Guidelines for Term Project
Basic idea is to make a science critic out of you. Thus you should not regard this assignment as an opportunity to further your progress on a particular research project, or to demonstrate your ability to do lots of work, such as picking a topic and doing lots of calculations and analysis. Instead you should regard this assignment as an opportunity to develop and refine your skills in finding and describing significant ideas (concepts).
Rather than asking you to come up with such ideas, we ask that you look for them in a paper that is already in print. It could be an older work or a recent work so long as it is a significant contribution, in the sense of having impact in the particular area that it deals with.
Your task then is to state clearly what is this idea and why is it an important contribution. You should try to do this as a critic (a judge or a reviewer). First, make your discussion clear (understandable) to an audience as general as possible - this is sometimes not so easy. Secondly, give your discussion in a professional way, like an art or music critic, that makes it clear that you have deep appreciation of the topic yourself.
Think of your term project as an essay in which you review a paper that is recognized to be important, and it is your task to explain what is the importance, preferably beyond what the author has already said in the paper.
Once you have selected the paper that you wish to analyze, come see me so I can help you to settle on a good plan of attack.
