writing project

My usual procedure is to wait until later in the semester, and assign a writing project that is due at the end of the semester. People rarely complain, but who needs more stress at the end of the semester anyway?

So let's get an early start. Within ten days, say by Monday March 5, I'd like you to tell me, in a short email, the topic of your paper. It has to have something to do with IR, and NOT something that we'll be going over in class in detail, although going in depth in some topic that we mention in class is fine. Describe your topic in a paragraph, and list at least three references that you're thinking of consulting.

The final paper should be about ten pages, with at least ten references. Don't let all the references be from Wikipedia. The paper will be due on Wednesday, April 18.

There are lots of possible topics! We can start with the
SIGIR Call for Papers

and move on to the
CIKM Call for Papers

I'm not expecting original research results of conference quality (although that'd be nice) but you'll need to do something more than just a rehash of existing work. It's always a good idea to summarize work in an area, and then suggest future work that somebody could do for a 698 project, or a thesis. Another approach is to study some technique, and then present a new example that would help people understand it. If you want to write a program (e.g. an extension or modification to Lucene) you can include that as an appendix, and it won't count towards the ten-page limit.

It doesn't bother me if your writing project happens to be related to your job, or dovetails with something you're doing in another class.