Princeton University Computer Science Dept.

Computer Science SRT Senior Thesis Research ***A.B. Candidates Only*** Tom Funkhouser

Spring 1999

Description:

Two-semester sequence of courses during which AB candidates research and write their senior thesis. Topics may be selected from suggestions by faculty members or proposed by the student. A list of independent research topics, including each professor's research area, is available here, or from the Undergraduate Secretary in Room 410, Computer Science Building. The final choice of topics must be approved by the faculty advisor.

Prerequisites:

A.B. CANDIDATES ONLY (BSE Candidates: please see the CS498 home page).
AB candidates are implicitly registered for independent research every semester of their last two years.
B.S.E. candidates who do independent work must register explicitly.

Coursework:

Students enrolled for independent work this semester must attend occasional class meetings where they will be advised about how to do independent work, how to prepare an oral presentation, how to write the final report, etc.

The student is expected to average at least 10-15 hours per week and to make regular progress reports to his/her faculty advisor. A written report must be submitted at the end of the semester.

Answers to frequently asked questions about independent work.

Schedule

• Monday, March 1:

Deadline to choose a second reader for your thesis.
Send email to Tina Hill (tmhill@cs) with the name of the professor
that has agreed to be your second reader.  Meet at least
once (and hopefully more) with your second reader during February
and March.
 
• Monday, April 5:

First draft of thesis written reports are due.
By this time you should have all of your experimental results.
Give copies to both your advisor and your second reader.
 
• Monday, May 3:

Final draft of thesis written reports are due at 5PM.
Please hand-in four copies, as follows:
(1) one bound copy to your advisor,
(2) one bound copy to your second reader,
(3) two unbound copies to Tina McCoy in room 410.
 
• Wednesday, May 12 & Friday, May 14:

Thesis "defence" presentations.
AB Theses: Wednesday, May 12, 10AM-12noon and 1-4PM, CS402, 3 students per hour.
BSE Theses: Friday, May 14, 1-3PM, CS301, 4 students per hour.
SIGN UP FOR A TIME SLOT ON THE SHEETS HANGING OUTSIDE ROOM 410.
BE SURE TO PICK A SLOT WHEN YOUR ADVISOR IS AVAILABLE.
 

Schedule of Thesis Presentations and Departmental Exams:
 
   NAME                 DEGREE  ADVISOR          PROJECT TITLE
====================================================================

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/99, CS402, 10-11am
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  MANDELBAUM, Yitzhak   AB     Larry Peterson   "Routing In Time"
                                Randy Wang
2  ZISKIND, Elish        AB     Larry Peterson   "Hybrid Algorithms for
                                Randy Wang        Complex Scheduling Tasks"

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/99, CS402, 11-12pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  ANDERSON, Wiley       AB     Andrea LaPaugh   "Personalizing an Alumni Network"
                                Perry Cook
2  SMITH, Tanya          AB     Ed Felten        "Biometric-Based Identification:
                                Nissenbaum        A Fool-Proof Solution?"

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/99, CS402, 1-2pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  PARKER, Marquis        AB     Ed Felten        "Investigating the Security Issues
                                 Randy Wang        in the Public Key Infrastructure"
2  LIGGERA, Michael       AB     Perry Cook       "A. I'll Arrange It"
                                 Ken Steiglitz
3  RODGERS-KING, Saadiq   AB     Ed Felten        "A Feasability Study in the Area of
                                 Perry Cook        Java Smartcard Based Indentification
                                                   at Princeton University"

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/99, CS402, 2-3pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  DUMITRESCU, Theodor    AB     Perry Cook       "Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae Electronicum (CMME)"
                                 Peter Jeffrey
2  KNOWLES, Thomas        AB     Dick Lipton      "Designing a More Precise System for
                                 Andrea LaPaugh    Analyzing Users Web Exploration"
3  MATHEW, Vivek          BSE    Rene Carmona/CIV "Extending Modified Position-Models to
                                                   Multidimensional Modeling of Catastrophic Risk"

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/99, CS402, 3-4pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  NIKOLOV, Philip        AB     Dick Lipton      "Research  in Public Cryptosystems"
                                 Ed Felten
2  KERBIKOV, Boris        AB     Michael Goldwasser "The Competitiveness of the Algorithms for
                                 Dick Lipton       Online Non-preemptive Scheduling Problems"
3  MUKAI, Keith           AB     David Dobkin     "An Analysis of the Challenges Involved in
                                 Perry Cook        Creating a Multi-User Real-Time 3D Environment"
 
 

FRIDAY, 5/14/99, CS301, 1-2pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  CHANG, Eric           BSE     Tom Funkhouser   "Retrieval of Camera Pose from Images"
2  HSIUNG, Dan           BSE     Kai Li           "Cluster Manager"
3  HALL, Roshan          BSE     J.P. Singh       "Clonal Trees"
 

FRIDAY, 5/14/99, CS301, 2-3pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1  SCHENK, Elizabeth     BSE     Dannie Durand    "Genomic Databases on the World Wide Web"
2  MILLIRON, Timothy     BSE     Adam Finkelstein "A General Framework for Morphs and Warps
3  ELDER, Delia          AB      Perry Cook       "Audio Classification"
                                 Ken Steiglitz
4  BUCK, Ian             BSE     Adam Finkelstein "Real-Time Video Driven Face Animation"
 

Thesis Written Reports
Due Monday, May 3 at 5PM.

The thesis written report should contain descriptions of the goals, challenges, implementation, results, and conclusions of your project.  You should include a review of previous work with appropriate citations from the literature.  You should write detailed descriptions of the approach you've chosen, the implementation hurdles you've encountered, the features you've implemented, and the results you've generated.  Please do not be vague in your written descriptions.  Final reports from previous semesters are available on the shelves in CS401.  Following is a sample outline ...

• Abstract
• Introduction
• What problem are you trying to solve?
• What are the potential applications for a solution to the problem?
• Why is the problem challenging?
• Briefly motivate/describe your key insight/contribution (one paragraph)
• Give a brief overview of your paper (a one paragraph executive summary)
• Previous Work
• What researcher first identified and worked on your problem?
• What other researchers have worked on it?  What approaches did they try?
• For each previous approach: what was the key insight? Under what conditions does it fail/succeed?
• What is the gap you are trying to fill?
• Approach
• What approach did I try?
• What is the key insight that differentiates it from previous work?
• Under what circumstances do I think it should work well?
• Why do I think it should work well under those circumstances?
• Methodology
• What pieces had to be implemented to execute my approach?
• For each piece ...
• Were there several possible implementations?
• If there were several possibilities, what were the advantages/disadvantages of each?
• Which implementation(s) did I do?  Why?
• What did I implement?   <== Include detailed descriptions
• What didn't I implement? Why not?
• Results
• What was I trying to test?
• What experiments did I execute?
• What different approaches/parameters did I vary in these experiments?
• What objective measure of success did I use?
• Provide quantitative results.
• What do my results indicate?
• Discussion
• Overall, is the approach I took promising?
• What different approach or variant of this approach is better?
• What follow-up work should be done next?
• What did I learn by doing this project?
• Conclusion
• Summarize
• Draw conclusions
• References
• Follow the guidelines in:
• James Thorpe, Literary Scholarship, Chapter III, Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1964, pages 63-88.
• The MLA Handbook, 2nd Edition, Modern Language Association of America, New York, 1984.
• A Manual of Style, 13th Edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982.

Thesis Defence Presentations
AB Theses: Wednesday, May 12, 10AM-12noon and 1-4PM, CS402, 3 students per hour.
BSE Theses: Friday, May 14, 1-3PM, CS301, 4 students per hour.

SIGN UP FOR A TIME SLOT ON THE SHEETS HANGING OUTSIDE ROOM 410.
BE SURE TO PICK A SLOT WHEN YOUR ADVISOR IS AVAILABLE.

Each student will give a 12 minute talk to present the results of his/her thesis project.
AB talks will be followed by 10-15 minutes of questions (which comprise the "departmental exam").

You probably want to use around 10 slides for your talk.  For instance, ...

  1.Problem description (1 slide)
         What is the goal of my project?
         What problem am I trying to solve?
         What applications are there if I succeed?
         Why is the problem hard?
         How will I measure success?
  2.Previous Work (1 slide)
         What approaches have others tried?
         Under what conditions have they suceeded and failed?
  3.Overview of Approach (1 slide)
         What approach am I trying?
         What motivated me to try this approach?
         What is the key idea behind what I am doing?
  4.Methodology (3 slides)
         What components have I implemented?
         What issues have I resolved?
         For each issue ...
            - What options were there?
            - Which of the options did I implement?
         What issues remain?
  5.Results (1-3 slides)
         How have I tested my work?
         For each issue resolved so far, which of the options was best?
         Present data indicating whether or not you are meeting your goal.
  6.Conclusion (1 slide)
         Summarize your key points, so everybody gets it
 
You are encouraged to use transparencies in your talk. To print transparencies on printers in the department see here for instructions. If you prepare transparencies with a PC or a MAC, you will need to save them as postscript files and then print the postscript files on the dept. printers. Alternatively, you can print on paper as usual and then photocopy onto a transparency. Ms. Tina Hill can tell you which photocopier to use and how (most copiers in the department cannot photocopy onto transparencies).  Use of gimmicks, props, ... anything you can think of to make your talk more interesting is encouraged.  So, be creative!
 

People

• Instructor: Tom Funkhouser, office hours are 2PM on Mondays, Room 422, CS Bldg., funk@cs.princeton.edu
• CS undergrad secretary: Ms. T. Hill, Room 410 CS Bldg. tmhill@cs.princeton.edu.

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