B552: Knowledge-Based Computation
Spring 2008
Final Project Writeups

Final project code and writeups are due by Noon on Friday, April 25.

Project Goals

An excellent project will address interesting questions, try to overcome hard problems, come up with creative approaches for solving them, and examine not only the strengths but also the limitations of the approach. Don't hesitate to take risks: If you devise a creative method that fails to work, that can still be a strong project. In that case, the point of the paper will be showing you learned about the problem and method and ideas for exploiting what you learned. The conference style should be that of a conference paper (which may give a head start on a conference submission about your work!).

What to Submit

Projects may be done individually or in groups of two. Each group should prepare a single joint submission. Each submission will include the following parts:
  1. Electronic and hard copies of a paper describing the problem you are addressing, the methods you have chosen to address them, the motivations for those methods, their relationship to work in the field, and, most importantly, what you have learned from the project.
  2. An appendix with additional sample output with very brief annotations to give a more complete picture of how the program works and what it can do.
  3. A well-documented hard copy of your program (for manageable code lengths), with the code also submitted via oncourse.

How to Submit

For hard copies, please submit in class or in the homework drop box accessible near the LH215 mailboxes. Please be sure to include your name, my name, and B552 on your envelope.

Writeup Format

Individual writeups should be a maximum of 5 pages in 2-column AAAI conference paper format, and group writeups a maximum of 8 pages, including sample program output to illustrate its points. AAAI Word and LaTeX templates are available on line.

You may include an additional appendix if appropriate; please talk to me. If you are unsure of what to include or what to aim for in the writeup, I'd be happy to talk about it!

Project Components/Grading Criteria

Grading for the written materials will be based on the following. (I know different projects may have different types of focuses, and am glad to work things out if not all of these apply to your project. If you believe that some of these criteria aren't appropriate to your project, please discuss this with me as soon as possible.)

Problem (20%)
Is it interesting and challenging? (The paper should explain why it is.)
Model (35%)
Is the theoretical solution interesting?
Would it scale up?
Does it make theoretical claims? (E.g., saying something about needed knowledge for a task, or the strengths and weaknesses of a given process, or about what are the hard and easy parts of the problem you're attacking.)
Paper (20%)
Motivation
Relation to other work (this should go beyond what we have covered in class, to zero in on the most relevant references to your specific project).
Analysis of strengths+weaknesses/evaluation
Clarity on program (All major points should be described, but at a fairly high level)
Presentation
Program (25%)
Implementation of model. The program must be well documented (see class policies page for more information)

Useful Tips

Please take a look at the section on writing AI papers from the MIT AI lab. This has many helpful tips for writing up your research and discusses why to write. (This is an opinionated page which represents only its authors' views.)

Questions

Please let me know if you have any questions about expectations, or on anything related to your work. Have fun on the project---I'm looking forward to seeing what you've accomplished!