Final Projects

Your task: a review of a selected topic from the list below. The list below contains potential project topics, where some lean more toward the theory side, some toward the applied side and others contain a bit of both. You may also suggest a topic of your own liking, in this case please submit the Abstract and we will examine each case to decide if the topic is appropriate.
This is not a research project, yet we are open and more than happy to hear any research ideas that you come up with while working on the project, as a potential last section in your review report (this is not a necessity or requirement).
The projects must be done in groups of 2-4 people [No exceptions]. Please coordinate via the dedicated Ed forum to find suitable partners. We created a Final Project message category in the forum for that purpose, please post all threads regarding the project under that category.
Grade: 40% of final grade, or 30% if it is lower than your midterm grade.

Once you have found your teammates and chosen a topic, please kindly sign up your team in the following spreadsheet:

You are also welcome to list the topic of your interest for others to join, if you haven’t found them. In this case, you can fill ‘yes’ at the last column, “Looking for additional members”. If your team is finalized then please change this option to ‘no’.

The order of presentation will be randomized

Abstract Submission: Nov 20th. A one-page pdf that explains your approach to your chosen topic, and the questions you are planning to develop, along with a list of tentative bibliography. The reference list is not included in the page limit. The list of team members cannot be altered any more after this deadline.
Small Presentation: Dec 13th. We ask you to prepare a small presentation (5-10mins, depending on the number of projects) of your project. This will take place at our last lecture, on Zoom. We will make a further announcement of the presentation schedule around Dec 1st.
Project Submission: Dec 20th. Please see the instructions below.

Goal and style: to present a coherent story that unifies a few papers on a certain topic. Please avoid listing the work on a topic without a unifying view or central thesis. Covering a smaller area beautifully will be more successful than a superficial view of a larger topic. You do not need to do original theory or experiments (unless you find them pedagogically convenient). There is no need to explain background techniques which are not the subject of your paper, but make sure to precisely define notation and cite appropriately.
Format: a survey paper in 6-10 pages. We recommend either using LaTeX in the JMLR style or creating a web page in the Distill format (if you would like to embed interactive visualizations).
Samples: here are high-quality reviews example1 and example2 from previous years, though longer than you should aim for. Note that their topics are not aligned with our suggested topics because they are from a different course. Please follow them for guidance on style and the level of depth instead of specific topics.
Group submission: for abstract and final survey, each group makes one submission on Brightspace, with all members’ names clearly presented.
References: in addition to the listed papers for each suggested topic, please dive into them for more references to tell an organized and self-contained story. Also, you are welcome to follow their citations for any up-to-date (significant) results.