Project Outline
ITEC-6205
Winter 2011
York University

The topic of a project can be research-oriented, application-oriented or evaluation-oriented. You are welcome to discuss with the instructor about your project topics and work on topics of your own interests with the consent of the instructor.

Categories of Projects

  • Research-oriented. Students will define a research problem, develop a reasonable solution and conduct an empirical study on a few datasets.
  • Application-oriened. Students will find a real world dataset, define an application problem, apply at least five exsiting algorithms to solve the problem (or you can design your own solution and compare with at least two existing ones), and conduct an empirical comparison of the algorithms on the dataset.
  • Evaluation-oriented. Students will select a (new) algorithm or system that has not been extensively evaluated. Find or create datasets to evaluate the algorithm or system.

Components of a Project

A project will include the following components:
  • Project proposal. Each student should write a project proposal (1 or 2 pages), which describes the project topic, the problem to be solved, the approach(es) taken, the dataset(s) and the project schedule.
  • Implementation and experiments. A student working on a research problem will implement his/her proposed idea/method, test the program on a number of datasets, and compare the results of the proposed method with the results from at least one existing method (if there exists one). Performce measures used in the comparison depend on the nature of the research problem. A student working on the application track will select at least three existing methods to solve the application problem. If you can find the programs for the chosen algorithms, you can use them; otherwise, you will implement them by your own. You will conduct experiments that compare the result performance on the application dataset.
  • Written report. Your project report should be written in the format of a decriptive research paper (e.g. a paper in ACM or IEEE format). You can use the research papers you have read as models. The report should include the following:
    • Introduction and motivation
      • The objective and motivation of the project
      • Statement of the problem to be solved
      • Organization of the report
    • Related work
      • previous solutions
    • Approach(es)
      • desription of algorithm(s)
      • illustrate examples
      • theorerical analyses of algorithm(s) if possible
    • Experimental results
      • description of the experiments
      • results
      • discussion of the results
    • Conclusions
      • summarize what was achieved
      • findings from the projects
      • Limitaions and possible externsions
    • Appendices
      • User's manual (if you implement a program or programs)
      • Description of your system design (system components, data structures, control flow structures, how your program handle very large dataset, etc.)
      • Sample input and output.
      • Program limitations and known bugs. (such as the maximum size of dataset your program can take)
  • Class presentation Each student should prepare a 30-minute oral presentation of your project and demo your prototype system.

What to submit?

You should submit the following items: project report, programs that you implement, data sets if not given by me, a file called readme.txt where you give a tutorial on how to compile and run your program, and anything else that you think you should submit for evaluating your project.