CS 1011/1001 Presentations
Later this term every student will make a short presentation to the
tutorial group. Your tutor will discuss the timing of your
presentation but you should expect it to last 15-20 minutes, and out
of this time you should allow a few minutes at the end for questions.
In order to fit a topic into this period you should select a concise
piece of material and prepare it carefully, allocating an amount of
time to each of the parts of your talk.
During reading week (week 6), students you are expected to write a 1000
word essay on the topic you have chosen for your presentation; this
will be marked by your tutor before your presentation. It is important
to recognise the difference between a written piece of work and a
presentation on the same subject. You will hear more of this in the
CS1011/1001 lectures.
Below there is a list aimed at suggesting the sort of topic that is
suitable for a seminar. Tutors may have ideas of their own and tutees
may well want to create their own topic. If you have previous
experience, eg have written some useful software, or used some unusual
applications package, or have an appropriate computer related interest
or hobby, you may well want to talk about this, but should discuss it
with your tutor. In any case the topic should involve some new reading
or investigation. For the topics below, there is some suggested
reading material. Many of the articles will be available in the CS101
folders held in the Departmental Student Resource Centre (Room LF21),
although these are getting dated and there is often newer information
on the Web.
You may also make use of University libraries to find information on
your chosen topic, e.g. JRUL, the John Rylands University Library.
The World Wide Web is an increasingly useful source of information,
There will certainly be something there if you can find it. The Google search engine at www.google.com is more likely than
most to find the most relevant articles from a keyword search. Most
search engines turn up far too much marginally relevant material to be
very useful. You could also consult the technology pages of broadsheet
newspapers, magazines like New Scientist, Scientific American, and the
general computing mags.
There will be opportunities for discussion in tutorials before the
presentation itself has to be given.
Try to make the level of the presentation suitable for other members
of the tutorial group. In general some people in the group will know
nothing about the topic, so be careful to introduce the topic and set
the scene. State clearly the subject and aim of the presentation. The
aim might be to give an introduction to a subject, in which case you
might state why the subject is important before getting into technical
detail. The aim might be comparative, in which case state clearly what
you are comparing and the criteria you are using in the comparison.
Avoid too much detail in the main part of the presentation. Try to
emphasise the main points you are making or the main concepts you are
trying to explain. At the end of the presentation state some
conclusions which summarise the points you have made.
Other students and the tutor will be expected to ask questions or
comment on the presentation. The aim of this is not to make you feel
bad, but to give you some feedback so you can do it even better next
time.
The choice of topic is important. Those with previous computing experience
are encouraged to choose a technically advanced topic, those with less
experience are advised to choose something more straightforward. You should
discuss your choice with your tutor.
Presentations count 25% towards your CS1011/1001 course unit mark.
Feedback from your tutor and from other members of the group is
intended to help you develop your presentation skills. Hopefully
criticism will be constructive. You will receive written feedback as a
summary record of how your presentation was marked.
The detailed marking scheme will be provided later but the group will
be asked to assess you presentation on organisation, presentation and
technical content. Organisation includes the logical flow of material
presented and suitable length. Presentation includes the verbal
delivery, handling of questions and use of visual material. Technical
content includes the depth and accuracy of the information presented.
The other parts of the CS1011/1001 assessment are: 70% for a 1.5 hour
examination, and 5% for your contribution to tutorials. For those of
you taking CS1001, the other parts are a 1 hour examination (35%), a web-site (35%) plus tutorial contribution (5%).
- The history of computing: Choose a suitable topic, e.g. (1)
Babbage's life, work and engines, (2) the contributions of Alan
Turing or John von Neumann, (3) who was first with the electronic
computer - Manchester, Cambridge, Germany or USA? [Refs: WWW links
from the CS1011 syllabus page, also extensive material at
http://www.computer50.org on Manchester History.]
- What sort of Electronic commerce is likely to be a commercial
success and why. With the rapid commercial development and exploitation
of the World-Wide Web, why do some companies fail.
Are companies such as http://www.amazon.co.ukor http://www.thetrainline.com successful?
(Look at the web
version of this document to see if we have been able to
add additional references)
- Electronic commerce. What infrastructure is needed to support
commercial use of the World-Wide Web. Consider for example the operation
of http://www.amazon.co.ukor http://www.thetrainline.com. (Look at the web
version of this document to see if we have been able to
add additional references)
- Non-photorealistic computer graphics: can computers create images
that look like they were really drawn by humans? Should they?
Refs: lots of links at http://www.realtimerendering.com/.
- Walking with dinosaurs: computer animation in the movies. [Refs:
National Centre for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University
(http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/); Essential Computer Animation, by John
Vince, Springer, 2000, ISBN 1-85233-141-0; Computer Animation, by John
Vince (Addison-Wesley), in our library; computer animation at Ohio State
University (http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~parent/book/preface.html);
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/beasts/].
- Computer-generated images in the movies.
Refs: search the Web! And
try http://www.visualfx.com/milestones.htm.
(added 4/Nov/2002)
oops - this has gone from the web, as it has now been published as part of a book
http://www.kascope.com/cgibook/html/cg101html/cg101index.htm,
but you can still see an archived copy at
http://web.archive.org/web/20010405051024/http://visualfx.com/milestones.htm provided by the Internet Archive
http://web.archive.org
- Virtual Reality and Virtual Environments. [Refs: try the Advanced
Interfaces Group's web pages (aig.cs.man.ac.uk) and follow our links.
Also
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/recveb/ and
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Vis/].
- From Daleks to Honda robots and Sony dogs: the future of
robotics.
References:
* http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/robotics/sites.html
* Ulrich Nehmzow, Mobile Robotics: A Practical Introduction. Springer 2000.
* Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, MIT Press. Conference proceedings,
various years.
- Computer viruses: An introduction to some of the programs involved and
to viral disinfectants. [Refs: start with Scientific American, Nov 1997,
available on-line using a Google search for Computer viruses.]
- How does a CD player select tracks at random? An introduction to random number generators. [Ref: Algorithms, R. Sedgewick, Addison-Wesley 1990, in the Departmental Library or reference copy in Resource Centre.]
- Global Positioning by Satellite. [ Refs: Scientific American Feb 1996 pp32-38
in CS101 folder, various web sites including a good introduction at
http://www.colorado.Edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html.
You can find reference material at http://www.unavco.ucar.edu/ and links from that site]
- Fractals: What they are, what they may be used for (if anything!).
[Ref: Fractals Everywhere,
M. Barnsley, Academic Press, 1989. Available in JRUL
together with other books on the topic.]
- Should an automatic pilot have a manual over-ride? Which is more error-prone, a computer or a person? Issues in Safety-Critical Systems. [Refs: The crisis in software. Scientific American, Sept 1994; The risks of software, Scientific American, Nov 1992;
Ageing airways, Scientific American, May 1994. More technical are the following two articles: C.A.C.M. Vol. 34, No. 2. Feb 1991. and
C.A.C.M. Vol. 33, No. 6. June 1990, both available in the CS101 folder held
in the Resource centre. The `comp.risks' archive at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks or the book
Peter G Neumann `Computer Related Risks' also have some material]
- Can machines think? The potential of Artificial Intelligence.
[Refs: Articles in Scientific American, Jan 1990. Vol 262, No 1 (in Resource Centre) and `The Computer and the Brain', by P. Johnson-Laird. This is
a debating topic - you should present some of the arguments and some of the
achievements of Artificial Intelligence.]
- Women in computing: opportunities and problems. [Refs: For study material there is the Proceedings of the First National
Conference on Women in Computing (Eds Segal, Tregear and Newton), and also
Women into Computing:
Selected Papers, 1988-1990, Lovegrove and Segal (Eds), 1991. Springer
Workshops in Computing. ISBN 3-540-19648-X. Try also searching under
`women' and `technology' in JRUL]
- Computers in education: Can we learn anything from computers, except
computing? Can we even learn computing from computers? [Refs: The role of
computer based learning in the teaching of programming, Marie Owens, Proc. of
Developments in the Teaching of Computer Science, Kent University.
The Daily Telegraph, 21 Sept 1994 (in Dept Resource Centre CS101 folders). Also the
book: Hypermedia in the Humanities, Deegan, Timbrell and Warren, Oxford University. See also `Learner Centered Design' in CACM Vol 39 No 4,
April 1996 pp 24-49]
- From doctors' surgery to computerised axial tomography:
Topics in Computers in Medicine, either managerial or clinical.
[Refs: You will need to search for new articles, the following are too old:
British Computer Society Computer Bulletin Vol 5 Part 3 July 1993
(in CS101 articles from the Resource centre), Blum B.I. (ed),
Information Systems for Patient Care. Springer Verlag,
1984 in libraries]
- Cryptology and computer security. There is a brief introduction
in Scientific American December 1995 pp70-73 called `Confidential
Communication in the Internet (Copies in CS101 folders in Resource Centre).
This is a large topic, choose one item, for example
- Pretty Good Privacy. Do a web search for PGP
- An encryption algorithm. [Refs: General books on algorithms,
eg Algorithms, R. Sedgewick, Addison-Wesley 1990, in the Libraries
or Resource Centre.]
- The Clipper chip [Refs: New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1994 (available from the
CS101 articles in the Resource Centre). Also articles from the electronic `comp.risks' newsgroup about an American government proposal for supposedly secure telephone
communications. The complete risks archive in the UK is at
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks.:
The articles are also on-line in the directory $CS1011/clipper,
they get quite technical at times. There is a lot more about this and related social and legal issues on the web; see for example
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/ or http://www.eff.org/.]
A summary of some of the main arguments from comp.risks are in
Peter G Neumann `Computer Related Risks' in JRUL.
- Future directions in Computing. Increasing Computer power and how
to use it. [Ref:
Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry, Scientific American
January 1996 pp 40-46, available in the CS101 folders held
in the Departmental Resource Centre.]
- Client-Server Computing. [Ref: Client-Server Computing, Alok Sinha,
C.A.C.M. Vol. 35, No. 7, July 1992; a fairly technical article available
in the CS101 folder held in the Resource centre, you need other and newer
references from the Web, e.g. Datamation article October 1995.]
- Other topics for which you would need to seek references:
- Computer games: Not the rules but the industry, its finances, location
and the (purported) effect of computer games on the younger generation.
- Can computers make music? Topics in Computer Music.
- Optical computers. (For articles on future optical storage see Scientific American
November 1995 pp52-58, July 1996 pp28-37 in CS101 folder in Resource Centre).
CS 1011/1001 Presentations
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