Guidelines on the written report

Due date: 23.05.2023 at 23:59 29.05.2023 at 23:59

Overview

For your mini-project, our goal is to give you some hands-on experience delving into the unknown, and help train you to think like a scientist (e.g., justify your approach, understand the purpose of ‘control’ experiments, work in a team, draw conclusions that are supported by the data, clearly present your work).

Your final report is due on the due date by midnight that evening, please submit the text (no page limit, including references) as an Adobe Acrobat pdf (*.pdf) on the Moodle link. Please also submit all of your data and code by emailing us a link to a Dropbox/EPFL SwitchDrive account. Each group member will be expected to contribute to the experiments, data analysis, and report writing. The final report grade will be shared by all group members.

Organization

The report should follow the organization below. It must address all questions on the Questions to address page, but you are encouraged to have original points of discussion too.

1. Title (1 page) -
   • Title of the report, group member names, and date.
   • Include the course name.
2. Table of contents (~1 page)
3. Abstract (~1/2 page)
   • In one paragraph indicate - what is the overarching goal, why it is important, what is the question you are tackling, what is the approach you took, which results suggest that your approach was successful or unsuccessful, what are perspectives for future work.
4. Introduction / Background (~1-2 pages)
   • Put the experiments you’ve analyzed into context. See our introductory presentations for help on this.
   • State-of-the-art: What important findings and studies came before this one? Be sure to read the relevant papers on the ‘Introduction to the mini-project’ Moodle Week 8.
   • What are some open questions that you address in your study?
   • Have numbered references that cite previous studies.
5. Methods (~1-2 pages)
   • Which analysis methods did you use to address your questions?
6. Results (most pages)
   • Summarize the findings from your analyses with well-laid out Figures that have readable plots with labeled axes and scales. Be sure to refer to all figures in the text.
   • Each figure should have a nearby, clear Figure Legend.
7. Discussion (~1 page)
   • Which conclusions are supported by your results?
   • BE SURE TO ADDRESS ALL QUESTIONS IN THE Questions to address.
   • How would you have done the experiment differently if you could have collected the data?
   • Which experiments would you propose for future experiments to follow up on your analysis?
8. References
9. Appendix: Any additional information (e.g., list supporting data and code)

Style notes: Number your pages. Use minimum 11pt Arial font, 1.5 spacing between lines. Full justified. 1 column per page. For x-axes, convert data into real units of time (e.g., seconds (s)), not ‘frames’.

No page limit.

Grading criteria

1. The data analyses should be carefully justified and presented.
2. The resulting figures and illustrative videos should be well organized (e.g., use effective naming conventions)
3. The code should be well organized and commented.
4. The final report should be:
   • Deep – Relay important details in your description of what you’ve done and why.
   • Clear - You should provide the most critical information in a sequence that presents a story. You should use words that clearly convey what you want to say.
   • Concise – Don’t waste space with unnecessary text. You have 5-10 pages to present your work.

Guidelines on the presentation

Presentation date: 30.05.2023 in class; slides must be uploaded by 23:59 on that day

Overview

For your mini-project presentation, our goal is to allow you to share your new data analyses with your colleagues! Please prepare a series of slides on Powerpoint (*.pptx), Keynote (*.key), or PDF (*.pdf). Using a PDF is discouraged if there are videos which are important for understanding your result. These slides must be submitted — using a Moodle link — on the date of the presentation. Each group member will be expected to contribute to developing the slides, giving the presentation, and leading the discussion. The presentation grade will be shared by all group members.

Organization

You may want to discuss some of the Questions to address but not all. The slides should include at least all of the following points and videos of behaviors driven by your four controllers (decentralized, centralized, RL controller, hybrid controller):

8-10 minutes of presentation:

1. Title (1 slide)
   • Title of your research project, date.
   • Include your names and the course name.
2. Background (1-3 slides)
   • Put your research into scientific context.
   • Reference important findings and studies before yours.
   • What are the questions you hoped to address?
3. Figures and videos from your study (most of the slides)
   • Organize your videos and figures to tell a coherent story about what you did to address the questions you wanted to investigate. You don't have to present answers to all the questions. Instead, focus on the most interesting points of your data analysis.

3-5 minutes of discussion presentation:

4. Summary (1-3 slides)
   • What are at least 2 “take-home” messages from your work?
   • What do we know now that we didn’t know before you performed your analysis? Keep in mind, you’ve been given unpublished, entirely new data!
5. Critique (1-3 slides)
   • What are some methodological weaknesses of the experimental data you were given? How would you have done things differently to better address the questions?
   • For example, is the choice of experimental model or tools appropriate? Would another experimental model or tools have been more appropriate?
   • What future work would you suggest as follow up experiments?

Grading criteria

The presentation should be:

• Deep — Know the details of the data you were given and the analyses you performed. You should have a strong command of your own methods. You will need to know enough to answer questions from your peers.
• Clear — You should provide the most critical information in a sequence that presents a story. You should use words that clearly convey what you want to say.
• Concise — Stay on time. You have 8-10 minutes to present your project and 3-5 minutes to guide discussion/questions. Have a clear idea of what you want to say beforehand.