The project proposal is due on September 28 (Friday) by 11:59pm. Email me your project proposal with the phrase CPSC 689 PROPOSAL in the subject line. The project proposal should be written in HTML or some other browser-aware Web language. Most proposals will be between 2 and 4 pages. Remember that the project proposal is worth 15% of your final grade!

I will expect your proposal to address the following issues:

• Introduction and Problem Statement: What is the problem that your project seeks to address and why is it interesting and important? You should motivate the project sufficiently, and let me know the scope of your planned project.
• Related Work: You should provide some context for your project proposal. What other work has been done before? What differentiates your proposal from earlier work? Make sure that you cite appropriate related work and provide a list of references at the conclusion of your proposal.
• The Proposal of Work: Describe the specific project scope, including what you will build, test, develop, etc. and how you will evaluate the success of your project. Be sure to include a description of the new and interesting ideas, algorithms, techniques, or applications your project will address. Your proposal should also include a high-level design figure that shows the main components of your proposed solution and the connections among these components.
• Plan of Action: Identify your plan for developing your proposed project. Include a list of resources you will use (software, hardware, datasets, etc.), and a weekly schedule of milestones. Be specific.
• Evaluation: How will you evaluate your project? What metrics will validate your results?
• List of References

The tentative project workshop schedule is:

• November 21 (Wednesday): Brian and Robert; Ananda and Vijay
• November 29 (Thursday): Shaik and Videsh; Dustin; Jaime and Omar
• November 30 (Friday): Paul; Gazal and Keerthi; Sashi and Chiao; Megha and Jaya

We will meet in our regular classroom at 9:10am on each workshop day. You (and your partner, if you have elected to work with someone else) will lead an in-class presentation of your project. Plan for a talk of around 15 to 20 minutes, plus 5 minutes of questions. Since we have four presentations on November 30, class will run a little long.

Each project team will present a demo to me between November 30 (Friday) and December 4 (Tuesday).

The tentative demo schedule is:

• Dec 3, 11am: Robert and Brian
• Dec 3, 1pm: Dustin
• Dec 3. 4pm: Megha and Jaya
• Dec 4, 9am: Ananda and Vijay
• Dec 4, 10am: Videsh and Moulaali
• Dec 4, 11am: Gazal and Keerthi [new time]
• Dec 4, 1pm: Paul
• Dec 4, 2pm: Jaime and Omar
• Dec 4, 3pm: Gazal and Keerthi
• Dec 4, 4pm: Chiao and Sashi

The final deliverable will be due to me by 11:59pm on December 4 (Tuesday).

For your final deliverable, you will hand in to me the following items:

• The final project report.

  Your report should include the objectives of your project, the research problems you are addressing, the approach/methods you took for evaluation of your results, the architecture and functional components of your prototype system, and the three most interesting contributions of your project design and/or implementation. You are also expected to summarize (i) what you have learned through the hands-on experience of doing this project; (ii) the concepts and techniques you learned in class that you used in the current project design; and (iii) the concepts and techniques you learned in class that could be used to extend the current project.

  I expect to see a sufficient level of technical detail in the project report for me (or other interested faculty or grad student) to be able to implement your project. For example, if you use a variation of TFIDF in your project, tell me the specific version you are using; if you are using a clustering algorithm, tell me how your data is modeled as input to the algorithm, what the algorithm does, and what the output of the algorithm is.

  I expect the report to be well written and documented with references. The presentation style and quality (syntax and grammar) are an important part of the evaluation and grading of your final project. There is no official page limit for your report. Quality is more important than quantity. I would rather see a well-written 15 page report than a poorly written 30-page report.

• The original project proposal (a revised version is preferred, but not required)
• The in-class final project presentation (ppt or keynote file)
• Source code and code documentation
• Executable package of your prototype