Honors Project
CSE 260, Spring 2024
Goals: The main goals of the honors project are:
• Allow honors students an opportunity for in-depth study and research on a
topic of personal interest related to discrete mathematics in computer
science.
• Provide experience in locating and reading technical information on the topic
• Provide experience in self-directing a project
• Provide practice at presenting technical information (orally and written)
• Provide a meaningful culminating experience for the course
Overview: You will select a topic related to some use of discrete mathematics in
computer science. We have included a list of topic suggestions at the end of this
document, but you are free to choose a topic outside of this list. The topic should
be something you are interested in learning about. You will perform a literature
search to find information about your topic. After synthesizing and analyzing the
information, you will prepare a scholarly technical report to turn in and give a 15-
minute (virtual) oral presentation on your topic to the class.
Requirements: To receive honors credit for this assignment, you must receive a
3.5 or higher in the course (a College of Engineering requirement) and receive a
3.0 or higher on the assignment; you must be enrolled in the MSU Honors College;
and the following detailed milestones must be met:
• Choose a topic and locate at least three good sources of information about the
topic. Your sources may include scientific/technical books, articles, manuals,
blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. However, your bibliography should not rely solely
on websites. It must contain some documents. If generative AI is used to assist
the preparation of the report, the use must be documented in the report.
• Due on or before Friday Feb 23: A one-page, single-spaced project proposal.
The proposal should be clearly written and in a technical style. It must include
the following:
a. A brief description of the chosen area of study.
b. A statement of the specific goals of the project. (What do you hope to
accomplish? What questions will you answer? What will you investigate?)
c. An explanation of why the topic is appropriate, given your background and
interests. (Do not propose a topic that you are already very familiar with;
propose something that interests you and that you do not already know.)
d. Brief descriptions (2-3 sentences) of your preliminary references (which
may or may not wind up in your final bibliography).• Due on or before Apr 14: Research the topic and write a 5-6 page single-
spaced report describing the results of your research. The report must show
evidence of original thought—that is, it must not just summarize what you read
elsewhere, but must include something that you have “discovered” through
your investigation. For example, you might try using a technique on an
example of your own and illustrate the conclusions you draw using it; compare
two systems for solving some problem, pointing our what you consider relative
strengths and weaknesses of each; use a tool that automates a technique and
give some conclusions from that experience; write a program to automate some
part of a solution, etc. Generally, we expect some discussion of both strengths
and limitations of a method or tool that you study. The report should be
professionally written. It will include at least the following:
a. Abstract – provide a short, self-contained description of the project.
b. Introduction – provide a short introduction to your topic, explaining your
goals for the project and why the topic is interesting and/or useful; and
outline what you will do in the balance of the report.
c. Background – introduce any new definitions, notation, or other background
information necessary for understanding the rest of the paper. (You do not
need to introduce notation or background that a student who took CSE 260
should already have.)
d. Main Section(s) – Describe the heart of your project. What did you learn?
What theorems did you prove or results did you discover? What examples
did you find/invent? As noted above, you must show evidence of original
thought. To do so, you must clearly indicate what is original and what was
found in references. You can (and should) use references to guide your
write-ups of the examples, theorems, and proofs, but you must explain the
details in your own words and you must cite your references.
e. Conclusions – Summarize your conclusions, the new knowledge your
project produced, and why your project is interesting.
f. Bibliography.
• Note: It should not be AI-generated. We will check potential plagiarism on
iThenticate.com
Project ideas:
• Semantics of programming languages based on predicate logic (axiomatic
semantics), or functions (denotational semantics), or inference rules
(operational semantics).
• Symbolic execution of programs.
• Theorem proving in AI, or program analysis, or computer security, or …
• Temporal logic.
• Finite state automata in specifying behavior of systems, or software design,
or compiler implementation and design, or protocol design and
implementation, or modeling and analysis of concurrency, …
• Graphs and graph algorithms in computer graphics, or learning, or
knowledge representation, or networking, or program analysis, or …• Algorithm complexity
• Turing machines and computability
• Error-control codes
• Cryptosystems/hash functions
• Game theory
• Path planning
I have attached a copy of the proposal I want to work on so you just have to proceed directly into the research project.
