Term Papers

Advice:
- Our focus is technical, not marketing or management.
- Avoid redundancy.
- Value add: I am not looking for long lists of features or alternatives, so much as the ideas that underlie them. Evaluate approaches and claims by others. Highlight trade-offs and scenarios where one approach may be better than another. You may not be accustomed to thinking in this fashion; in that case, the exercise is even more valuable.
Schedule:
- Please identify your topic based on your interests and knowledge. You can ask the TA and me about what we think of potential topics, but we won't review these until you submit the proposal. The proposal should be about 600 words and describe the problem area you wish to study; your motivation; and (mostly) what you propose to do.
- If we like, we will request a revised proposal.
- The interim paper is important because this is the document on which we give you the most comments.
- The final paper has the highest weight of these submissions.
Originality of presentation: even though the material may be well-known, your presentation of it should not be lifted from another party. Credit your sources: not doing so is considered plagiarism.
Length: About 5000 words, including references and figures (where a page of figures counts as about 1000 words).
Style: Use the ACM conference proceedings style.
Grading: The TA and I will assign grades in consultation with each other.

Section	Category	Points	Minutes
I	Introduction	15	5
	Motivation	8
	Problem description	7
T	Technology	50	10
	Correctness	20
	Organization	10
	Relevance	10
	Explanation	10
E	Evaluation	20	9
	Strengths, limitations	4
	Competing approaches	4
	Possible directions	4
	Response to comments	8
D	Delivery	15
	Clarity of text	5
	Clarity of figures	5
	G	Grand total	100	24