Submitting Projects

Programming assignments are always handed in through the UR's Blackboard system. Do NOT submit materials that need proprietary products. In other words, nothing from Microsoft. No .doc, NO .docx, no .rar, etc. Make sure your code works under linux, make sure your prose submissions are .pdf. If you need help finding the appropriate utilities, see Google(TM), a classmate, or your TA. For instance, zip and tar are OK archive facilities.

The Readme and Program Files

The ReadMe file should contain the following:

Assignment name
===============
Assignment author(s)
Assignment date
Author(s)'s email address(es)
Table of Contents:
Files and contents: List of files, with brief descriptions
User guide: How does the user run the code? What are its inputs and what is their semantics? What outputs should we expect? What do error messages mean? What errors are not caught?

The Report

The report must be in PDF (not .doc).

It should have a section called "Who Did What" that details the contributions of each team member (design, coding, running experiments, writing, research, cooperating, whatever).

Out of 100 possible points, the coding portion is worth 60 and the writing worth 40. In some industrial settings, often the code is "worth" more, but as one advances up the ladder writing increases in importance. In academics, code per se is usually worth nothing except it's what you write about. The current mix emphasizes that aspect on which we expect you'll be spending the most time.

The final grade for the writeup is calculated thus:

Code: 60 Points

• Style: 20 points
  README, documentation, comments, good programming style for the language, elegance of solutions, sophistication of use of language features.
• Minimal Functionality: 20 points
  Program should compile, run, and implement at least the minimum requested functionality.
• Originality and science: 20 points
  Solution may incorporate your own ideas, results from your own independent look at the literature, extensions to the minimal problem. In any case, there should be a set of experiments or quantitative comparisons between methods or parameter settings.

Writeup: 40 Points

• Style: 10 points
  TR format, spelling, grammar, punctuation, active voice, present tense, sentence structure, avoiding CB's pet peeves, clear organization of ideas, organization into sections.
• Content: 30 points
  Abstract, background and motivation, assumptions, hypothesis, experimental description, results, graphics, conclusions, references.

  Sample input and resulting output, transcripts: In their own section or an appendix, the goal is to convince the reader your program works without him having to run it. Ideally, it illustrates all the relevant functionality and any problems. Annotate to explain what the different cases you show are illustrating.

  Please see the writing helpers for more guidance. Your goal is to describe your work (implementation triumphs and difficulties, your "originality and science" programming component and results) so we appreciate its good points, but you can also afford to be self-critical, to suggest further work, etc.

Extra Credit: up to 20 points

• Surprise and delight us on any dimension.

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Last update: 1.16.09.