Poster Session

Course Information

Prerequisites

• Proficiency in LaTex: All the reports need to be written by using LaTex. A template will be provided. If you are not familiar with LaTex, please learn from the tutorial in advance.
• Proficiency in GitHub: All the source codes need to be submitted in GitHub.
• Proficiency in Python: All the assignments will be in Python (using Numpy and PyTorch).
• Basic machine learning knowledge: It is possible to take this course without any machine learning knowledge, however, the course will be easier if you have foundations of machine learning.
• Basic Concepts of probability: It will be easier for you to understand some lectures if you know basics of probability.

Textbooks

Recommended Books:

• Speech and Language Processing (3rd ed. draft), by Dan Jurafsky and James H. Martin

Grading Policy (CSC3160/MDS6002)

Assignments (30%)

• Assignment 1 (12%): Speech alignment and synthesis
• Assignment 2 (8%): Text processing
• Assignment 3 (10%): Word embedding and classification

Midterm exam (25%)

We will have a mid-term exam on March 9th 2023. The scope of the mid-term exam is from lecture 1 to lecture 12.

Final project (40%)

You need to write a project proposal (2 pages) and a project report (max 6 pages) for the final project. Here is the report template. You are also expected to report project milestones and make a project poster presentation. After the final project deadline, feel free to make your project open source.

• Project proposal (2%): Use the report template to write a 2-page proposal. The proposal should include the problem you are trying to solve, why the problem is important, interesting or difficult. Please also include the papers you plan to read and the high-level idea of your solution to the problem.
• Project milestone (2%): You are expected to submit to project milestone report. Each project milestone report can be an one-page report, containing what you have done in reading and coding. You are expected to include the git pull request ID or commit ID in the milestone report.
• Project poster (5%): A template will be provided for the poster presentation.
• Expert rating (4%): Your poster presentation will be rated by at least 3 experts (professors or scientists from industry). The average rating will be the final credit.
• Peer review (1%): Each student provides constructive feedback to other 4 posters. The contructive feedback in written will be rated and shared with other students.
• Code reproducibility (1%): Visual inspection of code quality and readability.
• Project report (30%): The project report will be publicly available after the final poster session. Please let us know if you don't wish so.
• Originality and creativity (2%): Original and creative ideas are encouraged.
• Reference to prior work (3%): Cite existing related work, and discuss the motivation on why you work this project and your algorithm or approach. Even you are reproducing a published paper, you should have your own motivation.
• Technical correctness (4%): Present your algorithms or systems for your project. Provide key information for reviewers to judge whether it is technically correct.
• Experimental validation (4%): Present your experimental setups, and experiments conducted. Discuss the motivation of the designed experimental setups. Describe the project evaluation metrics and present details to understand your evaluation.
• Analysis quality (6%): Report quantitative results and include qualitative evaluation. Analyze and understand your system by inspecting key outputs and intermediate results. Discuss how it works, when it succeeds and when it fails, and try to interpret why it works and why not.
• Clarity in writing (3%): The report is written in a precise and concise manner so the report can be easily understood.
• Overall quality of report (5%): This is an overall evaluation of the final project report, including all dimensions: writing, creativity, convincing experiments and analysis.
• Peer review (3%): Each student writes constructive reviews to six other reports. Each review is worth 0.5%.
• Project bonus (2%): If you submit the project report by the early submission due date, 2% bonus credit will be entitled. However, your project credit is capped at 40%.
• Competition bonus (2%): If you use the final project to participate in a startup pitch competition, you could get 2% credit if you receive positve feedback. However, you need to get approval from the teaching team in advance. Also, your project credit is capped at 40%.

Participation (5%)

Here are some ways to earn the participation credit, which is capped at 5%.

• Attending Guest lectures: In the second half of the course, we have four invited speakers. We encourage students to attend the guest lectures and participate in Q&A. All students get 0.75% per guest lecture (in total 3%) for either attending in person, or by writing a guest lecture report if they attend remotely or watch the recording.
• Completing feedback surveys: We will send out two feedback surveys during the semester to improve the course. All students get 0.5% per survey (in total 1%) for completing the surveys.
• Course and Teaching Evaluation (CTE): The school will send requests for CTE to all students. The CTE is worth 1% credit.
• Volunteer credit (1%): TAs/instuctor can nominate students for a volunteer credit for those who help the poster session organization, or help answer questions from other students (not writing assignments).

Late Policy

The penalty is 0.5% off the final course grade for each late day.