CS 224: Advanced Algorithms
Prof. Jelani Nelson TFs: Zhixian Lei, Tom Morgan
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[Project]
The project can take several forms:
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Solve an open problem in the theory of algorithms,
formulate a new problem, or make some other
contribution to the study of algorithms.
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Implement algorithms solving some problem and perform an empirical
evaluation. Try finding heuristics that speed up things in practice, and
also finding hard inputs to break the heuristics. See if you can prove
that the heuristics work well for some interesting class of inputs. Try
to find modifications of how the algorithm was originally described to
obtain speedup and improved memory consumption (e.g. by constant factors).
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Write a survey on a few related algorithms papers. A good approach is
to first try to solve an open problem, which generally
requires reading several background papers first, then
switching to a survey if the problem evades solution. If possible
try to come up with new definitions or abstractions that allow
unifying several papers on a topic.
You are encouraged to relate the final project to your research
interests, and you will not be limited to the topics discussed
in class.
Project Proposals:
You must submit a project proposal by Wednesday, April 5, 2017. When submitting project
proposals, use the normal mechanism for submitting problem sets. The proposal
should be at most two pages long with 10pt font and 1 inch
margins.
We decide whether to approve your project's theme based on the proposal, so it
is imperative that you do some serious thinking about the project before
writing the proposal. Even though you should not change the topic of the
project after submitting a proposal, you may change the form of
the project (such as writing a survey if you fail in bringing a
theoretical contribution).
Policies:
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You may work in teams of up to three on the project. Each team
only needs to submit one project wite-up. All team
members receive the same grade on the project.
You are allowed and encouraged to consult with
anybody, including the teaching staff, when working on your
project.
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You must submit a paper by 11:59pm on May 7, 2017, which should be at most 10 pages, excluding
title page (which can include team member names, title, and
abstract) and bibliography. Use at least 10pt font and 1 inch
margins all around. A clearly marked appendix of
unbounded length can follow the bibliography, but there is no
guarantee that any of it will be read. As such, keep the most
interesting parts of your write-up in the 10 page body.
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As with problem sets, your paper must be typeset in
LaTeX. Submit your paper via
email to cs224-s17-staff@seas.harvard.edu
with filename of the form
[first-initial][last-name]-project.pdf (e.g. jdoe-project.pdf
for John Doe). If there are multiple members on the team, only one
submission need be made, and name the file using any of the
members' names (make sure all team members' names are written
in the paper though!).