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1) List your references 2) List all the tasks that need to be completed. Is there code that needs to be written? How will the project presentation be split among the team? Which references will be presented as background for the project? Assignment of sections of the Final Report to be written. 3) Put together a task assignment list (who is doing what) 4) Put together a schedule with due dates for these tasks 5) Put together a tracking mechanism. (Schedule reviews of the tasks with each other.) This step is unique to each member of the team: 6) Give more details for your particular tasks. Define the interfaces between your tasks and your team mates’ participation. If you need certain inputs from your teammates, are they well defined and on the schedule of tasks? Describe them in detail. Will you be able to finish your tasks in the scheduled time frame? Is the review schedule and tracking mechanism reasonable for you? This is your commitment to your team. When creating the project plan, each person on the team needs to answer the following questions for their participation: 1) Good tasks are ones that you would like to work on, that you have some ideas about, and that are small enough for you to finish by the end of the semester. 2) Do you have ideas about how to complete the task? Do you know how to solve the problem, write the code, or build the publication? If not, can you reformulate the problem to make it easier? Do you need help from a team mate in performing your task? 3) Are their interfaces that need to be defined between your task and a team mate’s task? If two members are writing code, are the modules well defined and separated with clear interfaces? Are the pieces of the presentation well defined so that the whole project will be presented and also that two people are not presenting the same material? B) The Project Definition If your project involves testing a hypothesis or original research, your proposal should state explicitly all the following: 1. What your research question is. 2. Why this is an interesting question to ask and why we would care about the answer to this question. 3. Whether any existing research work has tried to answer the same or a similar question, and if so, what is still unknown? 4. How you plan to work out the answer to the question. 5. How you would evaluate your solution. That is, how you plan to demonstrate that your solution/answer is good or is reasonable. If your project is to build a software tool, then your proposal should state explicitly all the following: 1. What the function of your tool exactly is. That is, what it will do. 2. Why we would need such a tool and who you would expect to use it. 3. Whether people have already built such a tool or a similar tool, and if so, how yours is different from or better than other tools. 4. How you plan to build it. 5. How you will demonstrate the usefulness of your tool. 6. A rough timeline to show when you expect to finish what. 7. VERY IMPORTANT: Please specify clearly what you plan to actually finish by the end of this semester. Consider documenting your work regularly. This way, you will already have a lot of things written down by the end of the semester. I have uploaded many research paper to the resources tab of this web site (under project/ papers). You could read one of these papers and present it in class. I have attached a description of some of these papers to this assignment. You are welcome to find a paper which interests you from those I provided or one you find on your own. C) Plan for Final Report The plan for the Final Report needs to include a proposed outline and team assignments for that outline. Here is more detailed information for the Final Report: Your team should write your report as if you were writing a short conference paper. You should (1) explain your problem clearly; (2) provide sufficient motivation for your work and explain how your work is connected with any existing/previous work; (3) explain your methods with sufficient details; (4) discuss the research results; (5) summarize your work, draw conclusions if possible, and discuss how you think the work can be further improved/extended. There is no strict length requirement. You may target anywhere between 6 pages and 10 pages without counting any necessary appendices. Actually, given the same amount of essential information, the shorter the better; of course, you will have to judge what counts as "essential information". A good report should include a straightforward description of what your team did. If you chose a challenging project, the report should demonstrate your research contributions very clearly and convincingly. Thus it is important that you think very clearly about what are the major points you want to make and include arguments and empirical evidence that support your points. For example, you may want to summarize or plot your experiment results in certain particular way rather than some other way, because the "particular way" would support your point better. Always keep in mind what exactly you expect your readers to learn from your report, including both positive and negative findings.