Guidelines for Academic Reports: Advanced Constraint Processing

Guidelines for Reports Advanced Constraint Processing CSCE 921, Spring 2013 www.cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/S13-921/ Berthe Y. Choueiry (Shu-we-ri) Avery Hall, 360 choueiry@cse.unl.edu Tel: +1(402)472-5444 Guidelines for reports

Outline • Presentation in class • Writing a critical summary • Committing to a project • Writing a progress report • About your final report Guidelines for reports

Class Presentation: Speaker • Choose a topic (part of/entire chapter/paper) • Confirm with instructor • Give cold run with slides to instructor at least 48 hours (preferably more) before the presentation • Present in class, as if you are teaching the material • Manage discussion, ensure that everyone is following/participating, ask questions, seek eye contact Guidelines for reports

Class Presentation: Scribe • Summarize technical content and discussion • Give notes to instructor within 48 hours of lecture • After instructor comments, distribute to class Guidelines for reports

Class Presentation: Class • Prepare questions/comments (2 per lecture) on paper before lecture, otherwise lose points • Questions will be collected at end of class • Evaluate speaker (late/no evaluation will be penalized) • Evaluate scribe (late/no evaluation will be penalized) Guidelines for reports

Writing a Critical Summary This generic template is provided as an aid but is not mandatory • PART I: your understanding of the paper • PART II: your opinion of the paper Guidelines for reports

PART I: The paper • What: Context of the paper • problem the authors claim to address (i.e., motivation) • assumptions they make • solution they claim to provide • How: Short Description of proposed technique • basic algorithmic steps • optimizations, if any • evaluation: empirical/theoretical • Impact: Comparison to previous techniques • if provided, how? • can you identify/propose some other? • What next: Directions for future research Guidelines for reports

PART II: Your opinion • Is the paper a ‘real’ advancement of the state of the art? • Is it useful for the theory? for practice? • Can you identify other uses of the proposed technique(s)? • What are the shortcomings? • Can you identify more? can you propose a fix? • Any issues swept-under-the-carpet? • Can you identify other directions for future research? Guidelines for reports

Outline • Writing a critical summary • Committing to a project • Writing a progress report • About your final report Guidelines for reports

Committing to a Project • By week 4, you must commit to a project • Submit to handin a short report (up to 1 page) stating: • Project title, your name • A justification for your choice • A clear work-plan listing main tasks, approximate dates, and expected outcomes • A bibliography, if applicable • Clearly state whether you are collaborating with colleagues and/or with a research assistant • One proposal per team is sufficient. Teams are reminded that each member will have to provide a full evaluation of the performance of each other team member, listing both good and bad aspects. This is a requirement for collaboration. Guidelines for reports

Progress report: format • By week 10, you must submit a progress report • In your report, you discuss your progress on the work-plan you had set to yourself in the proposal you submitted. • Be as concise as possible but do not be bothered by a limitation on the number of pages. Thus, there is no requirement concerning the number of pages (could take from 1 page to whatever is needed), shorter reports are welcome . • If you have finished your project, this could be your draft for your final report. Guidelines for reports

Progress report: content • Document what you did so far • Comment on what you accomplished with respect to what you promised you would • State whether you are early/late and why • Explain in case you have changed your plans and explain why • Report any difficulties, breakthroughs • Discuss anything else you feel is appropriate Guidelines for reports

Progress Report: Intent • Imagine you are a professional hired to carry out some investigations for a client. The client is paying you for the number of hours and for the quality of service/result you are providing. • It is time to re-evaluate the contract. You need to update your client on your progress. • How would rate your performance? how much would you charge? are able to finish the task? • if so how and when? • if not, will you keep the contract? drop it (a penalty is involved)? Guidelines for reports

Your Final Report (1): Content • By week 15, you must submit a final report • Given the variety of the projects, it is difficult to give general guidelines on the content of the report • Please discuss them with me on an individual basis • Include • What you accomplished • The problems you encountered • Your findings Guidelines for reports

Final Report (2): Typical Structure • Title, Course Number, Your Name , Date • Abstract • Table of Contents. In LaTeX: \tableofcontents • Introduction, motivation, roadmap (Section 2, Section 3, etc.) • Contributions • Experiments • Experiments set-up, data sets • Results • Discussions • Conclusions & future work • Bibliography Guidelines for reports

Final Report (3): Advice • Format: Use a one column format (not two columns) • Have as many figures as possible (including all those you are going to use in your slides): a picture is worth a million word.. • Include all your pseudo code (if any) • In your figures/plots, do not rely on color but use different line styles • Also, you may want to check my Golden Check to avoid annoying common mistakeshttp://csce.unl.edu/~choueiry/Advising/BeforeYouSubmitaReport.txt • The length of the report is not an issue. The shorter the better, but you should use any number of pages as you need. Guidelines for reports

Guidelines for Academic Reports: Advanced Constraint Processing