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CS8803-MDS

Final Paper

DUE MONDAY, DECEMBER 11 AT 12:00PM.

Table of contents

This is it! Finish and submit the research paper that you’ve been working on this quarter. You have all the tools; now it’s about finishing what you started.

As a reminder, when you’re done, please reach out to the instructor if you are interested in submitting your research to relevant conferences and workshops.

Part 1: Integrate new results and feedback

You’ve likely made a lot of progress since your draft paper. You’ve also received peer review feedback as well as feedback from your TA. Integrate these into your final submission. As a reminder:

  • Related Work: summarizes (and even celebrates) what’s been done, and then articulates how your work extends it. Your related work section should include at least two topics, and cover 5 ± 2 papers in each topic.
  • Results: conveys the outcome of your evaluation, and interprets the results so the reader can understand what they should take away from the outcome.
  • Discussion: generally asks the “why?” questions. Explain: why did the results come out the way they did? What ended up mattering, and what didn’t? What unforeseen outcomes arose, and why? In addition, lay out limitations: what can’t your approach solve, and what questions can’t your study answer? What does all this mean for future work in this space?
  • Conclusion: reiterate the problem and your idea, but focus more on the implications. Tie it up with a bow.

Include a brief changelog (no more than a few paragraphs) that details the major changes you made between your draft submission and final submission.

“What if it fails?” Sometimes, the results don’t come out the way that you’d hope. That’s an expected — and even important — part of science. Report the negative results, and unpack for us why you think it didn’t turn out the way you hoped. A quote to remember: “If we knew for sure that it would work, it wouldn’t be research.” In the case of negative results, we will evaluate your final paper based on your effectiveness at unpacking the reasons why the idea didn’t play out in the way that your thesis expected it to. You are welcome to do follow-up work if you have bandwidth.

Please use the provided VLDB latex template for your final paper. The paper should be no more than 8 pages (excluding references). The minimum page requirement is 4 pages for solo teams and 6 pages for everyone else.

Part 2: Complete the Team Dynamics Assessment Form

Solo teams can skip this part.

Generally, teams work constructively together to complete projects. It’s important for us to know whether this is the case in your project. In the case of substantially imbalanced contribution, we will adjust participation grades to compensate.

So we can understand this, each member of the team needs to fill out the team feedback form by the paper deadline. We will not return grades to your team until every team member has submitted the form.

Fill out the form here.

Submission and Grading

Submit a PDF to Canvas containing (1) your final paper, (2) your changelog, and (3) any code you wrote for this paper. This code could be a link to a github repository, a link to the colab, analysis scripts, etc. Only one submission is required per group.

In addition, all team members must individually submit the team dynamics assessment form.

Your final paper will be graded on the following criteria:

  • Thesis and bit flip: is there a clear research question and idea that makes a significant addition to your research area? (10pt)
  • Execution: has the thesis been explored thoroughly through the approach being pursued? (15pt)
  • Evaluation: has the thesis been tested convincingly? (15pt)
  • Clarity: is the writing overall clear and easy to follow for a technical expert in the field? (10pt)
  • Related work: does the paper cover major points of related work, and explain how this research extends them? (10pt)
  • Feedback: has the paper incorporated main feedback from the TA and peer review? (10pt)
  • Code: did the submission include a link to the code with basic instructions for reproducing the experiments? (10pt)

If the paper is over or under the page limit, the project will lose 10% credit. Being appropriately pithy is a skill!