Checkpoints and Final Submission on CS 412

Checkpoint 1: Getting Started and Project Selection

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Checkpoint 1: Getting Started and Project Selection

Goal: Set up your team repository, verify that every team member can work with it, and provide the information needed for project assignment.

Getting Started

Before completing the Checkpoint 1 requirements, review the Project Repository and Infrastructure page. It explains how to create your team repository through Classroom 50, clone it, and understand the organization of the provided course infrastructure and student implementation files.

Checkpoint 4: Experimental Investigation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Checkpoint 4: Experimental Investigation

Goal: Use the completed algorithms and bound to determine where the methods are practical, how solution quality changes when exact computation is no longer available, and what characteristics of an instance affect algorithm behavior.

Checkpoint 4 shifts the emphasis from implementation to controlled experimental investigation. The course provides the required benchmark collections and experiment-running infrastructure. You are not required to write a benchmark harness or create the required benchmark universe yourself.

Approved Add-ons and Extensions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Approved Add-ons and Extensions

Optional add-ons allow a team to pursue an idea beyond the core requirements without creating another checkpoint or an alternate path around required work. Examples include a polynomial-time special case, a stronger exact method, an additional heuristic, adversarial-instance generation, parameter-sensitivity analysis, a reduction experiment, a larger benchmark universe, or parallel benchmark execution.

A team that wants to pursue an add-on should propose it no later than the Checkpoint 3 submission. The proposal should identify what will be built or investigated, how success will be evaluated, and how the work complements the required project. The instructor must approve the scope before the team treats it as part of the project plan.

Final Project Submission

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Final Project Submission

The final project consists of the complete repository, a concise report, a class presentation, and peer questions.

Complete repository.

The repository should contain the final implementations, tests, experimental scripts, results, checkpoint reports, and presentation materials. Someone outside your team should be able to clone the repository and reproduce the important results by following the instructions in README.md. The final Gradescope assessment will perform a cumulative validation of the required repository structure and algorithm interfaces.

Checkpoint 2: Foundation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

← Checkpoint 1 All Checkpoints Checkpoint 3 →

Checkpoint 2: Foundation

Goal: Understand the theoretical and computational structure of your problem and establish a trustworthy exhaustive baseline whose search space is measurable.

Checkpoint 2 has two parts: Build and Validate the Baseline and Analyze and Plan. The written analysis produced in Part B belongs in reports/checkpoint2.pdf Organize the report using clearly labeled sections corresponding to the six analysis topics in Part B.

Checkpoint 3: Improved Algorithms

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

← Checkpoint 2 All Checkpoints Checkpoint 4 →

Checkpoint 3: Improved Algorithms

Goal: Move beyond complete-candidate enumeration by implementing a more selective exact algorithm, developing a polynomial-time method for bounding the optimal solution value, and implementing the first scalable heuristic.

Checkpoint 2 established an exhaustive baseline by generating complete candidate solutions before testing them. In Checkpoint 3, you will use information about partial solutions or subproblems to fail early and avoid generating large portions of that candidate space. The improved algorithm must remain exact—that is, it must still return an optimal solution.