THE COSC 6360 TERM PROJECT

Jehan-François Pâris

Introduction

• COSC 6360 traditional requirements included a term paper– Was almost always a survey of some sub

area of operating systems– Taught how to search current literature– Most papers were 15 to 25 double-spaced

pages long

The term project

• The term paper is now replaced by aterm project– Shorter than a term paper– Requires original work

What you can do

– Implementing an idea you like– Writing a simulation program to evaluate an

idea – Collecting some data and analyzing them– Doing some probabilistic analysis

Possible directions

1. Investigating cache replacement policies2. Analyzing the reliability or the availability of a

distributed system3. Evaluating the performance of any interesting

computer system 4. Investigating user access patterns for any

interesting computer system5. Learning how to program portable devices:

iPhone, iPod, Android

Your contribution

• Must be original but does not have to be innovative

• Does not have to cover all the bases:– Incomplete results will be considered

• I will take into account– The difficulty of the project– The amount of work you have done– The size of your team

The good and the bad

• The good news is that most of you will not have to write much more than a dozen pages

• The bad news is that you will have to get your hands dirty

If you insist …

• You can still do a survey paper but– It will be longer than a project report– You should not hope for more than an A-

More ideas

• Check my web page www.cs.uh.edu/~paris/6360/Topics.htm

• Look at a labor of love:Building an unmodified Xbox cluster http://www.bgfax.com/xbox/home.html

Getting the required information

• Will affect the choice and the scope of your topic– Avoid topics for which you cannot find any references– Narrow topics for which you end with too many

referencesTopics like distributed file systems, distributed shared memory or web caching are too vast to be treated in less than 50 pages

Where to find it?

• Two key criteria are– quality of the information– timeliness

• Quality of information is based upon– peer review – reputation of authors

• Timeliness is obvious

Scientific journals

• Offer best peer review process– ACM Transactions on Computer Systems– ACM Computing Surveys– IEEE Transactions on Computers– IEEE Computer– …

• Constitute most authoritative source– Not all OS people bother converting their best

conference papers into journal papers

Conferences and symposia

• Second best peer review is achieved by scientific conferences and symposia– Symposia on Operating Systems Principles

(once every two years)– USENIX, ACM and IEEE conferences and

symposia• Not all conferences are equally good

Look at who is publishing

The web

• Most up-to-date information can be obtained by searching web sites of people who are active in the area you are surveying

• Major problem is the lack of peer review• Must trust reputation of authors of report

I trust authors who have published papers in good journals and/or good conferences

Wikipedia

• Easiest source to consult• But

– Does not dispense from going to the original sources

– Quality is variable– Second-hand information

Some hints

• Most people send their best work to the better known conferences and journalsDo not spend too much time looking for a paper by a good author that appeared in a minor workshop

• Graduate students tend to have web sites that are more up-to-date than those of their advisers

Monographs and textbooks

• Monographs are books dedicated to a single topic– They become quickly dated

• Text books provide good syntheses of the topics they discuss– Easier to read than original papers– Second-hand information– Use them for background materials only

Useful resources

• My favorite search engines are Google and Bing (better privacy policy)

• UH library has recent ACM and EEE publications available on the web– Must register to access these from home

• Proceedings of past USENIX conferences are freely available at www.usenix.org

Your project report

• Four parts1. Introduction:2. Review of previous work3. Your own contribution4. ConclusionFollowed by a list of references

The introduction

• Should present the topic and the scope of your paper

• Key objectives are – explaining what you will do (and not do)– making it sound interesting

captatio benevolentiaecaptatio benevolentiae==

getting the goodwill of the readergetting the goodwill of the reader

The review of previous work

• Mention previous work that is relevant to your project– The key word is “mention”– You should not describe in any detail any

previous work unless it is necessary for the understanding of your own work

– Recall this is not a survey paper

Your own contribution

• Explain in a few lines its scope:– You will investigate an idea that you find

interesting– You have a better idea that solves of the

problems other proposals did not solve

The conclusion

• Should summarize the results of the paper• Often written in perfect tense• Research papers often include directions for

future work• Many people read the conclusion first before

deciding if the whole paper is worth their time– Make it informative

The list of references (I)

• Normally appears as an unnumbered section• Very important part of paper

– indication of good scholarship• Format obeys to strict conventions

– another indication of good scholarship• Take it very seriously

List of references (II)

• Always cite papers describing “pioneering work”– First paper on broadcasting for video-on-

demand was by Viswanathan and Imielinski– Must be cited even though much better

techniques have been devised• In case of doubt, cite the papers that other

people cite

What about the abstract?

• Not required (or even suggested)• Should read like the summary part of the

conclusions• Always in present tense• Must be self-contained

– No references– No unexplained acronyms (e.g., MTTDL)

Writing the paper (I)

• Avoid the passive voice– BAD:

Three different block sizes were selected for our experiments

– BETTER:We selected three different block sizes for our experiments

Writing the paper (II)

• Use short sentences• Uses figures whenever it helps

– You can borrow figures as long as you acknowledge your source

Figure 9. A page table (from [9])

where [9] is a reference to a paper you cite

Other rules to follow (I)

• Spell numbers at the beginning of a sentence– BAD:

52 % of the observations …– BETTER:

Fifty-two percent of the observations…

Other rules to follow (II)

– AWFUL:3 different block sizes were selected …

– BAD:Three different block sizes were selected …

– BETTER:We selected three different block sizes …

Other rules to follow (III)

• Spell out percent everywhere in your text– BAD:

We observed a 20% increase– BETTER:

We observed a 20 percent increase

Other rules to follow (IV)

• It’s is not a possessive– BAD:

It’s main disadvantage– BETTER:

Its main disadvantage• It’s is a contracted form of “ it is” and most good

writers avoid these forms in scientific papers and reports:– you’re, can’t

Last warnings

• Mere surveys of the current state of the art will not be considered for more than a B+ or an A- (86-90/100)

• Papers including sentences copied from any other source will get a zero.–NO EXCEPTION:

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED