T-61.184 Speech Recognition and Language Modeling: From Theory to Practice

Course Project Details

The goals of the projects are two-fold: (1) to gain hands-on or in-depth experience with a topic in speech recognition and/or statistical language modeling and (2) practice writing skills needed as a graduate student.  There are 2 types of projects that you can select based on your goals in the class (Hands-on Project or Survey Project):

1. Hands-on Project:  A hands-on project can be in a group ranging from 1 to 3 people.  Multidisciplinary groups (groups of students from differing departments is encouraged, but not required).  It is expected that project groups will determine an area of interest and work towards developing workable software to meet the project goals.  Here is what is expected:

Midterm: 2-page (4 pages maximum) paper in conference style format (style sheets for MSWord and Latex):

• Provide a clear and concise description of the project and problem statement.
• Provide a background literature review for your project area.  Please cite references and describe background to your problem.  Answer background questions such as: “what approaches have other people taken to solve this problem?” “What algorithms are typically used”?
• Provide a plan for how you will address your project problem.  What software will you need?  What software can you obtain from open source?  What software will you need to write?
• Clearly state the objectives of the project that will be achieved by the end of the term.  What, if any, experiments will you perform?  Also, clearly state who in your group will work on each aspect of the project.  Justify the need for the size of the group you have selected.

Final:  4-page paper (6-pages maximum) in conference style format (style sheets for MSWord and Latex):

2. Survey Project:  Survey projects involve obtaining a deeper understanding of some aspect of speech recognition and/or statistical language modeling.  Survey projects involve in-depth reading of the literature in your topic area and require an involved written paper.  At the end of the survey project, you will demonstrate expertise in this area.  It is not expected that you will write software for this type of project.  Although illustrations used in your final oral presentation will be helpful.  Only individual surveys are allowed (no group work).  Survey projects should try to understand the broad area of your chosen topic and provide a comprehensive review of techniques and algorithms used by experts in the field.  Here is what is expected:

Midterm: 3-page paper in conference style format (style sheets for MS Word and Latex):

• Provide a clear and concise description of the topic area you are investigating. 
• Describe the research challenges in your topic area.  Why is this a hard problem?
• Begin to summarize methods that are in use in the field for your topic area.
• Explain one approach to the topic-area problem in detail. 
• Cites references to related work.

• Restate the project goals and objectives
• Clearly state your topic area and research challenges in that area
• Provide in-depth summary of major techniques for this area that you read about and form a critical analysis of these techniques.  What are the pros and cons of each method you reviewed?  Is there clearly a better approach?  What performances can be expected from each technique examined?
• Cites references along the way
• In –class 5-10 minute oral presentation of your survey area.

Important Dates

• By Monday, October 18, 2004:  Decide whether or not you will do a hands-on project or survey project.  Determine your project group (if you are in a hands-on project only).   Write an abstract (250 words max) describing your project and list your group members.  Email this to me (pellom@cslr.colorado.edu) via email in plain ASCII text.  This abstract, once approved, will be posted to the course website.Switching from hands-on to survey or from survey to hands-on project will not be allowed after this date unless there are extreme and unforeseeable circumstances.

• Wednesday, October 27, 2004:  Midterm materials due.

• November 29th, 2004:  In class project presentations.  Final papers due by 5pm on Wednesday, December 8^th.

Working in Groups

Use of Open Source Software

 You may use any available resources for your class project.  Be creative and resourceful.  However, please document in your project what software tools you used or obtained from the Internet compared to those tools that you wrote or authored on your own.  If you did not write the software you used for some part of the project, provide a description of how this module is implemented.