CSCI-787-01 Graduate Research Seminar (Fall 2013) |
Week 16Week 15
- Reading: Read Zobel Ch. 13 on research ethics before class on Monday.
- The final experiment design is due Wednesday Dec. 18th at 11:59pm.
- Please complete the on-line course evaluation.
Week 14
- Reading: Read Zobel Ch. 13 on research ethics before class on Monday.
- Design Exercise (Wed. Week 16): will we have an extra credit assignment in-class next Wednesday. Before this class, write a one-page critique of the experiment design and analysis of results for a paper closely related to your own experiment. Bring both the paper and your critique to class. In class, we will exchange and discuss the papers and their critiques.
- The experimental design draft is due Friday at 11:59pm.
- The final experiment design is due Wednesday Dec. 18th at 11:59pm.
- Please complete the on-line course evaluation.
- Experimental design presentations this week: (10 mins. + 5 minutes for questions)
Monday:
- Matthew
- Pratik
- Samah
Wednesday:
- Wander
- Chad
- Sharath
Week 13
- Due to the holiday, there will be no class on Wednesday.
- Students will present a preliminary summary of their experimental designs on Monday and Wednesday of next week, and the draft Experimental Design write-up will be due next Friday.
- Please complete the on-line course evaluation - your feedback will help to improve the course for future students.
Week 12
- Assignment 5 is due Friday at 11:59pm.
- Here is a useful tutorial on using R to compute ANOVA with repeated measures.
- Next Wednesday there is no class. (enjoy Thanksgiving!)
- Examples motivating the importance of ethical research practice in human research, and 'Internal Ethics Review Boards' (IRBs):
- Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, et al.)
- Little Albert (Watson)
- Milgram Experiment (Note: this is not the best source of information for Milgram's experiment!).
Week 11
- This week we will start talking about experimental design.
- The final literature reviews are due Friday at 11:59pm. Submit your paper as a .pdf through the dropbox in MyCourses.
- Reading for Wednesday: Chapter 11 of Zobel (Experimentation)
- Assignment 5 will be posted by Friday evening.
- Here is an Experimental report template.
Week 10
- Presentations: On Monday 10 minute presentations of litearature reviews will be given by: Matthew, Prateek, Chad, and Sharath, and on Wednesday by Prateek, Samah and Wander.
- The final literature review is due next Friday (of Week 12) at 11:59pm.
Week 9
- Bring a printed copy of your literature review to class on Wednesday. We will be doing a peer review exercise in-class.
- Literature review drafts are due Friday (Nov. 1st) at 11:59pm. Submit your document as a .pdf through MyCourses.
- Next week, students will present their literature reviews during class. Each presentation will be 10 minutes long, with 5 minutes for questions. This will count as the 4th assignment in the course. (The presentation of the experimental design in Week 15 will also count, as the sixth assignment).
- Reading for Wednesday: read p. 251- 258 (6.7.6 - 6.7.9) of Japkowicz
Week 8
- Assignment 3 is due Friday at 11:59pm.
- Literature Review drafts are due next Friday at 11:59pm - plan to bring a copy to class next Wednesday.
- Reading for Monday (Wk 10): an additional reading from Japkowicz has been posted on MyCourses. Before Monday evening, read 6.7 - 6.7.5 (pp. 239-251).
- Reading: finish Ch. 2 of the Japkowicz and Shah book before class Monday evening. For Wednesday, read Ch. 6 up to the end of 6.5.1 (p. 226) - Ch. 6 has been posted on MyCourses.
- Online Statistics Text developed jointly by Professors at Rice, Univ. Houston Clear Lake and Tufts University.
Week 7
- Assignment 3 has been posted; it is due next Friday at 11:59pm.
- Literature Review: read Zobel's book Chapter 2. In particular, pay close attention to the sections on "Economy" (i.e. brevity and clarity), references and citation, and quoting from papers. Note that surveys will be graded for both style and content, as good style is key to making the content of a paper clear.
- Reading: reading for this week has been posted on MyCourses under "Readings" (statistics overivew - please read pages 42-64).
- Running R: on the CS computer systems, type 'R' (case matters!) at the command prompt. We will be using R as our statistics package for the course.
- Downloads, documentation, FAQs, manuals, etc. are available here.
- Online reference card for R and numpy: http://mathesaurus.sourceforge.net/r-numpy.html.
Week 6
- Assignment 3 Change: the assignment will be posted next Friday (Week 8).
Week 5
- Reading: next week, we will discuss algorithms and pseudo code on Monday (Ch. 7) and graphs, figures and tables on Wednedsay (Ch. 6). We will resume having in-class exercises related to the readings next week.
- Bring your topic proposal draft to class on Wednesday. We will do a peer-review and talk about our proposals in-class.
- A good resource for those wishing to learn about writing proofs: How to Prove It by Velleman. Brand new, it costs roughly $20.
- Resources for writing math in LaTeX documents:
- An introduction to LaTeX there are many, many resources available online for LaTeX - often searching for "[operation] example" will provide usable snippets of LaTeX code. Quite often there is already a LaTeX package that implements what you are looking for (e.g. automatically sorting reference numbers, including graphics, etc.).
- Detexify: draw symbols to find their LaTeX code.
- min: a protoype math editor and search interface; enter math using keyboard, images and mouse/touch (works on iPads, possibly other tablets)
- Math-aware search engines:
- Tangent: search math expressions in Wikipedia, and export them to min. The link here will select a random expression from the corpus and then search.
- Wolfram Alpha: will evaluate passed expression and provide additional information (this is a "question answering system," rather than a conventional search engine).
- Wikipedia and Google provide some support for searching math expressed in LaTeX.
Week 4
- Reading: next week we will talk about Zobel Ch. 5 on using mathematical notation in writing.
- Columbus Day (Week 8): class will be on Tuesday rather than Monday in Week 8.
- Paper Presentations (Wed): Students will make a five-minute presentation of a research paper from their area of interest in class on Wednesday, with two minutes for questions. A dropbox has been set up on MyCourses for presentation slides (please submit these as .pdf files).
- Advice regarding analyzing the content of research papers and presentations are available from the course text (see p. 167), Ch. 14 of the course text (on presentations and presentation slides) and the Zobel handout from Week 1; students are strongly encouraged to consult these resources.
- Topic Proposal (due next Friday, 11:59pm). Requirements for the proposal are available on MyCourses under Content/Assignments.
Week 3
- Assignment 2 is due on Friday at 11:59pm.
- Next Wednesday, all students will give a five minute presentation of a research paper, plus two minutes for questions. A dropbox for slides has been set up on MyCourses. Ch. 14 of the Zobel text discusses preparing presentations and presentation slides.
- We are revisiting earlier material on locating and reading papers from the textbook (pp. 163-167) and Sections 3 and 4 of Zobel's overview of research methods for Computer Science available through MyCourses (on reading, locating and managing your collection of research papers).
- Online open source code repositories: github, and SourceForge. Often research groups will have software available from their web site.
- Online databases for Computer Science research papers:
- DBLP
- Google Scholar
- CiteSeer
- RIT Library (note: provides free access to publisher collections below)
- JSTOR (archival articles)
Publisher Collections
- ACM Computing Surveys: a valuable resource for surveys and tutorials on a wide variety of Computer Science research topics.
- ACM Digital Library
- IEEE Xplore
- SpringerLink
- ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
- Tools for creating annotated bibiographies and paper collections:
- (MacOS) BibDesk
- (Cross-Platform) JabRef
- (Web-based: Firefox Browser) Zotero
- (Web-based) Mendeley
- Many of these tools will allow you to import bibtex entries from a text file. In a pinch, simply saving .pdf files for papers, and copying bib entries into a text file and placing notes in a 'note' or 'annote' field may do.
- It is a good idea to mark up .pdf files directly as well - this is very helpful for quickly remembering details of a paper. Many tools will let you mark up .pdf files associated with bibliographic entries, and then load the paper with annotations again later.
Week2
- Assignment 2 has been posted on MyCourses. It is due next Friday at 11:59pm.
- The LgEval/CROHMELib tools we looked at in class are available here.
- Readings/Viewings for Wednesday:
- Zobel (course textbook), "Measurements and Coding," pp. 189-190.
- Prof. Zanibbi's Research Programming Guidelines.
- Here is Paul Graham's classic essay on programming and creativity, Hackers and Painters. This is an interesting (and useful) perspective for graduate students and research programmers in general.
- Here is a video of Richard Hamming's talk on You and Your Research (written transcript version (with additional topics and details) for talk given March, 1986 at Bell Labs is available here). In this fascinating talk, Hamming talks about what it takes to do "first-rate," or "great" work. Many of his observations are surprising, and some controversial.
Week 1
- Assignment 1 is due on Friday.
- The course syllabus, schedule and required text (see "Resources") have been posted.
- In Week 1, we will explore the nature of both Computer Science, and Science in general.
- Reading for Wednesday: read the paper "Should Computer Scientists Experiment More?," and look over Zobel's overview of research methods for computer science; both are available through MyCourses. We will have in-class exercises based on these readings.
- Some videos related to our discussions:
- Donald Knuth's advice for young people. Doing work with an impact requires deepening your own understanding and sharpening your own instincts to a much greater extent than working on problems that are popular. Sharp instincts include having good ideas based in strong technical knowledge, making logical analyses and conclusions, and quickly identifying when your ideas are wrong (warning: this is often the case!) and adjusting accordingly.
- Richard Feynman summarizing the Scientific Method. This is the most elegant and funniest summary of both the process and culture of science that I have seen to date.
- Richard Feynman on knowing things, versus naming things. Naming ≠ Knowing.
- ..and again on not knowing things. Skepticism and doubt are essential, unavoidable aspects of scientific investigation - we can confirm theories, but never truly prove them. Science informs an ongoing debate, as opposed to adding to a body of "certain" knowledge.
- Reading for Wednesday of Week 2: read the "Reliable Research" paper available through MyCourses, and Ch. 10 of the Zobel text ("Doing Research").
- Assignment 1 will be posted on Friday, and will be due Friday of Week 2.