Welcome to CS 395/495Measurement and
Analysis of Online Social Networks
What is this class about? (1)
• Goal: to help you understand online social networks
– How they create?
– What are their properties?
– How can they be used to design better Internet protocols, i.e., routing?
– How can their properties help us design better ad targeting, search, or privacy-preserving algorithms?
– Are social networks really as relevant or not?
What is this class about? (2)
• Goal: to help you learn how to do the networking research
– Read research papers
– Argue and convey your ideas
– Execute a research project
– Write a research paper
– Test your ability to generate research ideas
– Learn about hot topics in the area of online social networking
Typical Path
• Pick a research topic (e.g., security, measurements, web search, etc.)
• Learn as much as you can about the topic (read papers)
• Generate a research idea (something that nobody else did before)
• Execute your idea (e.g., modeling, simulations, implementation, measurements)
• Write a paper and submit to a conference/journal
• Present the paper at a conference
Typical Problems
• You may know a topic that you are interested in
• Yet, you don’t know the related work
• It is sometimes hard to generate an idea, even if you know the related work
• By the time you come up with an idea, several quarters may pass (it took me 2 years!)
How to do it all?
• Projects:
– I’ll provide you with a well-defined, yet open, research projects
– The goal is to generate quality networking research
• Classes:
– Discuss various research topics
– Learn how to read papers
• Final:
– Generate a research idea (something that nobody else did before), related to the topics explored in the class
Process
• Aaron, Ionut, and Yong will be project leaders
• Each group will consist of 1 or 2 students (plus the leader)
• More about project topics – at the end of the class
Overview
• Administrative stuff
• Classes:
– Reading papers
– Paper reviews
– Presentations/debating
– Research ideas
• Projects:
– Topics
• Seminar class: paper reading + a big project
– Each class a new paper
– More on the class structure later
• Aleksandar Kuzmanovic ([email protected]),
Office Hours: by appointment
• TA: no TA
Course Overview & Stuff
Prerequisites and Course Materials
• Recommended: CS340 (Intro to computer networking)
• Highly Recommended: programming, OS or having some familiarity with Unix systems programming
• No required textbook – paper reading!
Grading• No exams for this class
• Class: 25%– Paper reading summary 7%
– In class paper presentation and debating 10%
– Class participation and discussion (when you are not directly debating) 8%
• Project 55% – Proposal 5% (up to 1 page)
– Midterm presentation 5% (up to 5 pages)
– Project presentation 15%
– Final report, 10 pages, 30%
• Research idea 20%– Required, 3 pages
Communication and Policies• Web page:
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~akuzma/classes/CS495-s09/
• Group e-mail [email protected]
• Send emails to instructor for questions inappropriate in newsgroup
• Paper reading summary is due by 3pm on Mon and Wed
– You can miss one paper summary without any negative points
Overview
• Administrative stuff
• Classes:
– Topics
– Paper readings and reviews
– Presentations/debating
– Research ideas
• Projects:
– Topics
• Online Social Networks
– Blogs, forums, instant messengers…
– How does information propagate in these networks?
– What properties do these networks have?
– Behavioral advertising
– Social mobility
– Privacy and security
Course Topics
Reading papers
• Why read?
• Decide what to read
• Reading for breadth: build a framework
• Reading in depth: Challenge what you read
– if you will lead a debate
Reviews
• Should… – Point out the paper's contributions, strengths as well as
weaknesses.
• Think in terms of what makes good research?
• What qualities make a good paper?
• What are the potential future impacts of the work?
• Note that there is no right or wrong answer to these questions
• A review's quality will mainly depend on its thoughtfulness.
• Restating the abstract/conclusion of the paper will not earn a top grade.
Writing Reviews (2)• Write a very brief summary of each paper, to be
emailed to me before the class (.txt please)
• Summary should include:
– Paper title and its author(s)
– A short paragraph summary (what is this paper about?)
– A paragraph of the most significant new insight(s) you took away from the paper (what is good? what is the contribution?)
– A paragraph of the one or two most significant flaw(s) of the paper (what is bad?)
– Explain what reference would you read next and why
– Give a grade to the paper (1-5)
Overview
• Administrative stuff
• Classes:
– Topics
– Paper readings and reviews
– Presentations/debating
– Research idea
• Projects:
– Topics
Defense (1)
• 30 minutes; should present as if it were his/her own
• The point is to make a compelling case why the contribution is significant.
• the context of the contribution,
• prior work,
– If an older paper: how the work has influenced the research community or industry's directions (impact)
– If newer paper: arguments for the potential impact
Defense (2)
– should go well beyond a paper "summary“
– The defense should not critique the work other than to try to pre-empt attacks from the offense (e.g., by explicitly limiting the scope of the contribution).
– The defense should also try to look up related work to support their case
Offense (1)
• 20 minutes;
• Should critique the work, and make a case for – missing links, unaddressed issues, lack of impact,
inappropriateness of the problem formulation, etc.
• The more insightful and less obvious the criticisms the better
• While the offense should prepare remarks in advance, they should also react to the points made by the defense.
• Hint: The offense should also try to look up related work to support their case
Offense (2)
• The defense and offense will be allowed follow up arguments
• The class will question either side either for clarifications or to add to the discussions and controversy and make their own points on either side.
• Use Powerpoint (feel free to use existing presentations from the Web)
Overview
• Administrative stuff
• Classes:
– Topics
– Paper readings and reviews
– Presentations/debating
– Research ideas
• Projects:
– Topics
Research Idea (1)
• At the end of semester, you should hand in a research proposal
• 3 pages including references
• Something that nobody else did before
– What would you do?
– How would you do it?
Research idea (2)
• Writing the research-idea documents:
– What is the main idea?
– Why is it important/interesting?
– What is the related work?
– What would you actually do?
• How would you execute the idea:
– Modeling, simulations, experiments?
– What is the expected outcome?
Overview
• Administrative stuff
• Classes:
– Topics
– Paper readings and reviews
– Presentations/debating
– Research idea
• Projects:
– Topics
Timetable
• Week 1 (Monday 3/30) Project presentations by group leaders
• Week 2 (Monday 4/6) Form groups of 2, choose a topic for your project, and meet with the project leader.
• Week 3 (Monday 4/13) Write an introduction describing the problem and how you plan to approach it (what will you actually do?). Include motivation (why does the problem matter?) and related work (what have others already done about it?). 2 pages total.
• Week 6 (Monday 5/4) Midterm presentation. Update your paper to include your preliminary results. 5 pages total.
• Week 10 (Mon 6/1 and Wed 6/3): Presentations by all groups.
• Week 11 (Friday 6/12) Turn in your completed paper. 10 pages total.
