Term paper
Submit your text for the final Term Paper, on your own page of the class wiki, by clicking the link for the Term paper that was created at the time you created the Term paper proposal.
Each student must submit his or her own term paper, even if the ideas were discussed by members of a team.
Visit Editing help for help with writing on the wiki.
Be sure to complete the term paper, then fill out the rubric and submit it at the same time.
The final version of your term paper is worth up to 44 points towards the 50 total points for the term paper.
You may not obtain the program files for a model that you have proposed to reconstruct from another source (e.g., from the author of the published paper), and run them with parameter changes, and hand in the results as your own work. The point of the project during the second half of the semester is for you to build the model yourself. It is fine to obtain model files to compare them to your own model, of course; you should report these comparisons as part of your term paper if you do this.
The work you present for the final term paper must be your own. Handing in a paper that was done for another class (even if the class is being taken concurrently), reproducing text and/or equations from a web site or a paper without proper attribution (plagiarism), or presenting work that was done by another (e.g., friend, roommate, faculty member, or other member of the class) as your own is a violation of academic integrity.
It is important to understand that taking other people's ideas and/or words without proper attribution is a failure to follow correct academic standards, and will be penalized. Please see the rules for Academic Integrity on the Course policies page.
The final rubrics for the term paper incorporate all the rubrics for each of the four previous benchmarks (Introduction, Model Description, Results and Discussion).
To each of these rubrics, we will also add evaluation questions about the model extension.
We will also consider the following overall rubric in assigning a final grade to the term paper:
- How well was the model replicated? This varies from full replication, to partial replication, limited replication, to no replication.
- Based on the term paper, how well did you understand the material? This varies from excellent, to very good, good, fair, or poor.
- How well written is the term paper? This varies from excellent, to very good, good, fair or poor.
- What kind of model extension did you do? The difficulty of the extension that you undertook may affect the credit we award for the extension. This can range from no extension, to parameter variations, input variations, changes in the model form, to mathematical analysis (e.g., a bifurcation analysis).
- How good was the extension? This varies from excellent, to very good, good, fair or poor.
If the extension to the model is missing, a student is likely to lose a full letter grade.
Acceptance of previous benchmarks only indicates that each section is adequate; it does not necessarily imply that the section is very good or excellent, and additional work may be necessary to obtain a grade of A or even B on the term paper. Improving your initial submissions based on the comments of the instructors and of your fellow students may be very important for obtaining a better grade.
Here is a list of the minimum changes that you will need to make to your benchmarks for the final term paper; this list is not comprehensive:
- In your Introduction, you must provide a brief overview of the Results that you have obtained, including a brief description of the model extension.
- In your Model Description, you must add additional details to describe how you extended the model.
- In your Results, you present the results you obtained from extending the model.
- In your Discussion, you should discuss what you will do next (future work), based on your Results, which should include your model extension.
Do not forget to include your Mathematica files with your term paper. Follow this link for help.
Here are exemplary Term Papers that can help guide you as you write your own:
