- Your report should be free of (mathematical and spelling) typos.
- References should be complete. In particular, enough information should be given so that a reader may easily retrieve the article or book from the library or from a publisher’s website.
- Sentences should be complete, grammatically correct, and they should make sense.
- Your discussion should be supported by figures or tables, whenever needed.
- Your report should be self-contained. It should not be an explanation of someone else’s paper, but rather a description, in your own words, of a particular modeling problem and of how it can be solved or addressed.
- Your report should be readable by your peers. In particular, complex calculations should be worked out; statements that are not immediately obvious should be properly justified; model equations should be derived and justified, unless we already discussed them in class (see also the “reasoning” section below).
This part of the grade is based on the amount of work you put into the project. The following considerations are taken into account.
- Amount of work done.
- Difficulty of the project.
- Number of team members.
- Resourcefulness and creativity of the team members.
This part of the grade judges how well you understand the problem and its solution. For instance, if statements or calculations are reproduced from an article with little explanation or justification, this is an indication that you did not spend the time to really understand what was done.
As a general rule, you should be able to explain any statement, calculation or reasoning that appears in your report to any of your peers, and this level of understanding should be reflected in what you write.
You should also think about objections or questions that other people may have about the hypotheses or statements that you make, and address them. In other words, enough (but not irrelevant) information should be given to make it clear to the reader that you know what you are talking about and are ready to stand by it.