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CS 1011/1001 Presentations

Guidance on the presentation

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.

Presentation Assessment

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%).

Presentation topics

  1. 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.]

  2. 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)

  3. 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)

  4. 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/.

  5. 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/].

  6. 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

  7. 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/].

  8. 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.

  9. 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.]

  10. 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.]

  11. 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]

  12. 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.]

  13. 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]

  14. 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.]

  15. 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]

  16. 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]

  17. 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]

  18. 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
  19. 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.]

  20. 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.]

  21. Other topics for which you would need to seek references:

About this document ...

CS 1011/1001 Presentations

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Pete Jinks 2002-11-04