CS 598: Hot Topics in Data Management

Time: 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM (Tue/Thu)
Location: 1310 Digital Computer Laboratory (Google Map)
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Instructor: Yongjoo Park (https://yongjoopark.com):

TA 1: Hanxi Fang (hanxif2@illinois.edu)

TA 2: Talika Gupta (talikag2@illinois.edu)

Prerequisites

Class Structure

Your main workload as a student will be

[Slides in Google Drive]     Accessible to all Illinois people; Permission denied? See this page.


Weekly Schedule

Paper links are included.


Evaluation

Review Carefully: Most students receive full scores in Quizzes and MPs. Midterms and the Research project scores vary more.

Overview

Regular Components

Extra Credits

Evaluating Other Student Presentations (5%)

There are 23 student presentation slots (11 before Midterm 1 and 12 after). For each presentation, you should provide peer evaluation using a Likert scale between 1 and 5. To receive full credit (5%), you must submit evaluations for at least 50% of the presentations (e.g., 50 if there are 100 presentations in total). If you submit less, you will receive partial credit (e.g., if you submit 25 evaluations among 100 total presentations, you will receive 25/50*5% = 2.5%).

Warning: If you submit constant scores (e.g., 5/5 for every presentation), it will be considered as “no submission” and your Participation score may get penalized.

[Presentation Evaluation Form]

Quizzes (11%)

In the middle of each class, there will be a short quiz. You will receive a full 11% by scoring 50/100 in the quiz portion. Specifically, to calculate the final score, your individual quiz scores will be summed and normalized to have a max 100 points (which is called a raw score); then, the final score will be calculated as:

(final quiz score; max 100) = min(raw score / 50 * 100, 100)

The above formula is already designed to accommodate expected/unexpected absences (e.g., mild cold, too busy for other courses, family travel, attending conferences, interviews). No exceptions will be given. The first two quizzes (for the first week) are sample quizzes; thus, they do not count toward the total.

Quiz Evaluation: You can receive up to two points in each quiz. If you submit an answer (in class), you will get one point always (even though your answer is wrong). If your answer is correct, you will receive one additional point, thereby two points in total for that quiz.

Quizzes are in-person only. You must not take the quiz outside the class. If found, you will receive a significant penalty.

Midterms (40%: 20% + 20%)

We have two midterms. Exam questions are slighly advanced versions of the quizzes. Online make-up exams are offered two days after each exam day with a 10% relative point reduction (thus, perfect answers will receive 90 out of 100, if the total is 100). The point reduction may be removed if the reason is something serious and unavoidable (e.g., tragic events, serious illness).

Your midterm scores will be released within one week. This delay is to accomodate the students who may be taking online exams.

Projects (40%): three MPs and one research project

Four students will form a group for the project. The goal of the projects is to learn well-known (modern) systems in the area of large-scale data management. Please read the following document to learn more about what tasks will be accomplished.

Project Document Placeholder

Late submissions will receive a 20% point reduction every day. For example, if you submit within the first day after the deadline, you will receive up to 80/100. After five days, you will receive 0 points. We will check both report submission times (if required) and the last timestamps of code changes (e.g., on GitHub).

Participation (4%)

Your in-class participation will be evaluated based on your participation in questions/discussions. If you ask questions or participate in discussions either in class or online, claim your contribution using this Google Form within two days of the class. You should not falsely claim your contribution (e.g., by submitting forms without actually asking questions), which will be in violation of the code.

Extra Credit: Student Presentation (4% + 1%)

Note: this extra credit is often critical in receiving A (or A-), but there are only limited slots.

Presentation Scores (4%)

You will receive extra credit based on the peer evaluations by other students. To ensure most students receive high-enough scores, the following (rather complex) scheme will be used.

(your presentation score; max 100) = \sum_i^N (normalized score from student-i) / N

where (normalized score from student-i) is obtained by normalizing all the scores submitted by student-i to have mean 93 and standard deviation 5. That is, even if student-i submits relatively bad scores (say 2/5 on average), his/her negative scores do not affect your overall score since those scores will be anyway normalized to have the same mean and standard deviation. The same logic applies to another student (say student-j) who tends to submit higher scores (say 4/5 on average) since his/her scores will also be normalized to have the same mean and standard deviation.

Your presentation scores will only be released almost at end of the semester due to normalization process.

Early-bird Bonus (1%)

To encourage presenting papers we cover earlier weeks of this course, we will give an additional bonus by scaling up your “presentation score” (up to 20%). That is, if you present in the second week (Lecture No 4), scaling factor 1.2 will be applied to your “presentation score”, making your final score “presentation score” * 1.2. The scaling ratio decreases over time. For more details, please see this Presentation Schedule (to view this document, you must be logged in using an Illinois account).


Other Materials

Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure

Anti Racism and Inclusivity Statement

Accessibility and Accommodations

Religious Observations

Sexual Misconduct Reporting Obligations

Statement on CS CARES and CS Values and Code of Conduct

All members of the Illinois Computer Science department - faculty, staff, and students - are expected to adhere to the CS Values and Code of Conduct. The CS CARES Committee is available to serve as a resource to help people who are concerned about or experience a potential violation of the Code. If you experience such issues, please contact the CS CARES Committee. The instructors of this course are also available for issues related to this class.