• View
• History
• Print

Main / P1M1

For the first week you need to be thinking about your general topic and learning about it, so you can begin to propose a good project idea.

In terms of reading: for each person, I will suggest some initial readings, and maybe some beyond that. You should also identify other readings that you think are relevant.

With readings, there are different degrees of how much to read:

1. (glance) A quick glance to get the gist and know what's there. (read the abstract, look at the pictures, skim the intro and section titles).
2. (skim) A quick read to get the basic ideas of the paper.
3. (read) A detailed read to understand what's going on.
4. (devour) A very detailed read, looking at all the small details as if you were going to reproduce what's in the paper.

There's kindof a 0th category, that I'd call "queued." It's a paper that you keep on a list to come back to. Maybe you've glanced at it, our maybe you've just seen a reference to it.

For this "pre-project" reading, you need to do some of #1 to get to know the range of the literature, some of #2 to know what resources are there, and a little bit of #3 to decide if its reasonable to try to implement it. You'll do some of #4 in the future when you implement things. Given the short amount of time, you should have some papers queued as well.

Note: your reading might not necessarily all be papers or books, it might be web pages, or course notes, or documentation for libraries you might want to use.

For this milestone, you must:

1. "read" (to some level) "enough" stuff
2. make a wiki page (in your page group), listing your readings. for each thing you read, give enough information that I know what it is (title, authors, where its published - a link is helpful). if you found it yourself, say where/how. describe the level of detail that you read it in. give a brief (a few sentences) synopsis of the main things you got out of it. your reading list should include a "future readings" as well - a list of papers that you intend to read as part of the project (either as part of the preliminary project definition, or to help with implementation once you get into it).
3. for each project genre, I will make a discussion page, so everyone working on a similar topic can discuss project ideas. you must initially make a posting describing your initial thoughts as to what you find interesting and/or what you think might make for a reasonable project. Put a link to your reading page in your initial post.
4. on this discussion, you must also participate in a discussion. this means (at least) commenting on each other person's initial post

Note that 2 and 3 must be done by noon on Friday, so people can do some of #4.

I will also be participating in the discussions, although I will not be able to read as much as everyone else.

How much reading is enough? Your goal is to read enough that you can have a good "conversation" about what a good project should be (and to convince me that you've made a good effort). You probably need to skim a few things, and read a paper or two. If you get to Friday and feel like "I need to read more", that's OK (you can always read more), but you should have a list as to what you need to read before defining your project, which you'll need to do early next week.

If you're concerned you haven't read enough, or aren't finding enough to read, send me a note before Thursday afternoon (earlier - like Wednesday) is better, and I'll give you feedback and suggestions.

What to turn in

Everyone must do Milestone 1 themselves, although it will involve discussions with other people with similar interests. Even if you don't work together on the project, you all should discuss project ideas. But every person must do all of the parts.

Before noon on Friday, February 6th each person must:

• Have their readings web page (as described #2 above) in their page group. Make sure to name it something obvious so I can find it. I suggest "Project1Readings". Be sure to list (and describe) the readings you've done, as well as the list of additional readings.
• Make an initial discussion "posting" on the appropriate discussion page. (#3 above)

Friday afternoon and over the weekend:

• During class time, we'll have small group discussions about project ideas.
• Over the weekend and early next week, people should have a discussion online. Feel free to contribute to other discussions.
• As you read more, update your project reading page appropriately.