Phase I. Survey Report Outline: At most 3 pages, 12 point font (submissions violating these will be penalized!)

Recommended structure for Survey Report is is

1. Title+abstract.
2. Related Work (bulk of survey report). Need to have >= 15 references. About 2 pages.
3. Motivation+Concrete Problem Statement (need not be formal, only concrete).
4. Approach(es) planned to solving problems - initial thoughts will suffice.
5. Timeline/Expected Milestones for achieving your goals.

Survey Submission Instructions: The Survey Report Deadline is February 28, 2010, 11.59 PM. At most 3 pages, 12 point font (submissions violating these will be penalized!). To submit, do BOTH of the following by 11.59 PM on February 28, 2010: (1) email your survey report as an email attachment (doc, pdf, or ps only) with Subject line "525 Survey" to indy at cs dawt uiuc dot edu; AND (2) print out a hardcopy (single-sided) and submit it by slipping it under Indy's office door (3112 SC).

Phase II. Midterm Report: We will be using double-blind reviewing for the midterm report. This means that (1) when you submit your midterm report, you should not include your name(s) anywhere in the midterm report, nor reference any of your prior work (if you need to cite this work, you can mark the reference as xxx); (2) your midterm will be peer-reviewed by 3 other anonymous students in the class, whose identities you will not know. (1) is necessary to preserve fairness of reviews and prevent reviewer bias, while (2) is needed to preserve anonymity of reviewers. Indy and the TA will be the only ones to know which report was submitted by which group, and the who reviewers were. See further instructions for writing blind submissions [here]

Please note that if your midterm report is not anonymous, it will be returned without being graded. Similarly, if your midterm review (instructions later) is not anonymous, you will not get credit for it.

Your midterm report needs to have (1) some algorithms, (2) some initial implementation, and (3) most importantly, some initial experimental data (mandatory!). While writing the midterm report, you may want to think about, and address the following questions head-on about your work:

• Question 0 What is/are your main hypothesis/hypotheses in the paper? This is a one-sentence summary of your paper. Position your paper w.r.t. other related work on the same or even similar problems (reuse relevant parts of your survey report here!). Show to the reader that your work is on a unique point in the design spectrum. Don't overstate it, don't understate it either. This statement is related to Question 6 below (yes, it's a chicken and egg problem!)
• Question 1 What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? What is the value added, and what is the novelty in the paper.
• Question 2 What are your goals?
• Question 3 What are your techniques?
• Question 4 What do your techniques gain you?
• Question 5 What do your techniques lose you? That is, what are the tradeoffs.
• Question 6 What do your experiments tell you? This is related to Questions 0,4,5 above (yes, it's an egg and chicken problem!). Show that your data supports your hypothesis, and show the gains, losses, and tradeoffs by using your techniques.

Midterm Report Submission Instructions: The Midterm Report Deadline is March 28, 2010 (Sunday), 11.59 PM. At most 8 pages, 12 point font (submissions violating these will be penalized!). To submit, do BOTH of the following by 11.59 PM on Sunday March 28: (1) email your survey report as an email attachment (doc, pdf, or ps only) with Subject line "525 Midterm" to indy at cs dawt uiuc dot edu; AND (2) print out a hardcopy (single-sided) and submit it by slipping it under Indy's office door (3112 SC).

Midterm Review Form: [TXT]

Midterm Review Submission Instructions: The Midterm Review Deadline is April 4, 2010 (Sunday), 11.59 PM. To submit your reviews, email your reviews as email attachment (txt file only) with Subject line "525 Midterm Reviews" to indy at cs dawt uiuc dot edu. No hardcopy is needed.

 

Phase III. Final Report: A conference-quality paper. Focus on Questions 0 through 6 above for the midterm report, as well a pay attention to: