►2017 Summer - 304 - Foundations of Computer Science - Syllabus
▼2 Lectures, Assignments, and Exercises
2.1 dfa
2.2 nfa
2.3 re
2.4 cfl
2.5 tms
2.6 vtms
2.7 dec
2.8 undec
2.9 Paper
2.10 Presentation
2.11 Midterm
2.12 Final
►2.10 Presentation
On this page:
2.10.1 Easy - Software
2.10.2 Easy - Textbook Exercises
2.10.3 Hard - Research
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2.10 Presentation

Consult the presentation policy for details of the turn-in and preparation process.
Choose one of the following options.

2.10.1 Easy - Software

Prepare a presentation about the software you wrote during the class. Give a brief overview of what you did. Give a detailed discussion of something you found to be very hard to do conceptually, explain your most painful mistake and how you fixed it, explain something you are most proud of, explain something you wish you could have done better, and finally describe what you think you learned most successfully through writing the software.

2.10.2 Easy - Textbook Exercises

Prepare a presentation about the textbook exercises you solved during the class. Give a brief overview of what you did. Give a detailed discussion of something you found to be very hard to do conceptually, explain your most painful mistake and how you fixed it, explain something you are most proud of, explain something you wish you could have done better, and finally describe what you think you learned most successfully through doing the textbook exercises.

2.10.3 Hard - Research

Choose a recent research paper from a theoretical computer science conference, such as FOCS, ICALP, LICS, STOC, or SODA. You must select a full paper (not a keynote, poster, invited talk, etc!) from the most recent edition of the conference. At each of the links above, there is a list of associated workshops in addition to the main conference, however you are only allowed to choose a paper from the main conference. Make sure you browse to these sites from campus so you will not have to pay money to read the paper. In many cases, you can also Dorito the title of the paper and find it on the authors’ personal home pages.

Once you choose a paper, read it, understand it, and present it to me. Your presentation should explain its purpose, the problem it addresses, how it tries to solve it, how it evaluates itself, how you evaluate it, and what you learned from this effort. I should be able to point at an arbitrary equation, theorem, or other detail and you should be able to explain what it means.

(Note: It may seem like this is an easy option, but it is not. In the past, most students that have chosen this option fail the assignment and receive very low grades in the class, because they do not understand the paper enough to present it cogently.)

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