Class Project

Overview
The goal of working on a class project is three-fold. First, it will provide you with the
opportunity to apply the concepts learned in this class creatively, which helps you with
understanding material more deeply. Second, designing and working on a unique
project in a team which is something that you will encounter, if you haven’t already,
rather sooner than later in life, and this course project helps with preparing for that.
Third, along with the opportunity to practice and the satisfaction of working creatively,
students can use this project to enhance their portfolio or resume. Sample projects that
you may want to check out for brainstorming: https://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2021spr/.

For this project, you will be working in a team consisting of 5-6 students. No exceptions.
You will be able to access the project assignments only after you join a group on
Canvas. You can find available groups at Canvas -> People -> Team Projects Groups
tab. You are encouraged to form groups by yourself, as discussed in class. Feel free to
use the discussion board to coordinate with people. If you cannot find group members
by 3rd week of the semester, the TA and I will randomly assign you to a group. If you
have any concerns working with someone in your group, please talk to a TA or the
instructor for accommodations.

Note about grading

There is no “perfect project.” While you are encouraged to be ambitious, the most
important aspect of this project is your learning experience. Hence, you don’t want to
pick something that is too easy for you, but similarly, you don’t want to choose a project
where you are not certain that is out of the scope of this class. (However, note that the
more comprehensive and interesting the project is, the easier you’ll find it to write the 6-
8-page project report.) Projects should have multiple facets. One concrete prediction
objective is good, but there needs to be enough depth to your approach or optional
goals that it cannot be done in only a few weeks. The project proposal is not graded by
how exciting your project is but based on whether you follow the objectives of the
project proposal, project presentation, and project report. For instance, if your project
ends up being unsuccessful – for example, if you choose to design a classifier and it
doesn’t achieve the desired accuracy – it will not negatively affect your grade as long as
you are honest, describe the potential issues well, and suggest improvements or further
experiments. Again, the objective of this project is to provide you with hands-on practice
and an opportunity to learn.

The project consists of 4 parts:

 1. a project proposal,
2. an oral update
3. a short project presentation,
4. and a project report.

The expectations for each part will be discussed in the following sections.

1) Project Proposal
Please note that you should use the attached zip file proposal-template for writing
and submitting your proposal! (Unzip the file and you will find instructions in
proposal.pdf)

The main purpose of the project proposal is to receive feedback from the TAs/the
instructor regarding whether your project is feasible and whether it is within the scope of
this class. Also, the project proposal offers a chance to receive useful feedback and
suggestions on your project.

Proposal Format:

• The project proposal is a 1-3 page document (800-1200 words), excluding

references.
• You are required to use 1-2 figures to illustrate technical concepts.
• The proposal must be formatted and submitted as a PDF document.

Introduction:

• Describe what you are planning to do.

• List the underlying technologies and design methods in as much detail as
possible, e.g. which programming languages, APIs, modules, server-side
configurations, and client-side hardware/software you expect to use.
• List as many verifiable milestones as possible between now and the completion
of the project. Identify incremental features. The goal is to produce a project that
will allow incremental development.
• Briefly describe related projects. Please list and provide contrasting detail for at
least two related approaches or sites accessible online. You don’t have to do
something new, but aim to be unique if possible. Differentiate approaches that
are commercial vs freely available as well as those that are closed vs. open
source.
Motivation:

• Describe why your project is exciting. E.g., you can describe why your project
could have a broader societal impact. Or, you may describe the motivation from a
personal learning perspective.

Evaluation:

• What would the successful outcome of your project look like? In other words,
under which circumstances would you consider your project to be “successful?”
• How do you measure success, specific to this project, from a technical
standpoint?

Resources:

• What resources are you going to use (datasets, computer hardware,

computational tools, etc.)?

Contributions:

You are expected to share the workload evenly, and every group member is expected
to participate in both the experiments and writing. (As a group, you only need to submit
one proposal and one report, though. So you need to work together and coordinate your
efforts.)

• Clearly indicate what computational and writing task each member of your group
will be participating in.
• Document how will you work collaboratively on the project. Weekly meetings
outside class, when? If using version control software, a mailing list, or a wiki,
provide the link so others can potentially help.

It is crucial that you talk to each other regularly!!! Schedule regular meetings
and/or use online communication tools (e.g., Trello, Gitter, Slack, or email) to stay
in touch with your group members throughout the semester regarding the
process of your project.

Modifications to the proposal

After you have received feedback from the TAs/the instructor and your project proposal
has been graded, you are advised to stick to the project outline in the proposal as
closely as possible. However, if there is a concept introduced in a later lecture (for
instance, a machine learning algorithm that you think is more appropriate then the one
you proposed), you have the option to modify your proposal, but you are not penalized if
you don’t. If you wish to update your project outline, talk to a TA first.
Project Proposal Assessment

The proposal will be graded based on completeness of each of the 5 sections

(Introduction, Motivation, Evaluation, Resources, and Contributions) and not be based
on language, style, and how “exciting” or “interesting” the project is. For each section,
you can receive a maximum of 20 points, totaling 100 pts for the proposal overall.

Also, it is important to make sure that you acknowledge previous work and use citations
properly when referring to other people’s work. Even minor forms of plagiarism (e.g.,
copying sentences from other texts) will result in a subtraction of at least 20 pts each
per incidence. And university guidelines dictate that severe incidents need to be
reported. If you are unsure about what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it, please
see the helpful guides at https://policy.unt.edu/policy/06-003.

2) Oral Update
About 3-4 weeks after the submission of your proposal, you will be updating your
progress on the project to the class. The rubric for the grades is provided in the
subsection Oral Update Assessment below.

• 20 pts: Motivation for the project

• 20 pts: Describe your project so that a general audience, familiar with machine
learning, can understand the project
• 20 pts: What methodologies are used in the project?
• 20 pts: What have been done? Is there a substantial progress towards
completion of the project?
• 20 pts: What challenges have been encountered and how are they solved?

3) Project Presentation
During the last three lectures, you will be presenting your project to the class. The
presentation is “free form” but should cover the following:

• introduce the topic to a general audience (your class);

• summarize the main approach or method;
• highlight the outcomes of your project;
• run your code to show a demonstration.
The presentation should be 10-12 minutes long, plus 2 minutes will be reserved for
questions. All members of the group should participate in the presentation.

• To encourage attendance, we will use a random number generator in class to

determine the order in which the groups will present.
• Please bring your own device for the presentation (we have an HDMI cable for
the projector).
• There will be 3 awards:
1. Best Oral Presentation
2. Most Creative Project
3. Best Visualizations
• The awards will be determined by voting, each student will fill out a card in class
(I will provide the cards), voting for each presentation (on a scale from 1-10 for
each of the 3 categories, where 10 is best), and I will collect the cards at the end
of the lecture.

The voting card should be filled out as follows:

1. Title of the Presentation, a/10, b/10, c/10

2. Title of the Presentation, a/10, b/10, c/10 …

where

• a are the points for 1. Best Oral Presentation

• b are the points for 2. Most Creative Project
• c are the points 3. Best Visualizations

The awards will be computed based on the highest number of points for each category.
However, one project can only receive one of the prizes. The projects that received a
prize will earn 5 bonus points for project presentation for the team. The rubric for the
grades is provided in the subsection Project Presentation Assessment below.

Project Presentation Assessment

The rubric for assigning the points (out of 100) for the presentation is provided below:

• 10 pts: Is there a motivation for the project given?

 • 40 pts: Is the project described well enough that a general audience, familiar with
machine learning, can understand the project?
• 20 pts: Figures are all legible and explained well
• 20 pts: Are the results presented adequately discussed?
• 10 pts: Did all team members contribute to the presentation?

4) Project Report
The project report is expected to be 6-8 pages long (excluding references) and should
contain the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Related Work
3. Proposed Method
4. Experiments
5. Results and Discussion
6. Conclusions
7. Contributions

More details are provided in the LaTeX report template.

Please note that you should use the report-template file for writing and submitting
your report! (Unzip the file and you will find instructions in report.pdf)

Also, you are required to submit all the code, computations, and experiments you
developed and conducted for this project. Note that the quality of code will serve as a
basis to establish that the report contains original and “real” results.

Project Report Assessment

The rubric for grading the project reports is provided below.

Abstract: 15 pts

• Is enough information provided get a clear idea about the subject matter?
• Is the abstract conveying the findings?
 • Are the main points of the report described succinctly?

Introduction: 15 pts

• Does the introduction cover the required background information to understand

the work?
• Is the introduction well organized: it starts out general and becomes more
specific towards the end?
• Is there a motivation explaining why this project is relevant, important, and/or
interesting?

Related Work: 15 pts

• Is the similar and related work discussed adequately?

• Are references cited properly (here, but also throughout the whole paper)?
• Is there a discussion or paragraph on comparing this project with other people’s
work adequate?

Proposed Method: 25 pts

• Are there any missing descriptions of symbols used in mathematical notations (if
applicable)?
• Are the main algorithms described well enough so that they can be implemented
by a knowledgeable reader?

Experiments: 25 pts

• Is the experimental setup and methodology described well enough so that it can
be repeated?
• If datasets are used, are they referenced appropriately?

Results and Discussion: 30 pts

• Are the results described clearly?

• Is the data analyzed well, and are the results logical?
• Are the figures clear and have no missing labels?
• Do the figure captions have sufficient information to understand the figure?
• Is each figure referenced in the text?
 • Is the discussion critical/honest, and are potential weaknesses/shortcomings are
discussed as well?

Conclusions: 15 pts

• Do the authors describe whether the initial motivation/task was accomplished or

not based on the results?
• Is it discussed adequately how the results relate to previous work?
• If applicable, are potential future directions given?

Contributions: 10 pts

• Are all contributions listed clearly?

• Did each member contribute approximately equally to the project?