Assignments: Master's Project/Thesis Seminar
4005-893-70

Week 10 (Final presentations)

• Each student will give a three-minute presentation summarizing their final pre-proposal (submit both your pre-proposal and presentation through MyCourses)
• Set up a project/thesis web page (see bottom of the page here).
• Important Note: To receive a grade in the course, pre-proposals must be approved by myself and your advisor (by signature or via email) by Monday of Week 12 (i.e. the last day to submit grades for the quarter).

Week 9 (Peer Review #2; Graphs and Figures)

• Students should submit a copy of their pre-proposal through MyCourses, and bring a printed copy of their proposal to class. Students will again be paired up, write a review of each other's pre-proposal and then discuss it.
• NOTE: you are welcome to remove the headings from your pre-proposal. All of the components described by the headings should be present, but you can now organize things however you and your advisor feel is best.
• Our final reading for the quarter is on using graphs and figures in technical writing (Ch. 6 of Zobel).

Week 8 (Using Mathematical Notation)

• Students who did not present in Week 7 will present in week 8; the remaining students will submit an updated version of their pre-proposal.
• Reading: on using mathematical notation (Ch. 5 of Zobel)
• Please note that we will be repeating our peer-review exercise in Week 9.

Week 7 (Algorithms and Pseudo Code)

• Students to give a 3-minute presentation on their updated pre-proposal: David, Andrew, Alex, Jaewoo, Asif, Mihir, Julio, Ted
• Students to submit an updated pre-proposal: everyone else.
• Reading: on algorithms and pseudo code (Ch. 7 of Zobel)

Week 6 (Peer review)

1. All students need to submit an updated pre-proposal draft before class on Thursday: make sure to use the provided template (i.e. using the section headings for problem descriptions, etc.).
2. Students will be paired up at random and peer reviewing each other's work in class next week.
3. Read Ch. 9 (137-155) of Zobel.

Week 5 (Experiments; April 7)

1. The following students will give a 3 minute presentation outlining a (draft) experiment designed to test their current working hypothesis: Harshal Joshi, Jaewoo Park, Yash Sachde, Anupam Saini, Kinesh Satiya, Nandan Sawant, Dana Slambekova, and Andrew Thornton
2. The following students will update their pre-proposal draft, revising their hypothesis and describing an experiment to test their hypothesis: Edwin Anto, Gianfranco Biondi, Alex Blank, David Carley, Mihir Chitnis, Asif Dipon, Julio Espinal, and Chi-Wei Fung
3. We will discuss the assigned reading on experiments (remainder of Ch. 11).

Week 4 (Hypotheses; March 31)

1. The following students will prepare a 3 minute presentation discussing a (working/draft) hypothesis and supporting papers, submitting their slides through myCourses:
   • Edwin Anto, Gianfranco Biondi, Alex Blank, David Carley, Mihir Chitnis, Asif Dipon, Julio Espinal, and Chi-Wei Fung
   Each student will have exactly 3 minutes to present, and about 2-3 minutes for questions and comments.
2. The following students will update the hypothesis for their thesis, or the hypothesis motivating their project implementation in a revised pre-proposal draft, submitted through myCourses:
   • Harshal Joshi, Jaewoo Park, Yash Sachde, Anupam Saini, Kinesh Satiya, Nandan Sawant, Dana Slambekova, and Andrew Thornton
   I will leave feedback in the dropbox for the submitted pre-proposals.
3. Read Zobel material on experiments, pp. 185-197, and prepare questions/comments for discussion in class.

Week 3 (Literature Review; March 24)

1. On myCourses, submit a rough version of the LaTeX thesis/project pre-proposal, which must include citations for two research papers related to a research topic of interest to you. It is highly recommended that you find a survey paper (overview) of your research topic; make to sure to check ACM Computing Surveys.
2. Prepare a (3-4 minute) presentation summarizing the topic and two papers included in your submitted pre-proposal draft. Submit your slides through myCourses.
3. Read Zobel material on Hypotheses and Research Areas (169-182), and come with questions or comments.

Week 2

1. Read Zobel text material on 'Doing Research' (p. 157-169)
2. Prepare a short presentation (3-4 minutes) summarizing the research of three faculty members in the Computer Science department. For each faculty member provide:
   • Their research area
   • The specific research problems that they work on
   • A 1-2 sentence summary of an abstract from one of their research papers.
3. Submit your presentation slides as a .pdf file through myCourses (link above)