Prepare a 5 to 7 page (approximately1,500 to 2,200 words) survey paper on a topic in computer science.You are required to submit your paper by the day of the final examination.
The choice of a topic is quite flexible. The following list of sample topics can serve as guidance. If you prefer a different topic, I must approve of it first. If you are uncertain, please send me an e-mail and I will let you know if the topic is relevant. The objective of the paper is for you to learn about some aspects of computer science in some depth, so you might as well pick something of interest to you.
The form of your paper should be of the survey type. The paper must be written in a clear, comprehensive, and critical fashion. Please discuss points on which you disagree with the authors, or that the authors could have extended, or relationships between the work of different authors. Don't be afraid of occasional errors of judgement; you are not expected to have a complete understanding of the issues in this field. It is preferable to be wrong but based on well thought reasoning, than simply to accept and report everything that is in print. Don't choose too broad a topic, because you'll find you may need to write a book, nor too narrow a topic, because you will find that there is not much to say. Try instead to cover an area, in the fashion of a unimodal distribution, i.e., with a peak in a well-defined problem and tails in related problems. Try, that is, to place your work in the context of a broader picture.
The survey paper is just that, a survey. You read, you understand, you provide an understandable summary of the subject. When preparing a survey paper you should read more than one paper or view on the subject. Furthermore, you should quote all sources of information. Look here for a discussion of how to sight (or is it site, or is it really cite) references from the Internet. In a survey it is good if you use other sources and the more you use and the better they are documented the merrier. The following should give you the idea about the layout and the structure of a survey paper.
Title of the document
Author of the document
Abstract: An executive summary of the paper, defining the subject and the scope of it. An abstract is a condensed introduction and summary. An abstract should be understandable to a layman and provide a bird eye view of the topics covered in the paper
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Define subject matter
- State what issues are going to be explored in the survey
- Outline its structure
- Overview: give a big picture of the subject, explain its importance, current trends, ...
- Detailed analysis: investigate and describe thoroughly important issues, highligh advantages and disadvantages, reasons for exitnace, possible future trends, prospects ...
- Summary: state what has been learned, draw conclusions, highlight open problems
- Additional Reading: list other sources of information, giving brief details about them. Point out closely related subjects.
- References: list all sources of information used.
Introduction
In the current world sharing of information becomes a necessity1. One of technologies that promises ...
[ ... ]References:
- Lawlor, Doug. The High Bandwidth Web Page. [Online] Available http://www.specialty.com/hiband/index.html, August 5, 1997.