By default, independent studies with me will have the following requirements.

Outcomes

At the beginning of the semester, we will identify a concrete outcome you will be aiming for. While this can be as simple as “I’ll read to chapter 5 in book X and do all the practice problems”, it will likely be much more complicated and subject to minor shifts throughout the term. That’s fine. But, I still want you to think carefully about what you want from the independent study and try to set a concrete goal for yourself. You will also be expected to generate a final presentation of some sort that (by default) will be shared publicly. This will give you practice with organizing your thoughts and sharing them that will benefit you in job interviews, professional networking, conferences, and much beyond.

Meetings

We will meet bi-weekly to discuss your progress toward your goal(s). You will give a short explanation of the work you have done, describe any difficulties you’ve encountered, and you should leave with a concrete set of actions to take before our next meeting. In preparation for this meeting you should write up a short reflection (it can even just be bullet points) to help structure your thoughts.

At three separate points in the term we will meet individually to discuss your progress. These will be during the first two weeks, to set your goals; after the midterm break, to check in on progress and make any plan adjustments necessary; and the week before the last week of classes, to discuss how things went. You will write a reflection in advance of these meetings that you share with me.

Past Topics

If you’re thinking about doing an independent study with me but not sure what to do, here is a (non-exhaustive) list of topics students have done in the past:

• Global history of mathematics
• Limits of using AI for software localization
• Building a small language model to be used in an AI Fundamentals course
• Equity in patent prosecution
• Whether transformer models can “learn” regular or context-free grammars
• How to teach quantum computing to a broad audience

Other Policies

All of my usual policies will apply in independent studies as well. You can see these here.