Course Information

Course Homepage: http://www.cs.middlebury.edu/~schar/courses/cs702-s09/ Time and Place: MWF 12:30-1:20 in MBH 438 Professor: Daniel Scharstein 633 McCardell Bicentennial Hall 443-2438 schar middlebury.edu Office Hours: MWF 1:30-2:30, Tue 11-12, and by appointment Required text: The Elements of Style, 4th edition Strunk and White Allyn and Bacon, 2000

Course overview

• First, to give majors the opportunity to explore in depth a topic in the field of computer science. This experience emphasizes some aspects of education not normally stressed in our regular courses: independent study, library research, organizing and internalizing a chunk of computer science, expository writing, and verbal presentation of material.

• Second, to expose computer science majors and other interested students to a number of important and interesting topics in the computational sciences that are normally not presented within the department's set of required courses. This goal is accomplished by the series of talks given by visiting scientists, members of the Middlebury faculty, and the senior majors.

It is required that you attend all scheduled talks and class meetings. In class we will discuss issues related to writing and orally presenting your thesis. There will also be a couple of short quizzes on assigned reading from the text by Strunk and White. At various points during the term, students will give brief progress reports and practice presentations on their topic.

The seminar schedule requires the student to make an early commitment to a particular topic and to begin work on that subject at the start of the term. You should begin with the realization that the senior seminar in computer science is supposed to be the capstone of your educational experience at Middlebury. It should be your number-one priority for the term. In the second half of the semester, large blocks of your time will be devoted to writing your paper. You can eliminate some of the last-minute all-nighters and panicky final days by disciplined work in the first half of the term. Set a definite period of time each day that you will devote to your thesis. Arrange regular meetings with your adviser at least once a week.

The bibliography, thesis outline, and the first and second drafts will usually be evaluated and returned to the student by the thesis adviser within one week. The thesis adviser will read the final draft and indicate corrections that must be made before the polished final thesis is submitted. The evaluation of how well the course requirements were met will be considered by the department faculty in determining the final grade for the course.

Students sometimes experience difficulty in their first independent learning experience. The structure imposed on you in regular courses - classes meeting two or three times a week, daily homework, scheduled examinations - makes it somewhat easier for you to organize your time and to discipline yourself to meet deadlines. Some of that structure is (deliberately) missing from the senior seminar. You will have to take more initiative in organizing your schedule to complete the work on your thesis.

Thesis expectations

1. Well presented. The thesis should have a minimum of typographical errors and misspelled words and be neat and evenly spaced. Take the time to run a spell checker and to proofread. Spelling and grammar do count. Have a friend proofread it for you; new eyes will see mistakes you've missed. Even if the content is great, you won't get a top grade unless it is also presented in a readable, comprehensible manner.

2. Relatively difficult computer science content. You must learn something new, something you did not see in a class, and something with substance. The work does not have to be very broad, but it should be somewhat deep. One option is to take a narrow topic and learn a lot about it. You should understand the topic and be able to explain it in your own words.

3. Independent work. You should do most of the learning on your own. Read the material; try to work through algorithms, analyses, and proofs by yourself. Feel free to ask questions of your adviser, but do not expect your adviser to present the material to you. If you get stuck, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for hints or for you and your adviser to work through a problem together. Ideally you should combine material from several sources and draw your own conclusions or arrange the material in an original way.

   For example, you might pose a problem. Then you could try to work out your own solution or find several different solutions from several different sources. You might discuss their similarities and differences: Do they use different areas of computer science? Can you draw your own illustrations or examples of these methods? Insert some of yourself into your thesis - your opinions, your arrangement of material, your own analyses or proofs, and your own figures.

4. Correctness (or accountability). Check your definitions; be sure that your analyses are correct and that your arguments make sense to you. Can you explain them in your own words? Be very careful that you're not just mimicking someone else's work and that you really do understand the words you are using.

   There is a fine line here between doing your own work and plagiarizing someone else's (see also the last section on this handout). Any material taken from a source, whether verbatim or paraphrased, must include a citation. If you copy an entire sentence word for word you must use quotation marks to indicate that it is not your own writing – otherwise it is plagiarism, even if you include a citation. Using well-established definitions from the literature is not plagiarism, but again you must acknowledge your source. It is not acceptable to string together paragraph after paragraph of quoted material. You should be doing most of the writing yourself, using quotations to support a point. For the expository parts of your thesis, gather the information and then express the ideas in your own worlds. The definitions can be quoted. The analyses or proofs should be, as much as possible, your own. When it comes time to write up your thesis, you should try, as much as possible, to express the ideas in your own words.

5. Parts completed on schedule. This means not only meeting all intermediate deadlines, but also holding regular (usually weekly) meetings with your adviser. The thesis is not meant to be a last minute, night-before project. It is meant to be a semester-long research project. Get each part done on time! Get regular feedback from your adviser. You will need the time available to absorb and understand the difficult concepts. It you understand all of the ideas the first time through, then your problem (project, topic) may not be hard enough.

Poster and oral presentation

The second task is to prepare and present an oral presentation of your thesis. The presentations will be scheduled during the last week of class, and you are encouraged to invite friends, family and other guests to attend.

Grading

Honor Code

As an academic community devoted to the life of the mind, Middlebury College requires of every student complete intellectual honesty in the preparation of all assigned academic work.

Plagiarism is a violation of intellectual honesty. Plagiarism is passing off another person's work as one's own. It is taking and presenting as one's own the ideas, research, writings, creations, or inventions of another. It makes no difference whether the source is a student or a professional in some field. For example, in written work, whenever as much as a sentence or key phrase is taken from the work of another without specific citation of the source, the issue of plagiarism arises.

Paraphrasing is the close restatement of another's idea using approximately the language of the original. Paraphrasing without acknowledgment of authorship is also plagiarism and is as serious a violation as an unacknowledged quotation.

The individual student is responsible for ensuring that his or her work does not involve plagiarism. Ignorance of the nature of plagiarism or of College rules may not be offered as a mitigating circumstance.
[Middlebury College Handbook 2008-2009]