is 𝜖𝜖, so the objective function must
attain its minimum somewhere above the boundary of its compact domain (in particular, above the
boundary where x=𝜖𝜖). The 1st and 2nd partial derivatives of the objective function w.r.t. y (along the
x=𝜖𝜖 boundary) reveal there is only one point, along the x=𝜖𝜖 boundary, at which the function attains
its minimum.
Your Python program did not use the information from the mathematical analyses – i.e., that the
objective function attains a minimum at a unique point over the x=𝜖𝜖 boundary. With this information,
a “root-finding” algorithm would have been enough to numerically solve for the minimum.
During a PhD there will be many technical questions you will not initially know the answers to. When
faced with such questions you should get better at precisely applying mathematical analysis, and
thinking critically about what the analysis is telling you, in order to answer a question. I often find it
very helpful to draw pictures that capture my understanding (e.g. sketch domains, gradients, contour
maps, curves, etc.) when solving optimisation problems.
I hope this feedback is helpful and I wish you the very best in your future endeavours. Please stay
in touch. Once more, on behalf of the interview panel, thank you for applying.
Best wishes,

www.city.ac.uk Academic excellence for business and the professions

Kizito Salako
Lecturer in Computer Science