CSE 260 Research Projects

(Fall 2012)

One of the goals of CSE 260 is to teach you how to conduct research. A research project is a formal requirement of the course and counts for 40% of your grade. A project may be done in teams of 2 or 3. Extreme programming is an extremely helpful technique in parallel programming! You should allow 4 weeks to complete the project. Your project grade will be based on your successful completion of the following 3 parts:

  1. Project selection: due Friday Nov. 9th, 2012
  2. Progress report: due Wednesday Nov. 28, 2012 (2/10 of the project grade)
  3. Final Report: due Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 5PM. in EBU3B 3244 (Hard copy and electronic, 8/10 of the project grade).
    Be sure to read these Project requirements, including instructions

Here is a List of Projects. I will allow a small number of self-proposed projects, and will explain how this works once the quarter is underway. If I approve your selection you must provide a project proposal which addresses the following issues. Note that your responses may be tentative, and you can revisit them in the progress report.

  1. What are the goals of your project? Are they realistic?
  2. What are your hypotheses?
  3. What is your experimental method for proving or disproving your hypotheses.
  4. What experimental result(s) do you need to demonstrate?
  5. What would be the significance of those results?
  6. What code will you need to implement? What software packages or previously written software will you rely on?
  7. Describe the tentative division of labor among the team members.

The proposal should also include the investigator names, the title of the project, and a preliminary list of milestones—with completion dates—and possible options depending on your progress. Be realistic, but remember that your milestones are not binding and you can fine-tune them as the project is underway. (This is fine so long as you document your decisions.)

The progress report will help keep you on a steady pace and enable you to make mid-course corrections. The report should

  1. discuss your progress to date. If you are working in a team, include a self-evaluation discussing the division of labor and other aspects of how you worked together as a team team (A copy of the form is available in html)
  2. revise any milestones and completion dates that you established previously, including an explanation.

In evaluating your proposal and progress report I will check to see if your goals are realistic. A realistic project that is completed successfully will likely receive a higher grade than one that is too ambitious and doesn't get finished. Results alone are not adequate. You need to interpret them. If you have any questions about this, be sure and see me. If you do have an ambitious design, we can work together to set realistic goals.

Your final report should be a polished piece of work. To get an idea of what I expect, read some previous project reports.

Submit hard copy as well as an electronic version, e.g., html with ASCII and other attachments. Be sure to read this document about project requirements which discusses what I am looking for in the report, along with instructions for submitting an electronic copy.

Maintained by [Sun Oct 21 18:45:58 PDT 2012]