Projects

  • Students must complete a class project either individually or in groups of size 2.
  • 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.

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 29: Choose a team and project idea

By this date, you are expected to

  1. know who your team members are, and
  2. have a rough idea of what project you are working on.

I expect you to email the instructors at least once before this about your choice.

Oct 13: Project Proposal

1-4 page write-up (ideally in LaTeX) describing the project. It should contain the following:

  1. At least one paragraph on why the problem is important (motivation).
  2. A formulation of the problem, and how you will evaluate its “success”.
    1. Define your notion of privacy or fairness
    2. Define what “utility” means
    3. Formally state assumptions
    4. What datasets are you going to use
  3. Initial literature review testifying that the problem is not already solved (need not be detailed).
  4. Preliminary ideas on your approach to solving the problem.
  5. Preliminary ideas of which datasets/experiments/theorems …

Nov 3: 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.

Dec 13: Final presentations

Each team is expected to create a 5-10 minute video explaining their research project.

Dec 13: Final Report

Submit final 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.