Your report for the final project should NOT exceed 8 single-spaced pages (including references) using 11pt font with at least 1 inch margins.
Below are guidlines on how to write-up your report for the final project. Of course, for a short class project, all of the comments below may not be relevant. However, please use it as a general guide in structuring your final report.
A "standard" experimental AI paper consists of the following
sections:
1. Introduction
Motivate and abstractly describe the problem you are addressing and how you
are addressing it. What is the problem? Why is it important? What is your basic
approach? A short discussion of how it fits into related work in the area is
also desirable. Summarize the basic results and conclusions that you will
present.
2. Problem Definition and Algorithm
2.1 Task
Definition
Precisely define the problem you are addressing (i.e. formally specify the
inputs and outputs). Elaborate on why this is an interesting and important
problem.
2.2 Algorithm Definition
Describe in reasonable detail the algorithm you are using to address this
problem. A psuedocode description of the algorithm you are using is frequently
useful. If it makes sense for your project, trace through a concrete
example, showing how your algorithm processes
this example. The example should be complex enough to illustrate all of the
important aspects of the problem but simple enough to be easily understood. If
possible, an intuitively meaningful example is better than one with meaningless
symbols.
3. Experimental (or Theoretical) Evaluation
3.1 Methodology
What are the criteria you are using to evaluate your method? What specific
hypotheses does your experiment test? Describe the experimental methodology that
you used. What are the dependent and independent variables? For
projects in machine learning, what is the
training/test data that was used, and why is it realistic or interesting?
Exactly what performance data did you collect and how are you presenting and
analyzing it? Comparisons to competing methods that address the same
problem or to variations of your own algorithm are
particularly useful.
3.2 Results
Present the quantitative results of your experiments. Graphical data
presentation such as graphs and histograms are frequently better than tables.
What are the basic differences revealed in the data.
3.3 Discussion
Is your hypothesis supported? What conclusions do the results support about
the strengths and weaknesses of your method compared to other methods? How can
the results be explained in terms of the underlying properties of the algorithm
and/or the data.
4. Related Work
Can you say anything about related work from your background
readings? It may be possible to answer the following questions for
each piece of related work that addresses
the same or a similar problem. What is their problem and method? How is your
problem and method different? Why is your problem and method better?
5. Future Work
What are the major shortcomings of your current method? For each shortcoming,
propose additions or enhancements that would help overcome it.
6.
Conclusion
Briefly summarize the important results and conclusions
presented in the paper. What are the most important points illustrated by your
work? How will your results improve future research and applications in the
area?