Projects

The project is an important part of the course (and constitutes 30% of the course grade). This documentation serves as an introduction to the project expectations, deliverables etc. More details will be added as we go along.

Project Logistics

Following are the due dates for different components of the project. All (except final presentation) will be due on Gradescope. More details for each component will be provided in the subsequent sections.

Project Expectations

The main goal of the project is to give you all some experience of working on a problem related to data compression. Ideally, the project will involve some component of reading, understanding and also implementation of a compression technique.

The expectation for the project is as follows:

• Literature review of a compression method/area. You are expected to work with your mentor in understanding the topic you choose, and narrow down on a concrete problem to work on for the project.
• Implement the compression method (either using SCL or otherwise). You will work with your project mentor to ensure that your implementation is well documented and tested.
• Finally, write a report explaining the theoretical ideas + implementation details behind your method.

Given that the quarter is short, the problem on which you will work on will be a bit concrete. We will release a list of topics suggested by instructors below. You are welcome to come up with your own ideas applying compression to your domain of interest or simply exploring a particular theoretical result or practical technique. Please work with the instructors to ensure the feasibility of the project in the given time frame.

The expected team size for each project is 1-2 students. Groups of 3 are also ok in exceptional circumstances given the scope of the project. Each project will also be assigned a mentor from the teaching staff. The project team and the mentor can decide to meet as per need.

Project Deliverables

I. Project Proposal

Due: 2025/10/30, Thursday, 11:59pm

Please use the time till the deadline to explore and decide what project you would like to work on. Before you submit the proposal, ensure to have at least one 10 minute 1-on-1 chat with the teaching staff (as a team), and finalize on the project idea. The list of finalized project ideas will be maintained here: TBD. Once the project is finalized, we will assign a project mentor (Kedar/Shubham/Tsachy/Jiwon) who can help you with references for the project, help with programming, etc. As we are a small class, ideally we would not like to repeat the exact same project. The teaching team will help you modify your idea appropriately in case someone else is working on the exact same project.

For deliverable, we will follow a similar template as our friends from CS231N. For the project proposal please submit a 1-page summary on what your project idea is, and an approximate timeline as to what you are planning to achieve by week-x etc. Some questions the proposal should answer:

• What is the problem that you will be investigating? Why is it interesting?

• What reading will you examine to provide context and background?

• What method or algorithm are you proposing? If there are existing implementations and/or theoretical justifications, will you use them and how? How do you plan to improve or modify such implementations? You don't have to have an exact answer at this point, but you should have a general sense of how you will approach the problem you are working on.

• How will you evaluate your results? Qualitatively, what kind of results do you expect (e.g. plots or figures)? Quantitatively, what kind of analysis will you use to evaluate and/or compare your results (e.g. what performance metrics or statistical tests)?

II. Project Milestone

Due: 2025/11/20, Thu, midnight PT

For the project milestone, please submit a 2/3 page write-up on the technique/method you chose and link to your in-progress code as a GitHub repo (if any). If possible, you can use GitHub markdown (.md) file as your milestone report, put the .md it on your code repo, and provide us a link to that. That way you will find it easy to later modify it to get the final report. The milestone should roughly include the following sections:

• Introduction: what is the problem, why is it interesting?

• Literature/Code review: summarize any existing papers/implementations that you referred to

• Methods: what do you plan to implement as part of this project? What end result do you expect to achieve and how will you evaluate it qualitatively and quantitatively?

• Progress report: what have you already finished (please include code link where relevant)? What is the plan for the remaining weeks?

III. Final presentation

2025/12/04 Thu Time TBD, Location TBD

Slides due: TBD

The Final presentation will be during the last class (note we will have a longer last class slot!). The presentation will involve lightning talks: (short 5min talk + 5min QnA).

Attendance is mandatory for the presentation. You will work with your mentor on making sure the presentation is interesting and useful to your classmates :).

Guidelines:

• You need to submit your slide-deck by TBD using gradescope. Please submit a PDF of the slides. No late days allowed for this submission!

• You will have 5 minutes for your presentation, and 5 minutes for QnA. Here are some guidelines on how to give a good lightning talk.
• You can assume you are presenting to peers who have taken the class and are aware of the basic terminology. Please use these 5 minutes to concisely convey what you have been working on with such an audience in mind, e.g. you don't have to explain entropy coding basics and/or image compression basics. You can use the allotted time to explain the algorithm you are working on, why is it exciting, what did you learn and show the results so-far. Main idea is to ensure you are able to convey the key ideas of your project to your peers.
• You can use any presentation tool you like. We recommend using Google Slides or PowerPoint. You can also use LaTeX Beamer if you are comfortable with it.
• We plan to have some drinks and snacks for everyone during the presentation. We also plan to have pizza for dinner during the presentation. :)
• We will be making the projects public after the class ends. If you do not wish your project to be made publically available, please let us know.

IV. Final report and code

Due: TBD

• The final submission involves a 4-5 page report on your project idea. It should introduce the problem, describe in detail the technical details, and also briefly talk about results and other implementation details.

• You also need to submit a link to your code repository. The expectation is to submit a well documented and well tested code which is reproducible, and something someone else (or even you) can build upon.

Your mentor will work with you on setting expectations, and helping you review the report/code before the submission.

Project Suggestions

The list of projects from previous iterations of the course can be found here.