Assignment 3

due: 12:00pm April 22th by email to cs303@cs.stanford.edu,
submission instructions below

1. Prepare your background information and experimental methodology

Last week, you started a blog that will act as a lab notebook for your experimental project. This week, we want you to write your first major entry. As a minimum, this should include the following:

1.     Background information: what do your classmates and course staff need to know about your topic? You're the expert! You may want to include links to relevant papers (please provide a few sentences of summary).

2.     Your experimental question. What is your hypothesis/es?

3.     Your experimental method. This week in class you worked in groups to brainstorm plans for your experimental method. Take some time to think more about what you'd like to test, and write up what you've decided. If you've changed the plans you discussed in class, what made you change your mind? Why is your new method better?
You'll probably want to start early on this - please contact the course staff if you're having trouble.

4.     Media (if relevant):
            Photographs of your experimental setup?
            Sketches of interfaces? "Concept art"?
            Screen caps of interesting code, pseudocode, ....
            ... anything else that will help the notion of your experiment come alive for a reader.

(Optional) It might also be informative for the readers of your "notebook" to know your thoughts on your subject area in general - what larger questions are out there? If you had unlimited time and money (and subjects), is there anything you would do differently in your experiment? 

2. Human Subjects Clearance

Regardless of whether or not your experiment will use human subjects, it's useful to have some knowledge about the guidelines and practices followed by those researchers who do.

Stanford's Research Compliance Office links to an online tutorial where you can learn more about using human subjects. Please complete the tutorial and submit your certificate of completion. Also, please write a short paragraph containing any issues you found interesting, points you disagreed with, etc.

(Please note, the tutorial can be completed in stages, provided you make a user name and save your progress.)

3. Read the paper to be discussed next week.

The paper we'll discuss next week is:

Joachims et al.: Accurately Interpreting Clickthrough Data as Implicit Feedback [see also longer journal version]

Here's a primer containing some background information you may find useful.

Just like last week, please include with your submission a short paragraph summary/review of the paper. For instance, you might give your opinions on the paper's findings or methodology, or state what you might have done differently. Was anything confusing? What did you like and dislike about the paper?

Submission guidelines:

Please submit an email to cs303@cs containing the following:

1.     A link to your blog entry.

2.     A short paragraph giving your thoughts on the human subjects clearance, and your completion certificate. (This can be in the form of a forwarded email, screen cap, pdf... whatever is easy)

3.     Your review paragraph of the Joachims paper.