I have been enrolled in this course since late last year. I was making good progress through the Deep Learning Specialization, until I got to this course. During the first assignment in Week 1 (Dinosaur Island-Character-Level Language Modeling) my browser crashed due to “insufficient memory”.
At first I thought it was a local issue, but after restarting, clearing my cache, and switching computers, I ruled that out as a possibility. I hadn’t had any trouble with any of the other courses’ assignments. Then I thought that maybe it was just a temporary problem with Coursera’s servers, that there were too many people trying to use the resources at that time or something. So, I left it alone for a day, came back and tried again. Same error. I tried again a few days later…same issue. I looked for ways to reset my kernel (I see the instructions given here, Coursera Help Center, but they are useless for me since I don’t see any jupyter notebook at all, it just starts to load and then gives up and crashes).
The time stretched out and I got busy with other things. I checked in occasionally, just to see if the issue had resolved itself, but it never did. I’ve made literally zero progress in this course for months. I always meant to contact someone to help resolve the issue, but it kept being less important than other things…until I realized this week that I was still paying for the subscription for this course, for all these useless months.
This is, I hope understandably, infuriating. I want to finish this specialization that I worked very hard on for weeks. I contacted Coursera’s customer support, and they directed me to make a topic here. My understanding of this forum was that it was primarily a place for learners to discuss the assignments, but if there is any way that an instructor can help me resolve this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.
Sorry to hear that you have a problem that’s been going on for so long. The Dinosaur Names assignment is actually the second assignment in C5 W1, right? So I assume you got through the “Step by Step” assignment ok.
It sounds like the problem is that there is a bug in your code (e.g. an infinite loop or some added print statements in an inner loop) that has caused the memory image of your notebook to grow so large that it can no longer be loaded. The best hope is to get a clean copy, but if you can’t even open the notebook that may be a problem.
Just to confirm the evidence here: did you actually work on the code for this assignment initially before the original problem occurred and try running your code at least once before the problem occurred?
Note that the course staff is generally too busy to be listening here. The mentors are just fellow students who do not have any super powers w.r.t. the assignments of individual students. But I can ask one of the course folks to take a look at your notebook. Please just confirm the evidence above and I’ll send a DM to them …
Ah yes, you’re correct it’s the second assignment, and I did get through the “step by step” one alright.
And yes, I had been working on the code in the notebook prior to the issue. It’s been so long that I don’t remember what I was doing, but given the topic, I wouldn’t be surprised if the problem started from an infinite loop or something along those lines.
I don’t even care if they have to wipe the notebook so I start from scratch (it’s been so long that I would start this assignment from scratch anyway just to refresh my memory, no pun intended).
I checked with one of the course staff folks and he should be getting in touch with you. All he needs to do is rename your notebook, so that you can get a clean copy. Then go from there. I hope you’ll hear back soon.
Anyways, I had clear your output cells, your notebook size is back to normal. You should have no trouble opening it now.
HOWEVER, I’d like to say a couple things here:
I’m not sure what made your file size increase in the first place. Maybe you repetitively kept running the assignment, or maybe your solutions are incorrect ?
As you can see in the screenshot, it says your assignment was last touched 6 months ago. There’s a high chance there may have been changes in this notebook in the last 6 months.
What I want to recommend is, rename this notebook, get the latest copy of it using “Help” and start afresh. You can use your previous notebook for help, but I’m not sure if those solutions should be used as they may have increased the file size, and you don’t want that happening again.
Yes, 6 months ago sounds like the right time frame for the last time I was able to open the notebook. I’ve tried to open it many times since then but it always crashed before loading. I don’t know if that increased the file size, but I’m leaning more towards some inadvertent infinite loop that I accidentally put in there.
Well, my work schedule finally opened up enough that I was able to take another crack at this assignment, and…the same thing happened. The good news is that I think I see where the infinite loop is happening; I recognized that it was happening once I ran the final block of code in the assignment (all of the previous test messages were correct) and the program started spitting out an infinite list of parameters. I hit the “stop button” and then closed out of the tab to try to reset the memory usage, but unfortunately it was too late, the file size must be too high for it to open.
Can you clear my output cells again? Hopefully now that I have more clarity on what is causing the issue I’ll be able to avoid it going forward.
