Description

The course project is worth 10% of your semester grade. The project will be graded out of 100 points.
Question 1: Select your project topic from a list of all available topics.
Question 2: If you selected an alternative project topic (Topic 31), you will need to indicate that here.
Question 4: List all team member names here. If you are a single group, just type your name.
Question 5: Provides instructions on how to create your group in Canvas. (Every member of the team must complete this step even if you are a single person group.)
All we’re looking for here are a couple of paragraphs describing what you’ve done so far and what you still need to do. Only one team member needs to turn in this assignment, but you must clearly and unambiguously list EVERYONE on the team. Failure to do so will result in loss of points. The intent is not to provide an almost completed report as the TAs will not be grading anything beyond checking to see that you’ve provided the paragraphs. Please do not submit a rough draft copy of your project.
Milestone 3: Final Report (90 points)
Please submit 2 files as a part of submission (if you chose a non-coding-based topic then you only need to provide your report).
One file will be a pdf file, which will cover your final project report. The PDF must be separate from the zip file.
For each group, only one person from that group needs to submit the project files.
Project Administration Duties (10 Points)
11:59 PM Atlanta Time 5
11:59 PM Atlanta Time 5

Project Content (90 Points)
Plan Ahead. Don’t try submitting it to Canvas at 11:58 PM Atlanta Time!
Task Points Description
Title & Group Member Names 5 Include a descriptive title, the group number, and all group member names at the beginning of your project.
Abstract 5 A short synopsis (at most 200 words) of what problem you’re working on, including major findings
Background &
Description of the
Problem 5 Some detail of the problem under (maybe even a literature review along with a description of the organization of what’s coming up in the remainder of the write-up
Main Findings 50 The main findings of a project will clearly depend on what type of project you’re doing, how many people are in the group, etc. Here are some guidelines related to the broad categories from the original project list document:

• Describe in detail the applications area (e.g., all the potential ways that you can play with an inventory policy, why it’s important, etc.).
• Collect some data from someplace – e.g., an actual company, get it yourself, find it online, or (in an emergency) make it up, but with justification.
• Do an elementary data analysis and maybe some curve fitting, if appropriate.
• Simulate your model (e.g., in Arena), hopefully using the data analysis you undertook.
• Analyze the output, make improvements/conclusions.
Language- and Modeling-Oriented Problems. These projects usually involve learning a new simulation language or modeling paradigm. We’d like you to:
• Explain how the language works (at least at a basic level).
• Provide a tutorial / user guide with your own examples (please do not use the examples found in the online documentation).
• Outline good points and not-so-good points.
• Make a very quick comparison with Arena.
Programming-Oriented Problems. These problems are often concerned with Monte Carlo analysis of a game or preparing an easy-to-use library for some simulation functionality for us.
• Describe the problem at hand thoroughly and past efforts by others to solve it.
• Develop and document your code.
• Show how to run your program(s).
• Give illustrations of what you can learn from your code (e.g., whether a PRN generator is any good, or whether a certain strategy will work better than others in blackjack). Make sure to be statistically rigorous (e.g., estimates, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, etc.) if you’re carrying out Monte Carlo experiments.
Theory-Oriented Problems
• Describe the problem at hand thoroughly and past efforts by others to solve it.
• What are the techniques used to derive the main findings?
• Describe some of the fundamental results (e.g., this paper gives an explicit expression for an estimator’s expected value in terms of the covariance function).
• Formulate (but you don’t have to solve) a couple of research problems that might be derived from this work.
Something Else – which needs to be approved by us.

Task Points Description
Conclusions 5 What did you find/learn from the project? Provide ideas for future work that could be built using your project as a starting point.
Presentation, Writing
Quality, and
References/Citations 20 Is the paper written clearly, succinctly, and professionally? Is it free of typPogrficLe errors?

All outside sources used in the creation of your project need to be included. Any direct quotes you use in your project must be clearly cited. It is not acceptable to copy and paste large portions of your project even if you cite it correctly. You can use any style of citations you want (APA, MLA, etc.). If you’re not sure whether you should cite something, then cite it.

And, finally, here are some hints/expectations about exposition:
• The idea is to have fun and learn something about a topic that interests you.
• Then convey that interest to your readers. So…
• Write in a style that is clear, interesting, and well-thought-out; get a friend or two to proofread – no typos allowed in 6644!

• Bigger groups should generally tend to write more verbiage (but that is not mandated). Try to limit your report to 5 pages per person. (There is no need for tedious lists of data/tables or tons of code, unless that’s the point of your report.)
• I’m guessing you can bat this off in <15 hours of work per group member (just a guideline).