Topic Report

The course includes, as assignment, the elaboration and oral presentation of a report about a topic closely related to the course.

You must choose a topic (see list of topics) and form a report group. The number of persons per group varies depending on the topic (3-5 students). The task is to study a topic based on the recommended literature, write a report, and make an oral presentation about the subject.

You will obtain 1.5 points for the topic report and its presentation.

Registration

Once you have made up your mind about the topic you would like to study and selected your report partners, register for the report topics. The subgroup number should match the number of the topic. For example, a group wanting to study topic 2 should register as subgroup 2. Recall that the number of students per subgroup is limited by the topic. Do not overbook!

Note: A first come first served policy is employed. There can only be maximum one group studying a topic.

The deadline for report registration is 29 January, 2007.

Report Guidelines

• The report may be written in either English or Swedish.
• The report must summarize the main ideas and concepts of your topic, expressed using your own words. Copying and pasting full paragraphs from the source documents is completely unacceptable (this will be considered equivalent to cheating in a written examination). The report must also include a few viewpoints about the relevance of the topic under discussion.
• The suggested readings are the main source of information for your particular topic. However, you are not limited to the recommended literature and other sources of information can be used as well. Do not forget to cite all the references you have used.
• The expected length of the document depends naturally on the topic (number of students), but also on other factors like font size and line spacing. Hence giving a strict number of pages is difficult. A good rule of thumb, though, is five pages per student, but keep in mind that this is only a general guide.
• Although the report is to be written by all the members of the group and different parts will be written by different persons, the report must be a uniform document with a consistent flow. It is not a collection of writings glued together without coherence.

Handing in the report

In order to prevent and detect plagiarism, we will use a system called Urkund. This system will compare your reports with the documents in its database to check if there are any similarities with any existing document. The documents in the database are taken from scientific journals and proceedings, from publishing houses, from the Internet, and more.

For this reason, you must hand in your report by attaching the document in an e-mail and send it to the following address:

• danka.liu@analys.urkund.se

Note that this is not my normal e-mail address. The report will be automatically forwarded to the supervisor together with the results of the comparison. You do not need to take any further action. In particular, do not send a copy specifically for me. The Urkund system will confirm to you that it has received your report.

Your report must be in either .ps or .pdf format. Other formats may, reluctantly, also be accepted if absolutely necessary.

The deadline for handing in the report is 21 February, 2007.

Presentation

The topic must be presented by the group. All members must actively participate in the presentation, that is, each of them is to present a part of the selected topic. As a rule of thumb, the length of the presentation should be about 5 minutes per student. Time yourself beforehand, so that this time will not be greatly exceeded at the seminar. After each group, 5 minutes will be denoted to discussions. A laptop and a projector will be available. Groups who want to download their presentations on the laptop should either send them on e-mail (not via Urkund) the day before the presentation, or bring them on a USB stick. Diskettes and CDs/DVDs cannot be accepted. Powerpoint, pdf and transparencies (which you have to print yourselves before the presentation) formats are accepted. The presentations will not necessarily be given in topic number order. The language for the oral presentation is English.

The presentations will be held on the SS sessions during weeks 8 and 9 (see schedule for details). You are required to attend the presentation seminars.