Literature Survey and Problem Formulation

Literature Servey

This assignment is for you to summarize and write up a thorough literature review about background knowledge and related work. The goal is to get you to know what is out there and what people have done. In addition to reading the technical papers (conferences, journals, surveys, etc.), you might also want to subscribe to websites of specific communities (e.g., ACM SIGs) and even general newspapers, as these can give you a perspective of how "everyday people" look at the field and also some sense when the field has arrived.

I expect this to take a couple of weeks to weed out the most important papers. Once you started the actual work, make sure it is an ongoing process (although don't spend the entire semester surveying the whole world before starting).

Categorize the papers into nice folders (virtual or physical) by field, sub-field, specific problems, specific methodologies, etc. Write a one-page summary of each "important" paper and a one-paragraph summary of those "not-that-important". They will be easy for you to refer to later on.

As for this submission, you are required to submit a literature review summary for 10 papers (5 of them should be the "important" ones) in the field of the topic you selected in Assignment 1.

Problem Formulation Guidelines:

• Formulate a goal that is clear, non-trivial, but achievable.
• Figure out a plan (brief is ok)
• Argue that it is important (not only to you and your boss!)
• Formal problem formulation.
• Theoretical vs. Practical? What are the expected results?
• The complexity of the problem? May need rigorous proof!