• Final reports:

    Last piece:

    Please submit your final report by Sunday Tuesday, 11:59 pm, December 10 12.
    Naming convention:

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

  • Instructions for final presentations to be held on Monday, December 11, from 1:30 pm to 4:15 pm.

    Dear PoCS people,

    Final presentations will be held on Monday, December 11
    starting at 1:30 pm 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 me your slides ahead of our final session,
    no later than 11 am on the morning of 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 Sunday Tuesday, 11:59 pm, December 10 12.
    Naming convention:

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

  • What was a regular feature:

    Office hours: To be sorted out with Assistant Deliverator.

    Office hours: To be sorted out with Assistant Deliverator.

  • Online lecture for Thursday, November 10: Scale-free Networks

    The Deliverator will be away and the following episode from last year has been reserved for this absence:

    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.

  • Office hours:

    Latest plan for the semester:

    1:15 pm to 2:30 pm on Tuesdays (Dewhurst)
    1:15 pm to 4:45 pm on Thursdays (Some mixture of Dodds and Dewhurst)

  • Everything you need to know about the first talks:

    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.

  • Office hours:

    Tentative plan for the semester:

    Office hours: To be sorted out with Assistant Deliverator.

  • Speical Note for Online-O-Pocsters (OOPs):

    This is a short note to welcome you to PoCS for the inaugural online edition.

    I've been building the course for many years and have a full set of lecture slides online
    coupled with a storehouse of videos.

    Everything for PoCS will be housed here:
    https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/pocs/

    Instructions will appear here throughout the semester:
    https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/pocs/instructions/

    The course tweets at @pocsvox.
    Tweets appear on the instructions page; you do not have to follow the Twitter account
    but it's a good way to hear of updates.

    Archived versions of all courses are listed here:
    https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/

    David Dewhurst will be the TA for the course and we will work out when to hold office
    hours.

    As for every edition of PoCS, I encourage you to work together as a team.

    Plan for the course: Absorbables (slides and videos) will be posted with a "consume by date" in terms of weeks and sessions of the course. Plan on roughly 14 weeks with 2 sessions each (28 sessions total).

    Assignments will mostly appear weekly.

  • General Welcome for PoCSologists

    Spring, 2019: PoCS goes on a Cyberpunktrek with evil twin brother Bruce. PoCS is online only.

    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 absorbing lectures (slides and videos) 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.

The tweetses: