Assigned Oct 21st
Overview
The purpose of this project, worth 25% of your final grade, 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
This project is a group project.
You must select a partner for this project and your topic for you presentation by Friday,
Oct 21st.
Your project will be to develop original modeling solutions to a past problem from the
International
Mathematical Contest in Modeling. You must choose an A or B problem from any
year between 2005 and 2016, except for 2008B and 2011B.
Background Overview
On Monday, Oct 31st, I will need a one-page overview of your project task. On this day,
your team will give a 4 minute presentation to the class about your topic. Your
one-page document and presentation 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 modeling 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?
Model Descriptions
On Friday, Nov 11th, I will need a one-page description of your 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
On Wednesday, Nov 30th, I will need 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
Project Organization
Your 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
- Introduction
- Background
- Model Descriptions
- Sensitivity Testing
- Evaluation
- Conclusion
- Future Work
- References
Include any code and IPython documents you write as an appendix to your paper, it will
not be counted toward the 12 pages.
Examples of excellent papers for similar MCM problems, and the judging criteria
used, can be found in the UMAP Journal.
Be sure to make good use of figures and graphs to demonstrate your results, use proper
grammar and spelling, and use proper citations.
I will provide feedback by Dec 5th on your paper. If your rough draft grade does not
exceed 50%, then your final project grade will be lowered by 15%.
Presentation
Finally, on Friday Dec 9th, 2:00-5:00pm, Your final paper will be due.
Also, a 15 minute in-class presentation
will be required. 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. Leave
at least one (1) minute for questions at the end of your presentation.
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 15 minute time-limit will be strictly enforced to
ensure equal time for all presentations.