WEBPAGE/SYLL FOR CMSC 297- Fall 2012

Format: Every lecture someone (a faculty, a grad students, a former honors student, a current honors student) will come to our class and give a talk on their research area. The goal is to get YOU (the students!) to both think about research projects and learn what is going on in computer science. Important: We will assign you short papers to read AHEAD of time so that when the talk is given you will better understand it.

WHERE TO MEET: CSI 2107.

Meeting Time: The class meets Every WEDENSDAY 4-5

Organizer: William Gasarch. Office AVW 3245, Phone is 5-2698. Office hours are W 2-4 and by appointment.

Grading Policy: This is a 1-credit P/F course. The requirements are (1) attendence, (2) Participation, and (3) Write a short essay about some of the research presented including what you might want to pursue in that field. In the schedule below the HW will be specified.

PARTIAL SCHEDULE

Aug 29- Dr. Neil Spring introduces the course AND gives a short talk on some of his research projects.

HW 1: See this pdf file. You may find the LaTeX source that genreated it useful, it is here.

Sept 5- Dr. William Gasarch: The Honors Program, Mini and Maxi Projects in Theory.

HW 2: Invesitate the dishwasher game in the one-dim case with tiles of shape 1x2 and 1x3. Assume Player I wants to leave have less holes uncovered and Player I wants to have more. For n=3,4,...,20 if both players play perfectly then how many holes are uncovered. Try to come up with a general theorem. Optional: When you are done look at other 1-dim tiles of your choice and try to come up with theorems.

Sept 12- Dr. Elaine Shi For her slides see SLIDES

HW 3: Write an essay about Dr. Shi's talk. Either summarize it or write about an idea for research based on it.

Sept 19- Dr. Dave Mount Title: Multi-Dim Sketching: How to Approximate Curves and Surfaces Efficiently Read Before Hand

HW 4:

1. Show that Douglas-Peucker is not optimal. (In particular, give an example of a choice of R and epsilon where it is possible to approximate the semicircle to distance epsilon using strictly fewer than k sides.)
2. Give an example of a polygonal curve that is not self-intersecting, such that running the D-P algorithm results in a curve that is self-intersecting. You may pick whatever value of epsilon you like in their counterexample.

HERE IS A SOLUTION: HW4 SOL

Sept 26 - Dr. Amol Despande Cloud Computing and Data Centers READ THIS and THIS BEFOREHAND.

HW 5: Write an essay about Dr. Deshpande's talk. Either summarize it or write about an idea for research based on it. OR compare and contrast Amol's view of Cloud Computing with Shi's.

Oct 3- Dr. Hamid Mahini Algorithmic Game Theory. THIS IS HIS TALK

HW 6: Write an essay about Dr. Hamid Mahini's talk. Summarize it and write about an idea for research based on it.

Oct 10- Dr. Jon Kleinberg. In Hornbake Building 0109.

Oct 17- Dr. Atif Memon

Oct 24- THEORY DAY Goto Room AV Williams Building (NOT CSI) room 2460. There are talks 3:00-4:10 and then poster sessions. If you can get there by 3:00 GREAT. If not then by 3:25. If not then 3:50. If not then 4:10. (The 3:25 talk is by Bill Gasarch!)

HW 7: Write an essay about one of the posters you saw.

Oct 31- Dr. William Gasarch and John Purtilo Ugrad research at UMCP/Mini Projects in Theory. NIM with Cash- an example of how research may go Read this AHEAD of time.

HW 8: Mandatory: Determine exactly when Player I wins NIM(1,4,5). That is, come up with a statement like Player I wins NIM(1,4,5) on n sticks IFF XXX. Optional: Try to find out things about NIM WITH CASH for NIM(1,4,5). Optional: For your own interest read our paper, even though its not finished, here. For our talk see here.

Nov 7 - Dr. Hector Corrada Bravo Computational Biology.

HW 9: Write an essay about Dr. Bravo's talk. Summarize it and write about an idea for research based on it. Due Nov 14.

Nov 14- Andrew Lohr and Josh Brule- Project in Theory.

Nov 21 CANCELLED

Nov 28- Dr. Jon Froehlich Human Computer interaction.

Dec 5- Dr. Nick Feamster Cybersecurity.