Can I sit-in/audit CS 6604?

I do not "recommend" it :-). I strongly believe that this type of course would have the maximum benefit and utility if credited, the project undertaken in full earnest, and the discussions approached in the spirit of a regular course. If you insist on auditing CS 6604, the requirements would be to conduct a (literature) survey of a particular sub-area of recommender systems and submit a sizable document (at least 40 pages, single spacing, 11 point or less, Non-Microsoft WORD) which will be graded by the instructor for polish, presentation, and critical analysis and evaluation of the topic. Alternatively, a tutorial of some area could also be submitted, one where the presentation itself is novel and which brings out the key aspects of the area in an interesting fashion.

For students who are crediting the course, a final report will still be expected, although not necessarily of the same size and polish as stated above.

Grading policies explained

As indicated on the web page and mentioned numerous times in class, 25% of the grade will come from class participation (talking, shouting matches, contributing constructively to listserv discussions, volunteering as scribes and note-takers, leading discussions etc.).

Recall also Slide 6, from our Introduction on Jan 15; I had originally intended that everybody write a critical 2-3 page review of some paper. I am willing to waive this requirement for those of you who are "regular contributors" to class (see me in person if you have doubts that you qualify under this category :-)). Of course, you could still turnin a review if you like.

For others, you might want to avail of this opportunity. Notice that reviewing a paper involves making fairly non-shallow, non-obvious remarks and if you are reviewing a paper that was already discussed in class, significantly more insight and novelty of arguments (than what was enumerated in the lecture sessions) will be expected in your exposition. See more detailed guidelines below.

The remaining 75% of the grade depends on your final project report, expected to be of publish-worthy quality (again see guidelines below).

Reviewing papers: suggested guidelines

You are welcome to review any published paper (conference/journal) of your choice, so long as it pertains to recommender systems, broadly defined. All reviews are expected to be 2-3 pages long and have the following approximate format: (i) short (1-2 paragraph) summary/overview of the paper, (ii) your opinion of the paper's relevance and technical merit (a summary, again), (iii) detailed technical comments supporting your observations in (ii), (iv) how the research can be improved/followed upon. You are expected to present sound technical arguments and provide supporting evidence for your review, if necessary. This could involve citing other papers (that maybe the authors were not aware of), scribbling equations and calculations (to show why their assumptions don't apply, for instance), and/or providing statistics or any other supporting information that would be appropriate. And yes, you are welcome to exceed the 3 page figure above.

Preparing your final project report

Before starting your report (6-8 pages, see detailed guidelines last), take a deep breath and read this rather interesting and useful writeup by Jonathan Shewchuck, UC Berkeley. Please also remember our thrashings of papers in class and thus do not write your report in ways that will invite such abuse.

Some personal statements about how the report should be organized: I refer to it as a "report" but you should prepare it so that it can be submitted to a conference/journal as-is (i.e., without any changes). This is my way of saying that unpolished work, spelling mistakes, formatting blunders, incoherent writing is not acceptable.

The authors for the report should be only you and your project partners (no, please do not include my name; if you do wish to acknowledge some contribution I made, you can just mention it in an "Acknowledgements/Thanks" section). If you received substantial assistance from somebody (perhaps a system admin, some other colleague etc.), you are expected to acknowledge them in your report. Also, send me a separate email to clarify the role of these parties in the research. Also, if you have had problems working with any of your project members (ethical,work-related, behavioral), please bring them to my attention if you think I should take these factors into account.

Provide a brief and crisp abstract of your work, something that tells the reader immediately what to expect in your report. Then provide an introduction, stating the problem, what it is that you are doing and why it is an important problem (the motivation). Then include a section on related research, their shortcomings and how your work differs. This should be followed by a description of your proposed approach/solution/technique/methodology; perhaps theoretical, perhaps descriptive, but higly technical nonetheless. Support your theories/statements with experiments, results, statistics, observations. Interpret the results of your experiments carefully; do not make sweeping statements, do not make "broad" and "anything goes" statements (e.g., "the recommendations from our Rec2001 system were consistently better than other techniques"; what does "better" mean? how is this defined, etc.). Then, provide concluding remarks and a statement of future research directions (yeah, yeah, you are probably waiting to run away from all of this, but you should talk about this all the same). Acknowledgements and references should be last. Of course, you are welcome to reorganize the above suggested sequence as you deem fit, as long as the "flow is smooth."

Do not insult the reader by repeating your own statements verbatim at several portions in the text. It is quite irritating when this happens, and gives the impression that you took some time yourself to digest the importance of what you are talking about. If you must mention some aspect at different points in the story, make sure you point out the special "positional significance" of the aspect, as applicable to the issue(s) under discussion.

The report is expected to cite all relevant research pertaining to the topic. It is considered a serious and inexcusable blunder to not cite some work that is pertinent. Even if you think that this other work was of low quality, you are expected to include it and mention the connections to your own research. Thus, I am not expected to be able to find some (relevant) references/thread of research that are not cited in your report.

If you have indeed submitted your report/planning to submit it for consideration in a conf./journal, send me a separate email indicating this. If your work involves a web site that we can try out etc, mention it somewhere in the report.

An important thing to note: Some good resources are available: The report is expected to be 6-8 pages long, in double column format. Papers shorter than 6 pages will not be accepted, although you are welcome to stray beyond the 8 page upper bound. I had to choose some consistent styling, so I settled on the IJCAI template. You can find files for both LaTeX and Word at this IJCAI'99 site. For LaTeX users, notice that there is a style file, a bst file, as well as a sample .tex file for how to format the paper. You are required to use the above styles. Do not change the font size declaration, line spacing, or such any tricks! All submitted final reports have to look alike (except of course, for the content). If you have problems or serious difficulties working with these files, let me know ASAP. These files also contain word limits on the abstract, formats for references etc., so most of your questions about such things will be answered. Here's an example paper formatted according to this style.

When you are all done, please send me a PDF version of the paper or give me a hard copy. The report is due on the last day of class, before class starts.

How the report will be graded

Your paper will be evaluated for: for a total of 75%. I will provide a detailed review of your paper along each of the above categories and will use the IJCAI-provided form for this purpose.