Seminar "Selected Topics in Human Language Technology and Pattern Recognition"

In the summer term 2014 the Lehrstuhl für Informatik 6 will host a seminar entitled "Selected Topics in Human Language Technology and Pattern Recognition".

Registration for the seminar

Registration for the seminar is only possible online via the registration page provided by the Computer Science Department.

Prerequisites for participation in the seminar

Bachelor students: Einführung in das wissenschaftliche Arbeiten (Proseminar)
Master students: Bachelor degree
Diploma students: Vordiplom
Attendance of at least one of the lectures Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks, Introduction to Statistical Classification, Automatic Speech Recognition, or Statistical Methods in Natural Language Processing, or evidence of equivalent knowledge.
For successful participants of the above lectures, the possibility of a seminar talk is guaranteed.

Seminar format and important dates

UPDATE: Prof. Ney will be on leave during the lecture period, therefore the seminar needs to take place in block mode during the first full week of August, i.e. around August 4-8, 2014. Details will be announced in the L2P.

Proposals: initial proposals (report's content page) have to be submitted by email to your supervisors by May 2, 2014. At this time participants must arrange an appointment with the individual supervisor.
Article: must be submitted at least 1 month prior to the trial presentation date, but not later than June 15, 2014 to the individual supervisor in electronic form (PDF).
Presentation slides: must be submitted at least 1 week prior to the trial presentation date to the individual supervisor in electronic form (PDF).
Trial presentations: at least 2 weeks prior to the actual presentation date. Please refer to your individual supervisor to schedule your trial presentation.
Seminar presentations:As opposed to what was discussed during the kick-off meeting, due to Prof. Ney being on leave during the lecture period, the seminar needs to take place in block mode, most probably in the first full week of August, i.e. around August 4-8, 2014.
Final (corrected) articles and presentation slides: must be submitted 4 weeks after the presentation date at the latest to the individual supervisor in electronic form (PDF).
Compulsory attendance: in order to receive a certificate participants must attend all presentation sessions.
Ethical Guidelines:The Computer Science Department of RWTH Aachen University has adopted ethical guidelines for the authoring of academic work such as seminar reports. Each student has to comply with these guidelines. In this regard, you, as a seminar attendant, have to sign a declaration of compliance, in which you assert that your work complies with the guidelines, that all references used are properly cited, and that the report was done autonomously by yourself. We ask you do download the guidelines and submit the declaration together with your seminar report and talk to your individual supervisor. You also find a German version of the guidelines and a German version of the declaration you may use as well.

Note: failure to meet deadlines, absence without permission from compulsory sessions (presentations and preliminary meeting as announced by email to each participating student), or dropping out of the seminar after more than 3 weeks after the kick-off meeting (i.e. by March 27, 2014) results in the grade 5.0/not appeared.

Topics, relevant references and participants

The specific topics of the seminar can be found below and are introduced and distributed during the preparatory meeting in the seminar room at the Lehrstuhl für Informatik 6.

The following books will serve as initial references for this seminar:

C.M. Bishop: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, Springer, 2007.
R.O. Duda, P.E. Hart, D.G. Stork: Pattern Classification, John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
D.A. Forsyth, J. Ponce: Computer Vision: A Modern Approach, Prentice-Hall, 2003.
D.A. Forsyth, J. Ponce: Computer Vision: A Modern Approach, (Second edition), Pearson Education Inc., 2012.
R. Szeliski, Computer Vision, Algorithms and Applications, Springer, 2011
L.R. Rabiner, B,-H. Juang: Fundamentals of Speech Recognition, Prentice-Hall, 1993.

List of seminar topics:

Linear Models for Classification (NN; Supervisor: Patrick Dötsch)
Initial reference(s): Bishop: Sec. 4; Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 5
Non-Parametric Techniques (NN; Supervisor: Patrick Dötsch)
Initial reference(s): Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 4
Introduction to Neural Networks (Ruppert; Supervisor: Simon Wiesler)
Initial reference(s): Bishop: Sec. 5; Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 6
Stochastic Methods (Andelefski; Supervisor: Tamer Alkhouli)
Initial reference(s): Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 7
Sparse Kernel Machines (incl. SVM) (NN; Supervisor: Simon Wiesler)
Initial reference(s): Bishop: Sec. 7
Introduction to Log-Linear Modeling (NN; Supervisor: Simon Wiesler)
Initial reference(s): Bishop: Sec. 8
Maximum Likelihood, Mixture Models, and EM (NN; Supervisor: Tamer Alkhouli)
Initial reference(s): Bishop: Sec. 9; Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 3 without Subsec. 3.10
Hidden Markov Models (NN; Supervisor: Tamer Alkhouli)
Initial reference(s): Duda, Hart, Stork: Sec. 3.10; Rabiner Juang: Sec. 6.
Segmentation by Clustering (Taraschewski; Supervisor: Christian Oberdörfer)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 9, 14; Szeliski: Secs. 5.2, 5.4, 5.5; Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 14
Segmentation by Fitting a Model (Kliege; Supervisor: Patrick Dötsch)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 10.1 to 10.4; Szeliski: Sec. 6.1; Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 15
Segmentation and Fitting using Probabilistic Models (NN; Supervisor: Jörn Wübker)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 10.5 to 10.7; Szeliski: Sec. 5.3; Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 16
Tracking (Meissner; Supervisor: Jörn Wübker)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 11; Szeliski: Sec. 5.1; Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 17
Registration (Model-Based Vision) (NN; Supervisor: Christian Oberdörfer)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 18; Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 12; Szeliski: Sec. 6.2 and 6.3
Classification (Blasius; Supervisor: Jörn Wübker)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. s 22,23; Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. s 15, 16.1, 20; Szeliski: Sec. 14.1 to 14.2
Finding Images (=Retrieval) (Assmann; Supervisor: Christian Oberdörfer)
Initial reference(s): Forsyth, Ponce, 2003: Sec. 25; Forsyth, Ponce, 2011: Sec. 21[,17]; Szeliski: Sec. 14.3 to 14.5

Guidelines for the article and presentation

The roughly 20-page article together with the slides (between 20 & 30) for the presentation should be prepared in LaTeX format. Presentations will consist of 45 minutes presentation time & 15 minutes discussion time. Document templates for both the article and the presentation slides are provided below along with links to LaTeX documentation available online. The article and the slides have to be prepared in LaTeX format using the provided templates and submitted electronically in pdf format. Other formats will not be accepted.

Online LaTeX-Documentation:

Document Templates:

Article Template (164kB), contains the template and all necessary files in tar format (or here 53kB in zip format).
Presentation Slide Template (4.9MB), a zip file containing the template and all necessary graphics as well as the institute’s style template.

Guidelines for articles and presentation slides:

General:

The aim of the seminar for the participants is to learn the following:

to tackle a topic and to expand knowledge
to critically analyze the literature
to hold a presentation

Take notice of references to other topics in the seminar and discuss topics with one another!
Take care to stay within your own topic. To this end participants should be aware of the other topics in the seminar. If applicable, cross-reference other articles and presentations.

Specific:

Important: As part of the introduction, a slide should outline the most important literature used for the presentation. In addition, the presentation should clearly indicate which literature the particular elements of the presentation refer to.
Take notice of references to other topics in the seminar and discuss topics with one another!
Participants are expected to seek out additional literature on their topic. Assistance with the literature search is available at the faculty’s library. Access to literature is naturally also available at the Lehrstuhl für Informatik 6 library.
Notation/Mathematical Formulas: consistent, correct notation is essential. When necessary, differing notation from various literature sources is to be modified or standardized in order to be clear and consistent. The lectures held by the Lehrstuhl für Informatik 6 should provide a guide as to what appropriate notation should look like.
Tables must have titles (appearing above the table).
Figures must have captions (appearing below the figure).
In the case that no adequate translation of an English technical term is available, the term should be used unchanged.
Articles and presentation slides can also be prepared in English.
Completeness: acknowledge all literature and sources.
Referencing must conform to the standard described in the article template.
Examples should be used to illustrate points.
Examples should be as complex as necessary but as simple as possible.
Slides should be used as presentation aids and not to replace the role of the presenter; specifically, slides should:

illustrate important points and relationships;
remind the audience (and the presenter) of important aspects and considerations;
give the audience an overview of the presentation.
Slides should not contain chunks of text or complicated sentences; rather they should consist of succinct words and terms.

Use illustrations where appropriate - a picture says a thousand words!
Abbreviations should be defined at the first usage in the manner demonstrated in the following example: "[...] at the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Technischen Hochschule (RWTH) there are [...]".
Take care to stay within your own topic. To this end participants should be aware of the other topics in the seminar. If applicable, cross-reference other articles and presentations.
Usage of fonts, typefaces and colors in presentation slides must be consistent and appropriate. Such means should serve to clarify points or relationships, not be applied needlessly or at random.
Care should be taken when selecting fonts for presentation slides (also within diagrams) to ensure legibility on a projector even for those seated far from the screen.

Contact

Inquiries should be directed to the respective supervisors or to:

Dr. Ralf Schlüter
RWTH Aachen
Lehrstuhl für Informatik 6
Ahornstr. 55
52056 Aachen

Raum 6125b
Telefon: 0241 / 80-21612

E-Mail: schlueter@cs.rwth-aachen.de