CS 5970 — Large Project Assignments

NOTE: Each part of this assignment, like others in this class, is due at the beginning of the class period. This means that if you are even a minute late, you lose 20%. If you are worried about potentially being late, turn in your completed assignment ahead of time. Do this by submitting it to me during office hours or by sliding it under my office door. Do not send assignments to me through email or leave them in my departmental mail box.

As discussed in the syllabus and in class, a large portion of your course grade will be based on large project. That project involves choosing a topic, writing a paragraph describing that topic, doing a literature search and turning in a list of references, proposing a project, giving status reports, writing code, collecting data, analyzing that data, writing a report, and presenting your results.

The Assignments

Topic Paragraph

The first step in this assignment is to determine your topic. The topic may be any topic covered in the course textbook (Evolutionary Computation: A Unified Approach, Kenneth A. De Jong, 2006, MIT Press.)

Once you have decided on a topic, you are to write a paragraph describing, in your own words, the topic you have selected. (If you are unclear as to what it means to described something "in your own words," please read the Provost's web pages on academic integrity, particularly the documents related to plagiarism.) The point of your writing this paragraph is to ensure that you have looked at your proposed topic in enough depth to make a topic selection appropriate for your work in this course.

Your topic paragraph should be approximately 100-200 words in length. (This is a guideline range. Values somewhat outside this range are acceptable. However, if you go much over 200 words, I may take off points for being excessively verbose.) You should double space this document, so that I have room to write comments/corrections on it. You should submit an electronic copy of your topic paragraph before class through D2L and turn in a printed copy at the start of class. Due: Wednesday, September 1.

References

The second step in this assignment is to conduct a literature search to find publications describing at least two different approaches to the topic you have chosen. (Actually, you could conduct part or all of this literature search while determining your topic. However, you are not required to turn in your list of references until after you have turned in your topic paragraph, so you may conduct the literature search second.) The approaches you decide to cover may include those discussed in the textbook. However, you must find where those approaches were originally published in the primary peer reviewed literature and use those publications for your projects.

You will need to find at least one publication describing each approach. The exact number of publications you use is up to you to determine. If you find a single publication that describes an approach in sufficient detail for you to get a good understanding of how it works, that one publication is sufficient. If you discover that the one publication you have found on an approach is insufficient for you to understand that approach, however, then you'll need to find more publications on that approach or move on to another approach.

The publications you use must be refereed technical publications. These include conference papers and journal articles (whether published in print or on the web) but not popular sources such as magazines (e.g., Discover Magazine) or un-refereed sources (such as most web sites, even for departments or labs). Moreover, conferences or journals used should be professional conferences or journals, rather than student conferences or journals. It is okay if some or all of the authors of your selected publications are students—they often are in professional publications! However, the conference or journal should be one in which professionals regularly publish. If you are in doubt about a possible source, you should check with me before using it.

Turn in complete citations for these five approaches. Here are guidelines for what a complete citation includes.

You should double space this document, so that I have room to write comments/corrections on it.

You should submit an electronic copy of your references before class through D2L and turn in a printed copy at the start of class. Due: Wednesday, September 8.

Proposal

The third step in this process is to write a project proposal. Your proposal should extend your topic paragraph by explaining:

Your project proposal should be approximately one to two pages in length. (This is a guideline range. Values outside this range are acceptable. However, if you go much over two pages, I may take off points for being excessively verbose.) You should double space this document, so that I have room to write comments/corrections on it. You should submit an electronic copy of your topic paragraph before class through D2L and turn in a printed copy at the start of class. Due: Wednesday, September 15.

Short Status Reports

On Monday, October 25, during class, you will give a brief (no more than 15 minute), informal status report of your chosen project.

This status report should begin with your chosen and approved topic and include all the components required for the proposal (why the topic is interesting, what question or problem your project addresses, how you will attempt to address this question or problem, and what sort of activities you will carry out for your project) and references to at least two different approaches to your topic. In addition, you should explain where you are in carrying out your project activities and what you have learned so far from developing your project and carrying out project activities.

The presentation medium is up to you, as long as it effectively conveys the required information. That is, you may use slides (PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress, Keynote, etc.) from your computer, or use the document cam, or write on the board, or otherwise present your material, as long as it presents the required information to your audience in a way that is likely to be well understood.

Status Reports

On Wednesday, November 10 or Monday, November 15, during class, you will give give a formal status report of your chosen project. You need to be ready to give this report on either day as I will not announce ahead of time who will give their status report on which day.

Your formal status report should last 15 minutes and leave 10 minutes for questions and feedback from the class. In your report, you should briefly cover the basics of your project (topic, problem/question, approach) as a reminder to the class. If these basics have changed in any way, be sure to tell us of these changes and explain the reason(s) for these changes. Once you have covered the basics (which should take less than five minutes, perhaps as little as one minute if there are no changes to report), you should inform us of your current status—what you have accomplished and what you still plan to accomplish during the final four weeks of the semester.

In your status report, be sure to answer the following questions:

Notes on your status report:

Project Report

You will submit both a draft report and a final report for your project. Both versions have the same required contents. The draft report will be graded on a ✓+ / ✓ / ✓– (check-plus/check/check-minus) scheme only and is intended primarily to allow me to provide you with feedback that you can use to improve the quality of your final report. The final report will be point graded.

Your report will be modeled on a technical report that might be published by a laboratory. This will have the same basic structure as a conference paper or journal article but without the fancy formatting or severe page limits. Your report will have the following components:

Note that while all of the components above must be included in your report, they do not necessarily need to be organized into sections this same way. For example, if your approach combines ideas from multiple prior approaches, you might describe the approach in a single section with multiple subsections or, alternately, in multiple sections. As a second example, you might choose to combine your discussion and conclusions into one section or to combine your conclusions and future work into one section. However, deviations from the expected order and division of the document should be justifiable, not gratuitous.

You should double space this document, so that I have room to write comments/corrections on it. To conserve paper, you should print all of your documents for this class on both sides of each sheet of paper when practical and should make an extra effort to do so with this large document.

You should submit an electronic copy of your report before class through D2L and turn in a printed copy at the start of class. Draft Report Due: Monday, November 15. Final Report Due: Wednesday, December 8.

Project Poster

This and the remaining components of this assignment will be filled in at a later date.