CS486/CS686 Course Project
- Required for graduate
students enrolled in CS686 and optional for undergraduate
students enrolled in CS486
- Pick an application domain that interests you
- Identify a problem in that application domain
- Analyze or develop new (artificial intelligence) techniques to
tackle this problem
- Optional: implement and evaluate empirically some of those
techniques
- Undergraduate students can form teams of up to 3 people, but
graduate students must do the project by themselves
Options
- Option A (Literature survey):
- Pick a problem that interests you
- Search the literature for artificial intelligence approaches
to tackle this problem
- Survey and discuss the relative strengths of each approach
- Option B (Empirical evaluation):
- Pick a problem that interests you.
- Implement and experiment with several artificial
intelligence techniques to tackle this problem.
- Option C (Algorithm design):
- Identify a problem for which there are no satisfying
approaches.
- Develop a new artificial intelligence technique to tackle
this problem.
- Analyze theoretically and/or empirically the performance of
your technique.
- Option D (Theoretical analysis):
- Identify a problem or artificial intelligence technique for
which the properties (e.g., complexity, performance) are not
well understood.
- Analyze the properties of this problem or technique.
Proposal (no mark)
- Submit electronically on the
LEARN website by June 29 (11:59 pm)
- At most one page
- Names of team members (for undergraduate students only)
- Which option did you pick?
- Option A (Literature survey):
- What is the problem?
- Cite 6 to 10 papers that you plan to survey.
- Option B (Empirical evaluation):
- What is the problem?
- What artificial intelligence techniques do you plan to
experiment with?
- Cite 3 to 6 related papers that you plan to review.
- Option C (Algorithm design):
- What is the problem?
- Why are there no satisfying approaches?
- What is the intuition behind the new technique that you plan
to develop?
- Cite 3 to 6 related papers that you plan to review.
- Option D (Theoretical analysis):
- What is the problem or technique that you plan to analyze?
- What properties would you like to analyze/prove about this
problem or technique?
- Cite 3 to 6 related papers that you plan to review.
Report (25% of final mark for CS686 and 5% bonus for CS486)
- At most 8 pages
- Explain the big picture and any necessary detail
- Submit electronically on the LEARN website by August 10
(11:59 pm)
Suggested Structure for the Report
- Option A (Literature survey):
- Introduction
- What is the problem?
- Why is it an important problem?
- Survey
- Summarize the range of techniques by highlighting their
strengths and weaknesses (i.e., the 6-10 papers that you
read)
- Tip: this summary should not
be a laundry list of techniques with an independent
paragraph for each technique
- Suggestion: organize your summary based on desirable
properties of the techniques
- Analysis:
- What is the state of the art?
- Any open problem?
- Conlusion
- What future research do you recommend?
- Option B (Empirical evaluation):
- Introduction
- What is the problem?
- Why is it an important problem?
- Techniques to tackle the problem
- Brief review of previous work concerning this problem
(i.e., the 3-6 papers that you read)
- Brief description of the techniques chosen and why
- Empirical evaluation
- Compare empirically the techniques for complexity,
performance, ease of use, etc.
- Conclusion:
- What is the best technique?
- Is any technique good enough to declare the problem
solved?
- What future research do you recommend?
- Option C (Algorithm design):
- Introduction
- What is the problem?
- Why can't any of the existing techniques effectively
tackle this problem?
- What is the intuition behind the technique that you have
developed?
- Techniques to tackle the problem
- Brief review of previous work concerning this problem
(i.e., the 3-6 papers that you read)
- Describe the technique that you developed
- Brief description of the existing techniques that you will
compare to
- Evaluation
- Analyze and compare (empirically or theoretically) your
new approach to existing approaches
- Conclusion:
- Can your new technique effectively tackle the problem?
- What future research do you recommend?
- Option D (Theoretical analysis):
- Introduction
- What is the problem or technique?
- What properties did you analyze/prove about this problem
or technique?
- Analysis
- Brief survey of previous work concerning this problem
(i.e., the 3-6 papers that you read)
- Describe the analysis performed
- Conclusion:
- What have you discovered about the technique analyzed?
- What future research do you recommend?