CSE 262 Class Projects (Winter 2013)

One of the goals of CSE 262 is to teach you how to conduct research. A research project is a formal requirement of the course and counts for 85% of your grade. A project may be done individually, but some projects are better suited to a team of 2. Your project grade will be based on your successful completion of the following 4 parts:

1. Project proposal (writeup + brief in-class presentation, 5% of the project grade)
2. Progress report. In class presentation (10 minutes) on Wednesday, Feb 18, 2013 + 1-2 page report due on Friday, Feb 20, 2013 (10% of the project grade)
3. Final Project presentation: Presentation Schedule TBA   (15% of your project grade)
   Bring hard copies of your slides to class.
4. Final Report: due Friday, March 15, 2013, 9PM. (Hard copy and electronic, 70% of the project grade)

Your project proposal should address the following issues.

1. What are the goals of your project? Are they realistic?
2. What are your hypotheses?
3. What is your experimental method?
4. What result(s) do you want to demonstrate?
5. What are the significance of the results?
6. What code will you implement? Briefly describe any software packages or previously written software that you will be relying on.

The progress report will help keep you on a steady pace and enable you to make mid-course corrections. The report consists of a 10 minute in-class presentation + 1-2 page writeup. Your report should address the following points.

1. Your progress to date, including: experimental results and their interpretation; remaining implementation effort.
2. Any revised milestones and completion dates that you established previously, including an explanation.
3. A self-evaluation. If working as a team, discuss the division of labor and other aspects of how you worked together as a team. If working on your own, answer the questions on the form that are specific to you individual project. A copy of the form is available in html.

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.

You'll have 20 minutes to give your final project presentation, plus 3 minutes for questions. I suggest that you present about 10 to 12 slides. The 20 minute limit assumes that there are no questions; if there are questions you should keep the extra 3 minutes in mind and lead any discussions accordingly. Be sure to rehearse your talk beforehand, so that you can present it in 20 minutes if uninterrupted.

Bring a hard copy of your slides to class so can take notes during your presentation.

Your presentation should address the following issues.

1. What is the goal of your project? If you are working with an application, describe the important steps of the underlying algorithm and the bottleneck(s). This part should be brief (1 slide, not more than 1 minute) since you've reported on your project proposal and progress previously.
2. What was your approach, e.g. experimental method?
3. What are your findings and their interpretation? Include an analysis of performance. You should devote most of your time to this part
4. How did the project differ from your original goals, and any goals modified in your progress report?
5. What are your conclusions?

Your final project report should be a polished piece of work. Read over these these requirements for your project for instructions on what to present, to include in your report, and how to submit an electronic copy. To get an idea of what I expect, look at project reports from courses I’ve taught previously.

Maintained by [Mon Feb 18 17:16:02 PST 2013]