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Differential Geometry with Applications

Final and Midterm Projects


Description:

This is by far the largest component of the course. The final project usually continues the midterm project but could be a different project with different partners. You will discover, explore, and attack a problem in Physics or computer vision of your choosing. There are three types of projects you can work on, shown below in order of increasing difficulty:

  • (1) Application of existing algorithm to a new problem and potentially new data.
  • (2) Algorithmic work. Extend an existing algorithm or conceive a new one to solve some problem. This inherently includes the first option because you will need to test this new algorithm on data.
  • (3) Theoretical work. Develop a new algorithm or new proofs of theorems in mathematical physics.

These also have increasing risk. For example, you cannot turn in a paper saying you worked on something but with no result. Option two has medium risk because part of the process of creating a new algorithm is creating baselines to improve upon. At any time during the course please feel free to come and discuss your problem and ask questions with the instructor or TAs.

Requirements:

All of the requirements below must be satisfied in order to receive full credits for the project:

  • Partners:
    Work individually or with up to 2 partners. All partners must contribute equally.
  • Report:
    Your submission may be a pdf in NIPS format. Note that this means you must use LaTeX with their style file. (NIPS, Neural Information Processing Systems, is one of the major machine learning conferences). The midterm report should be at least 6 pages for individual students, 10 for teams of 2 and 12 for teams of 3. The final report should be at least 10 pages for individual students, 15 pages for teams of 2 and 18 for teams of 3
  • Presentations:
    For individuals presentations will be 10 minutes long including time for Q/A. For groups presentations will be 15 minutes long including time for Q/A.
  • Submission:
    Put all code, the PDF of the report and the latex code in a public github repository. Then send a link to the repository to gu@hmc.edu.

Due Dates:


  • Monday September 18th 11:59pm  Midterm Project Proposal
    Typed (LaTeX) one page maximum explaining your problem, what data sets or theoretic work in physics you are likely to use (you must find some candidates), who your partners are, and what methods (of those you know of) you think you might use. Note that this is not 100% final but it should be within some epsilon of your midterm project. Submit on Sakai dropbox

  • Monday October 23rd 11:59pm:  Midterm Presentation and Report due
    Everyone presents in class on that day.

  • Monday November 27th 11:59pm:   Draft of Final Project Submission
    Typed (LaTex) draft of final report and all of the codes written need to be submitted. The draft needs to detail the progress of the final project, which is expected to be a significant amount. The draft is used to demonstrate what you have done so far and show that you are ready for the final presentation. It does not need to follow the NIPS format (which is required for the final version). The code does not need to be super clean and organized for this draft submission, but it is expected to be cleaned up for final submission. You do not need to have the presentation slides ready for this submission. Submit the draft by sending a link to the github repository to gu@math.hmc.edu.

  • December 4th: Final Project Presentation
    Everyone presents in class on that day.
  • December 11th 11:59pm: Final Report due