Finishing the course · Inside language models

Your final assignment

Explain an assistant failure using a concrete model of its inputs and limits. Use the fictional examples from this course, or a non-sensitive scenario you are authorised to work on. Do not submit personal workplace records to complete the course.

Build your evidence pack

Tokens, spelling and the price of long inputs: Compare a short email, a list of reference codes and a paragraph in another language. Predict which is hardest to estimate by word count. Remove duplication from one without deleting needed facts.
Context windows and forgotten instructions: Write a five-line handover for an event whose start time changed. Include the approved time, superseded time, decision owner, unresolved venue question and next action.
Embeddings: similar does not mean equivalent: Create four pairs of near-matching sentences. Change a negation, a model number, a date and a unit. State how each change affects the action a reader should take.
Sampling and repeatability: Design a comparison using two prompts, three fictional documents and two runs per document. Write the scoring criteria before producing any outputs.
Prompting, retrieval and fine-tuning: Classify three failures: missing current opening hours, inconsistent headings and a specialised classification task with many labelled examples. Suggest a first intervention and a way to test it.

Combine the five outputs in the downloadable course workbook. Write a short decision note explaining the problem, your chosen approach, the evidence used and one limitation that would matter in real use. Keep initial and revised versions where a check changed your answer.

Review against these criteria

Explain why a word count is not a token count.
Separate available context from reliable use of that context.
Identify when semantic similarity is insufficient.
Design a fair comparison when outputs vary.
Choose the kind of change a task actually needs.

Ask a colleague or learning partner to challenge one assumption if available. If working alone, use the worked examples to review your reasoning and record the limits of that self-review. Completion is a personal learning record, not independent certification.

Change one condition

Choose one input or assumption from your original exercise and change it. Explain which part of the result must be recalculated, rechecked or withheld. Keep the revised answer and a short explanation of why the change matters. This is a transfer exercise: repeating the model answer without adapting it is insufficient.

Continue practising

Try a related Academy workspace or choose another course. The existing Practice Lab portfolio saves simulation work; keep this course workbook with your own learning records. Course completion progress remains in your browser and can be backed up through My Library.