COS-518 Information
Overview
Grading
Your final grade for the course will be based on the following weights:
- 25% Class participation
- 25% Reading responses
- 50% Project
- 10% Checkpoint #1 - project proposal
- 10% Checkpoint #2 - preliminary demo
- 30% Checkpoint #3 - final report (5 pages + bib)
Project
The project in COS-518 is an open-ended research and/or development
project, done in groups of two or three. As COS 518 counts towards your
programming requirement, the project requires significant coding. You
must show a preliminary version of a working prototype by checkpoint 2
(early December) and a more complete working version by the due date
(January). More information can be found on the Project page.
Class participation
Papers will be discussed in a very involved manner. All students are
expected to have thoroughly read and considered each assigned paper,
prepared to answer and pose questions about each reading. Students must
submit a response for their assigned paper by 11:59pm, two days prior to
class. After submitting your review, you will be able to see other's
reviews, which you should review the morning before class. For
instructions how to read and review a paper, read the following.
Reading responses: How to review
When reviewing papers, you will see a section for describing a paper
summary, its strengths, its weaknesses, and detailed comments. In the summary
section, please directly address:
- What problem the paper is addressing (1-2 sentences or bullets).
- The core novel ideas or technical contributions of the work (1-2 sentences
or bullets). Put another way, what's the 30 second elevator pitch, or, five
years from now, what should one remember about this paper?
- A longer description (3-5 sentences) that summarizes the paper's approach,
mechanisms, and findings.
For the other sections, please include 2-4 bulletted points for the strengths
and weaknesses, while a much longer exposition in the detailed comments.
Remember to be constructive: don't only focus on the paper's shortcomings, but
also on what it could have done differently or as the next steps. Imagine that
you are having a conversation with the authors: What would you tell them?
In class, one reviewer will be assigned to present the paper, prior to
general discussion.
Presentations
When presenting papers in class, you should prepare slides for a 10-12 minute presentation that includes:
- Paper name, author/institution, venue (conference)
- "Descriptive" part
- Problem statement
- Core idea(s)
- Descriptive summary of technical design, including illustrations/animations
- Summary of evaluation
Depending on how long the above topics take you to cover (and you should
practice your presentation prior to class), you might also include an optional
"opinion" part of the presentation:
- "Opinion" part
- Strengths
- Weaknesses/limitations
- Proposals for follow-on work?
Remember that many students in the class haven't read the paper, so the first
descriptive presentation is necessary for their understanding. The second
"opinion" discussion will be driven by other readers' comments, whether or not
your formal presentation finds time to cover it.
Textbooks
This year, there is an official textbook for the course which we will have weekly reading from:
- Principles of Computer System Design
- The first half of the book is a traditional printed text from
Elsevier (ISBN: 978-0-12-374957-4). It is available from both Labyrinth Books (in Princeton) and Amazon for around $56.
- The second half of the book can be found online for free from MIT's Open Course Ware.
Additionally, the following texts may be of interest:
- Modern Operating Systems, 2/E by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
Publisher's website. ISBN: 978-0-130-31358-4.
- Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms (2nd Edition) by
Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten Van Steen.
Publisher's website. ISBN-13: 978-0-13-239227-3.
- Reliable Distributed Systems: Technologies, Web Services, and Applications by Kenneth P. Birman.
Publisher's website. ISBN: 978-0-387-21509-9.
For reference, all three of these texts have been placed on reserve at the library for this class.
Last updated: Tue Oct 15 22:59:22 -0400 2013