A2: Final-project proposal; A3: feasibility check; A4 commitment statement and follow-through

2021 edition, with this text's color serving as a visual reminder.

Within-class teams. Joint proposals are encouraged but are not required.

Commenting on other people's proposals, on the other hand, is an individual (and encouraged!) activity.

Working with "external" courses, your advisor, or others. Experience has shown that communicating about such situations early with all possibly involved parties heads off misunderstandings!
 
If your project involves coursework for another class and/or collaboration with someone who is not a student currently in 6742, such as your advisor or another student in your research group, the following policies apply.

1. Overlap with other courses must be declared both to me and to the instructor(s) of the other course(s), and you must send me verification that the other instructor(s) approve(s). Email to me cc:ed to the other instructor(s) sent by Wed Oct. 20 11:59pm suffices.
2. Your proposal must state who the "external" people are and what their role(s) would be.
3. You must verify with all parties involved that co-working with you on this class project is OK and that all members understand that the project is done in the context of the final project for this class, and that the "external" people are OK with the possibility of co-authoring with me --- or wish to mandate in advance that I should not be a co-author (in which case we'll need to set up some rules). (I state co-authorship as a possibility — I may or may not contribute enough to your project to merit co-authorship. This issue will be discussed later, and all decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.) You must send me verification of the other parties' understanding; email to me cc:ed to them sent by Wed Oct. 20 11:59pm suffices.

Deadlines.

• Wed Oct. 20 11:59pm (graded as A2): One and only one person from your team posts your team proposal to the course discussion site using the category "Project_proposals (A2)". 3-6 paragraphs is the rough length expectation. Include the following.
  1. At least one clear and concrete hypothesis. Number each one (e.g., "H1", "H2").
  2. Identification of at least one appropriate data source that you can obtain and process in the time allotted.
  3. An indication of what language features you plan to employ.
  4. A plan for at least one concrete feasibility test.
     • Examples: some counts from your data source showing that there are enough examples of the phenomenon of interest; an initial check that a first cut of a sentiment classifier you intend to use has sufficient accuracy on (samples of) your data.
  5. A listing of the members of your team.
  6. Acknowledgments of sources of other input/inspiration. For example, if you were inspired by a particular reading, cite it; if your proposal incorporates work or ideas you've already talked about (or plan to talk about) with other students/your advisor/an internship mentor/the instructor of another class/etc., give the names of all such people.
• Fri Oct. 29, 11:59pm (graded as part of A3): make an appointment at this booking page for your team's (mandatory) feasibility-check review with me.
• Mon Nov. 1, 11:59pm (graded as part of A3): Post your feasibility-check results as a comment/reply to your original proposal post on the the course discussion site.
• Tue Nov. 2 Feasibility-check appointments during the day.
• Thu Nov. 4, 11:59pm (graded as part of A4): Each individual (so, for a two-person team each person does this separately) submits a new post to the the course discussion site with category "Commitment_statement (A4)" a short commitment statement explaining what do you, individually, promise to accomplish on your project next week?
• Thu Nov 11 Mon Nov 15 11:59pm (graded as part of A4): Do what you committed to. State the results as a reply to your commitment statement on the the course discussion site.

Assessment criteria: Proposal (A2): thoughtfulness, creativity, and feasibility are most important to . A3 and A4: On-time good-faith completion of all requirements. Extra credit to individuals can be awarded for thoughtfulness and creativity of feedback you give to others.

Academic Integrity Academic and scientific integrity compels one to properly attribute to others any work, ideas, or phrasing that one did not create oneself. To do otherwise is fraud.

Certain points deserve emphasis here. In this class, talking to and helping others is strongly encouraged. You may also, with attribution, use the code from other sources. The easiest rule of thumb is, acknowledge the work and contributions and ideas and words and wordings of others. Do not copy or slightly reword portions of papers, Wikipedia articles, textbooks, other students' work, Stack Overflow answers, something you heard from a talk or a conversation or saw on the Internet, or anything else, really, without acknowledging your sources. See "Acknowledging the Work of Others" in The Essential Guide to Academic Integrity at Cornell and http://www.theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/AcadInteg/ for more information and useful examples.

This is not to say that you can receive course credit for work that is not your own — e.g., taking someone else's report and putting your name at the top, next to the other person(s)' names. However, violations of academic integrity (e.g., fraud) undergo the academic-integrity hearing process on top of any grade penalties imposed, whereas not following the rules of the assignment “only” risks grade penalties.