- Students must complete a class project either individually or in groups of size 2 or 3.
- Projects can focus on developing new theory/algorithms, or on implementing/adapting known algorithms to a real application setting.
- You can choose your own projects.
- At any stage of the semester, you are welcome to discuss with others as well as with the instructors.
Example Project Ideas
Some of the ideas described below are derived from active research projects we are working. Some of the papers are ongoing work. Please do not share these ideas beyond the class. You will be asked to log in using your netid to access the files.
- Project ideas in Privacy (PDF)
- Project ideas in Fairness (PDF)
- Project ideas in Privacy vs Fairness (PDF)
Grading
Total: 40 points
- 5 points each for submitting the project proposal and mid-term report on time.
- 10 points for presentation
- 20 points for final report
Timeline
Sep 26: Choose a team and project idea
By this date, you are expected to
- know who your team members are, and
- have a rough idea of what project you are working on.
I expect you to meet or email the instructors at least once before this about your choice.
Oct 15: Project Proposal
1-4 page write-up (ideally in LaTeX) describing the project. It should contain the following:
- At least one paragraph on why the problem is important (motivation).
- A formulation of the problem, and how you will evaluate its “success”.
- Define your notion of privacy or fairness
- Define what “utility” means
- Formally state assumptions
- What datasets are you going to use
- Initial literature review testifying that the problem is not already solved (need not be detailed).
- Preliminary ideas on your approach to solving the problem.
- Preliminary ideas of which datasets/experiments/theorems …
Nov 7: Mid-project report
2-3 page report on the progress. By now you should have a good literature review of related work, a good plan of attack and you must know which datasets you are running experiments on, or which theorems you are attempting to prove.
Nov 28: Final presentations
Present a poster detailing your work
Dec 3: Final Report
Submit report Report (6-10 page conference style paper).
Never copy a sentence or a paragraph word-to-word from any source. This is plagiarism. If you ever need to quote a sentence from another source, always put it within quotations marks and appropriately cite the source.
