Stat234: Sequential Decision Making

Grading

I expect that you will engage in the course out of intellectual curiosity. The formal course requirements are rather minimal. The final grade in the course will be determined by the quality of your scribed lecture notes and one final project using the weights given below.

1) Scribing Lectures (60%): Each of you will scribe 2 lectures. This means taking notes during class and typing them up in LaTeX. The scribed notes will be posted on the course webpage.

a. Sign up for scribing lecture notes via Canvas->Collaborations->Scribing Schedule (This brings you to a google doc sheet)

b. Download the template, useful macros, and the bib file via Canvas -> Files

c. Modify the template and fill it with your notes. If you make additions to the macros or bib file, make sure to do that at the very end.

d. For bibtex entries, try using Google Scholar. Search for the paper you want to cite, click on “Cite” and then click on “Bibtex” in the window that opens.

e. Email me your notes with name lecXX.tex (where XX is the date of the lecture) along with macros and bib files in case you made additions to those. Look at tex files from other lecture notes and try to keep your notation and style consistent with earlier ones.

f. Your scribed notes are due one week after the lecture.

2) Final Project (40%): An important component of the course is a final project which can either be:

a. a survey of some actively developing sub-topic within sequential decision making, or a detailed commentary on a classic paper on sequential decision making, or a research project involving contributing novel research (theoretical result, statistical method, computational algorithm) to the area of sequential decision making

b. Project credit breakup: Surveys have to be written individually. However, teams of up to 2 students can be formed for a research project. To get full credit, surveys have to be very high quality: they should be similar to a publishable survey article in a top journal. The bar for research projects will be lower because of the time constraint and the inherent uncertainty in the research process. While you’re not required to deliver publication quality research work by the end of the semester, you are encouraged to do so. We will provide some suggestions for research projects but you should feel free to work on any problem that interests you.

c. The 40% credit for the project will be split as follows:

i. Project proposal (5%)

ii. Project poster presentation in class (10%)

iii. Project final report (25%)