Dear PoCS people,

Final presentations will be held on Tuesday, December 11
starting at 7:30 am in our normal class room.

Here's what you need to know and do. Grading will take into account all of these aspects and more.

0. Talks should absolutely be G rated and respectful of others. See the PoCS syllabus, UVM's student conduct standards, and UVM's Our Common Ground.

1. Time: Please aim for no more than 3 minutes per person.

2. Your mission is to
(a) quickly review the problem/area you've been investigating;
(b) what you've been able to achieve so far (or what went horribly wrong).

Please re-introduce yourself in a sentence (name + your field),
and to acknowledge who you're working with.

3. We will move between talks as fast as possible.

4. Slides: Suggest 3 to 5. More may work but 100 is right out. Quality of slides forms part of the grade.

5. Please email your slides ahead of our final session,
no later than 5 pm on the evening before the talks.

Naming convention:
nnCSYS300project-finaltalk-$firstname-$lastname-YYYY-MM-DD.pdf
where the leading
nn = your talk number (delivered on a separate channel), including a padded 0 if needed

Examples:
07CSYS300project-finaltalk-michael-palin-2017-12-11.pdf
07CSYS300project-finaltalk-michael-palin-2017-12-11.pptx

6. As per usual: My machine will handle Powerpoint (it uses a pair of tongs
and rubber gloves to do so) but highly fancy Powerpoint presentations made
on a Windows machine may not transfer perfectly.

If you are feeling up for Beamer/LaTeX, I highly encourage it. Keynote is fine as well. Anything that ends up as a pdf will work.

7. Practice! These are short talks so you can run through
them a number of times to straighten everything out.

8. Important!: Please submit your final report by Wednesday, 11:59 pm, December 12.
Naming convention:

CSYS300project-$firstname-$lastname-final-report.pdf
e.g.,
CSYS300project-michael-palin-final-report.pdf

Please email your current iteration of your report. Work hard, do great things.

1. Please submit pdfs only!

2. Naming format:

CSYS300project-$firstname-$astname-YYYY-MM-DD.pdf
where the date is the current date
e.g.,
CSYS300project-michael-palin-2018-10-18.pdf

The Deliverator will be away and the following episode will serve as a replacement:

A proper house for the episode and links to slides are here:
http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2015-08UVM-300/episodes/19/

Blurb: In this episode, we work through the Barabasi-Albert model, connecting back to the rich-get-richer models of Simon and de Solla Price. We also think about how random attachment can work in reality, race through Krapivsky and Redner's generalized model, see what happens when the rich get much richer and the rich get somewhat richer, and investigate universality.

Normal service will resume the week after.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/07/

Due on Friday, October 26, by 11:59 pm.

PoCSologists,

Short pitch presentations will be held on Thursday, October 18, and Tuesday, October 23 if needed.

The format will be a mini-conference
session with each person presenting for two (2) minutes.

Here's what you need to know and do:

First: If you have not already done so,
please email me your topic choices, and if you are
working in a group or not. Feel free to talk in Slack about possible projects. Pitch your idea and recruit people to your team.

Teams of 2 to 3 are strongly encouraged (4 is too many, 1 is totally okay).

Send your information as the start of the draft
of your project report with the usual naming convention
with one twist:
CSYS300project-[firstname]-[lastname]-YYYY-MM-DD.pdf
where the date is the current date
e.g.,
CSYS300project-michael-palin-2018-10-18.pdf

At this point, you just need a title but you are welcome to add more.

If a topic is already taken and I catch this, I'll let you know.

Below are instructions for the talks and how to name your slides.
A randomized order will be delivered by email as well (if you are part of a group and I don't have this indicated, please let me know).

These talks always prove to be interesting, diverse, and fun; the
feedback I've received in the past has been that students greatly
enjoy hearing about each others' topics.

We will not be recording these talks.

Okay, here's the plan for these first talks---please read!:

1.0 Talks will be 2 minutes long.

1.1 Your mission is to:
(a) Clearly state the problem/area you're going to investigate;
(b) Why it's interesting;
and
(c) What you plan to do for the remainder of the semester.
Please also introduce yourself in a sentence or two (name + your field).

1.1b Talks should absolutely be PG and respectful of others.

1.2 If you are part of a group, you will need to speak for 2 minutes
each. Please coordinate your talk with your fellow group members.

2. We will have to move quickly between talks (< 30 seconds) so please
know when you're up and be prepared to swap over.

3. Slides: Mandatory. The number should be 1 to 3 per speaker. More can work but certainly not, say, 20, unless you have a sequence of stunningly beautiful pictures that will somehow help your story. Your assessment will in part be based on your slides.

4. Please email me your slides some time before the lecture in
which you are talking. The night before would be great but
I will be able to accept them before 11 am on the Thursday.

Naming convention:
nnCSYS300project-firsttalk-$firstname-$lastname-2018-10-18.pdf
where the leading
nn = your talk number, including a padded 0 if needed

Examples:
07CSYS300project-firsttalk-michael-palin-2018-10-18.pdf
07CSYS300project-firsttalk-michael-palin-2018-10-18.pptx

My machine will handle Powerpoint (it uses a pair of tongs
and rubber gloves to do so) but highly fancy Powerpoint presentations made
on a Windows machine may not transfer perfectly.
If you are feeling up for Beamer/LaTeX, I highly encourage it.
Anything that ends up as a pdf should be fine.

5. Practice! These are short talks so you can run through
them a number of times to straighten everything out.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/06/

Due on Friday, October 12, by 11:59 pm.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/05/

Due on Friday, October 5, by 11:59 pm.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/04/

Due on Friday, September 28, by 11:59 pm.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/03/

Due on Friday, September 21, by 11:59 pm.

The less tentative plan.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/02/

Due on Friday, September 14, by 11:59 pm.

Available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2018-08UVM-300/assignments/01/

Due on Friday, September 7, by 11:59 pm.

Tentative plan for the semester:

PoCS takes off again, this time for its twelfth season, on Tuesday, August 28.

We will cover everything, kind of. From randomness emerges the platypus.

Instructions will appear on this page throughout the semester so please check back regularly. Please also follow PoCS on Twitter at @pocsvox (you don't Need To Get Yourself A Twitter, you can just check the tweets out on the current page (or go here). The large button on the course's homepage should help you find your way.

Your main work will be faithfully attending lectures and contending with a range of assignments and projects. You should expect to work in teams. Don't go it alone.

Generally, students find PoCS to be challenging and rewarding. After appropriate suffering, people say good things.