Last updated:
- January 14, 2014 — A style for references and citations is now defined.
- January 8, 2014 — Original version.
Overview
Your goal: write a report that clearly describes your capstone project
problem and briefly summarizes previous related work. This will
eventually form the introduction to the final report you will submit at
the end of the semester.
What should this report contain?
- Describe your problem in words.
- Provide enough background so that your description of the problem makes sense to a reasonably general audience.
- What are the issues you are studying?
- How will you solve these issues? — i.e. what approaches or techniques will you use?
- Explain why studying this problem is important.
- Review the literature: who has studied this problem,
or similar problems, in the past? What were their approaches?
References and citation style
There is no standard style for references and citations in the
operations research literature. For this course, use this "typical"
style described below:
- References should be listed in alphabetical order at the end of
the report.
- List journal articles like this:
Y. Linde, A. Buzo and R.M. Gray.
An algorithm for vector quantizer design.
IEEE Transactions on Communications,
28(1):84-95,
1980.
- List books, pamphlets, and research reports like this:
H. Abut, editor.
Vector Quantization.
IEEE Press,
1990.
- List papers in a bound collection, such as conference proceedings like this:
M. Fanty, P. Schmid, and R. Cole.
City name recognition over the telephone.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing,
volume 1,
pages 549-552,
Minneapolis, U.S.A.,
1993.
- Refer to references by the authors' last names and year of
publication in round brackets, like (Linde et al. 1980) or (Abut
1990). If you want to refer to a specific page or result, you can do
so like (Abut 1990, p. 51) or (Fanty et al. 1993, Figure 2.3).
Suggestions
- Reading technical articles is sometimes difficult and can take a
lot of time. Start early and be patient. You may need to seek some
additional sources to fully understand what is going on. Ask for
pointers. Google can be your friend.
- Focus on making your report well-written and concise.
- Proofread, proofread, proofread.
How will you be evaluated?
Your report will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Submitting a complete first draft
- Demonstrating a reasonable understanding of the problem
- Demonstrating a reasonable understanding of previous related work
- Writing clearly, concisely, and eloquently, and in a well-organized fashion
- Meaningfully revising and improving your first draft