Computer Science

Information for CompSci.761 students taking CompSci.367


Important Notes

  • The CS761 course is equivalent to CS367 but contains additionally a report component
  • The requirements for the report component are the same as for CS601/CS602. For more info have a look at the CS601/602 orientation lecture.
  • The due dates are:
    Report Registration: Sunday 12th August
    Final Report: Sunday 7th October
  • Your report should be submitted using the Assignment Dropbox
  • All reports will be checked for plagiarism - so it is a bad idea to copy content from the web. Please express everything in your own words. If you use quotes clearly mark them by quotation marks, italics and an appropriate reference. Use direct quotes sparingly!

Tips for Writing the Report

  • When doing your research please make sure that you use quality resources, i.e. reputable journals and conferences, or frequently cited articles. Without experience it is sometimes quite difficult to determine this, but a good start is: The university has a subscription to both services and you can access them from the labs or any other computer using the university network.
  • You can only find articles by using, for example: You need to be careful since many websites contain false, misleading, or not verified information, which is not suitable as a reference in an article. For example, if a person says on his/her personal website that algorithm A is better than algorithm B, then this information in itself has no value. However, if an article in a quality refereed journal/conference says so, then this is generally true, since the article has been reviewed by world experts, who will have verified the evidence for this claim before accepting the article. However, even in such a case read carefully the claim made, i.e. for what applications the claim is true and what constraints exist.
  • When writing your report use references for every statement which is not obvious. If something is your personal opinion then make this clear and give reasons for this. If you use references use a common reference style - a good style is IEEE Transactions (click the link "Template for Transactions").
  • If you quote somebody please clearly indicate this by apostrophes and the use of italic font and give a reference to the source. Use quotes sparingly. We will run all reports through Turnitin: turnitin. Any copied text which is not referenced will be regarded as cheating.
  • For the report content please make sure that you survey the state-of-the-art and that you provide some insight. For example, if you say something like:
    "Author A has done ..., Author B has done ..."
    then this is a summary of previously published content, which is of limited interest. However, if you read previously research and you identify common concepts/ideas, then you can classify/categorise research and instead write something like:
    "Algorithms for XYA can be divided into 3 categories. The first category uses ... [explain commonalities], but use different techniques for ... [explain differences]"
    Such a description offers much more value to the reader and hence gives higher marks.
    Similarly, if you evaluate, for example, libraries you could either say:
    "Library A has the features X, Y , Z ..., Library B has the features ..."
    This is again quite boring and it is difficult for the reader to see which library is useful for what purpose. A better approach is to create an evaluation matrix, e.g. identify features and group them into categories, and then create a table where you compare them. For an example look at table 1 in this paper.
  • For report formatting please follow this link.
  • Remember to get email approval from Mike, Ian, or Jaimou by the report registration deadline.
  • Your report should be submitted using the Assignment Dropbox