Project 1: Final Project

Overview

The purpose of this project is to improve your research, writing and communication skills as well as give you an opportunity to explore in-depth a particular domain with your scientific computing skills.

Topic Selection - 10 points

This project is a group project. You must first select a partner for this project and a topic. A good inspiration for topics is the COMAP Contests in Modeling. The problems from previous years are posted for both the Mathematical and Interdisciplinary contests, and most of these would be suitable for investigation. You may choose another topic beyond these questions, but it must be as complex and interesting as those posed above.

Your topic should be chosen in consultation with me, and you will turn in a paragraph description of your topic. Please see Topic Selection Criteria for more information about how to select an appropriate topic.

Background Overview - 20 points

Next, I will need a one-page overview of your project task. Your one-page document should cover the following:

  • Topic Background
    • What are you investigating and why is it interesting?
  • Motivating Question
    • What questions are you trying to answer with this project?
  • Important Parameters
    • What are the inputs I will need to investigate this question?
  • Hypotheses for the Conclusions.
    • What do I expect to see as the output of the model?

Overview Presentation - 10 points

In class, your team will give a 4 minute presentation to the class about your topic, covering the point above.

Model Descriptions - 20 points

Following the overview presentations, I will need a one-page description of the resources you will be using to solve this problem, and your choice of at least two approaches to the problem. Be sure to specify what input and output you expect from your approaches.

Rough Draft - 50 points

Near the end of the semester, you will turn in a rough-draft of your project paper. I recommend using LaTeX to write your paper, it is an extremely powerful editor, and is used to format many scientific papers.

Your paper should follow the guidelines below in the Final Paper section. I don’t expect everything to be complete at this point, but you should have substantial progress to write about beyond your previous submissions and be formatting your work as a full paper.

The rough draft is due right before Thanksgiving break. I will provide feedback to you before our first class after the break so that you have an opportunity to revise your work before the final period.

Final Paper - 100 points

Your final paper must be at least 12 pages. Your paper should be readable by a layperson who is not familiar with your models but has a basic understanding of computer science and mathematics; essentially, write the paper for yourself before you took this class, based on the prereqs of Calculus and Foundation of CSCI. You should include the following sections

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Model Descriptions
  4. Evaluation
  5. Conclusion
  6. Future Work
  7. References

Be sure to make good use of figures and graphs to demonstrate your results, use proper grammar and spelling, and use proper citations.

Presentation - 40 points

On Thursday Dec 1st, you will give a 10 minute in-class presentation. Time and material should be split evenly between all project partners. Your objective in the presentation is to fill us in on the main ideas of how you approached and modeled your topic.

Practice is strongly encouraged prior to your actual presentation. The best way to be comfortable with presenting in front of an audience is to practice. You will be graded on both the organization and the presentation of your talk. The 10 minute time-limit will be strictly enforced to ensure equal time for all presentations.

Data and Implementation - 50 points

Finally, submit any code and Jupyter notebooks you write to complete your project. Your notebook should be well-organized including headers and Markdown blocks to denote the different sections of your analysis.