• 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: Tuesdays, 12 to 12:50 pm; Wednesdays, 1:15 pm to 2:05 pm; Thursdays, 12 to 12:50 pm; all on Teams

  • Main instructions:

    See Stories for current line up of slides, episodes, and assignments.

    Click on closed panels below to revisit past instructions.

  • The introductory basics for Online-O-PoCSsters (OOPs):

    This is a short note to welcome you to PoCS, Vol 2., now in its 10th Season.

    Everything is still fine.



    E-v-e-r-y-th-ing.



    (PoCS Vols. 1 and 2 are fun-but-very-serious courses.)

    Be safe.

    Things to know:

    1. The Deliverator has been building the course for many years and has a full set of lecture slides online coupled with a storehouse of clips and lecture-long videos. New videos will be added as needed. And of course, things keep changing in the world and relevant videos may be added throughout the semester.
    2. The context of PoCS, Vol. 2's 10th Season is the COVID-19 pandemic and the years 2020 and 2021 in general.
    3. PoCS Vol. 2 is something of a sandbox, with smaller arcs of knowledge building. Branching and supply networks, risk and optimality, textology, and storyology are part of the line up.
    4. Like every season, we will work to adapt and improve PoCS throughout the semester but acknowledge that everyone involved will be confronting and overcoming new kinds of difficulties.
    5. Instructions will appear here throughout the semester (you're on the page now):
      https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/pocs/instructions.
    6. Michael Arnold will be the AD (Assistant Deliverator) for the course.
    7. The course tweets under the handle @pocsvox. Tweets appear on the instructions page (where you are now). You do not have to follow the Twitter account but it's a good way to hear of updates.
    8. We will be interacting through Microsoft Teams for the first time (you will be signed up automatically).
    9. We also have a Slack space for all students in Complex Systems and Data Science courses and programs (invitation will be sent via email).
    10. Archived versions of all courses are listed here:
      https://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/.
    11. Lists are fun.

    Plan for the course:

    1. We will lay out the course through retellings of Stories of the PoCS.
    2. Mixtapes (YouTube playlists of clips) 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).
    3. All clips and slides will be stored and organised here and here.
    4. There will be 10 assignments and 1 project (small groups).
    5. Sadly, there will be no dioramas this time round. Because 2020.
    6. Assignments will generally be due on Fridays.
    7. Grades and assignment submission will work through Blackboard (the only use for the course).
    8. We will determine when office hours works best for everyone in the first week. We may have to adapt throughout the semester.

    As for every edition of PoCS, the Deliverator encourage you to work together in study groups.

The tweetses: