Paper 1 Homework

Note

A video showing you how to get started on the paper is available on the class YouTube account.

In this homework you will write a short paper on one of the technologies that was assigned to you in the TechList homework. In the process, you will learn how to write a basic LaTeX document. LaTeX is a document type setting environment used for writing scientific papers in many fields, and it is what we will use to write all papers in the class. Even if you are not planning to work in academia, LaTeX is a very powerful tool and can be useful for typesetting other types of documents, such as magazine articles, CVs, resumes, books and so on.

Detailed instructions on the steps for obtaining the template and compiling it can be found in the homework submission repository at: https://github.com/cloudmesh/sp17-i524

Writing the Paper

For the actual content of the paper, you need to write a two page overview of one of the technologies assigned to you in the TechList assignment. The two pages refer to the amount of text you should write; references, figures and other similar items are not included. Your intended audience should be someone who might not have specific technical background in the area of the technology, but who is a rigorous thinker and whose problem domain might benefit from it. Thus, the paper should provide context about the technology such as:

  • Summarize the technology briefly
  • What kind of problems has it been applied to successfully?
  • What kind of infrastructure does it need?
  • How does this technology relate to big data?
  • What major big data projects have used this technology?
  • If I were to be new to the technology, what resources exist to learn about it?
  • What is the status and popularity of the tool? Provide evidence, do not copy advertisement terms from the project..
  • What other things are important that you came across?
  • What are alternatives and how does the technology compare to them in terms of features, support, performance, etc.
  • Make sure you have sufficient references (You need at least one, but as you may point to projects using the technology and learning material you probably have more, determine the most important once).

Document Structure

Your paper should have an introduction and a conclusion, and use sections in the middle portion as needed to be easy to understand.

Writing Style

Treat this as a scientific paper, so you should aim to inform and give a well-rounded overview of the subject matter. Do not use superlatives or adjectives that are more appropriate for an advertisement, such as very, best, cutting-edge, etc.

In addition, non-trivial statements of fact or quantitative statements should be supported by other parts of your paper or by citations. For example, if you are asserting that tech A has more features than tech B, you can support this by including a table of features that you create or citing a paper that compared these technologies.

For your citations, use the original source of a finding whenever possible. That is, if paper A states something and cites paper B as a source, and paper B cites paper C for the same claim, you need to look at paper C to make sure the claim is accurate and cite that paper.

Submission

Submission of this assignment will be in Github as outlined above. Please, start early and raise any questions about the above process on Piazza and in the online office hours. Depending on how students are doing and what issues they are encountering, we will provide further resources to help you be successful in this assignment.