CSCI 204 (Data Structures and Algorithms) Final Project

Phase 1 Page, Phase 2 Page

Objectivs & Overview
Project Deliverables
Project Point Breakdown

Project Milestones & Dates

Teams of three students
Teams will be assigned by Prof. Dancy

Due-Dates:

• (Team info on Moodle): 30-Oct
• Phase 1: 09-Nov (10:00pm)
• Phase 1 presentations on 09-Nov (in class)
• Phase 2: 16-Nov (10:00pm)
• Phase 2 presentations on 16-Nov (in class)
• Final Phase: 06-Dec (10:00pm)
• Final presentations on 04-Dec (in Final Exam slot)

Objectives (Through all phases)

• Gain experience putting together several classes from the ground up
• Learn how to deal with a dataset and to start to explore it
• Use AVL Trees
• Use Heaps
• Learn what it means to make decisions with your data structures
• Reflect on how your design decisions affect the world around you

Combating crime one data point at a time!

Scruffy the crime dog wants you to take a bite out of crime

Final Project Overview

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Scenario

Scenario

You're group is an elite group of developers that have been contracted by the Chicago Information Sciences Department. You've been asked by the Police Chief to develop a new police patroll dispatch system that his officers can use to fight crime in the most efficient way possible.

The police chief is relying on you to help combat crime

The Chief made this back of the napkin drawing to help you think about what he envisions as the final system (the Decision Engine)

To help with this, he's given you a dataset of previous crimes so that you can decide how you'll handle those new data that you'll be reading in.

You will carry out the following steps (not necessarily in order) to bring your project from concept to completion:

• Get to know your team. Teams will consist of three (or four) people & I will require that everyone speaks equally during the presentations and can explain any part of the work (within reason).

• The team will work together to decide on a particular way to approach the above problem. It's up to you to communicate effectively so that you can work well as a team

• I will work with teams to check on the status and get estimates of time for the completion of the project. While I will be available to try to make sure you don’t go off into a barren desert, and can help point you to resources if you wish to use a method that we have not gone over, the point of this Final project is to give you a bit of freedom to explore things, while still using some of the things we've learned in 204.

For the final phase, we'll focus on reflection, revision, and packing our final software product for the police commisioner
In this part of the phase you will (hopefully) begin to think of your solution as more than just a technical solution, but instead a sociotechnical solution.
After all, all systems and artifacts we create are situated within our socio-cultural society and it is part of our jobs as responsible & ethical system designers and developers to realistically and systematically consider this.
You are not always given the tools or rightly forced to consider this, but consider this phase of the assignment a possible beginning to thinking about these things in a world that has (historically) tried to shield the technical from social considerations (even when those solutions are always used by and interact with individuals and social groups!)

1. Let's do some reading!

For this phase, you will need to read and respond to (in your report & code revision) 4 different articles/Book chapters

• All of these are linked on Moodle

Weapons of Math Destruction, Chapter 5

This chapter will introduce you to some ideas on "Big Data" and the criminal justice system

• Fun fact, I spent my summers (and some holidays/breaks) in Reading (family) for a good portion of my childhood

The color of law, Chapter 6

This book chapter will introduce you to some ideas on how the make-up of neighborhoods came about. (Related to the topic of "red-lining" if you've ever heard that term).

Black computing, Chapter 15 & Beginning of Chapter 16

This book chapter and a half will introduce you to some ideas on early policing "information systems" by giving background on an early one used in Kansas City (and some of the context that preceded the systems). Note that the required reading for Chapter 16 is from 226-235 (the first 11 pages), feel free to continue reading, but those sections (other than the figures) are less directly related to this project.

Vox article on policing

Image from the article

This article will introduce you to some racial issues with regards to policing (and cite some research in that regard).

2. Refactoring And Revising

This should be completed after reading and cognitively digesting the above readings
Given the above readings, refactor and revise your code so that it is, in your estimation, more fair and equitable.

• As an example, this could mean changing how you assign proirity based on location or crime.

You should also refactor your code so that comments, names, etc. are more socially appropriate. A way to think about it is illustrated in the scenario below:

A grieving family of a person shot by a police officer, partially as a result of mistaken identity, during a traffic stop comes to see you and your code that dispatched an officer to patrol that area. Would anything in your code (comments, name, etc.) anger or upset them due to being inappropriate given the severity of the system your developing?

• In your README.md, provide a section titled Code Refactoring and Revsions that deails the changes you make
• In your final resport, provide a section that discusses these changes in the context of the articles you read
  
  

3. Picking where to place police stations

• In your README.md provide a section titled Police Station Placement Design. I want you to come up with a general design and algorithm (complete with what data structures you would use in this algorithm) to pick where to place police stations. This section should be written close to the end (i.e., after you read the above reading and complete any revisions to your code)
  
  

4. Final Report

Your final report should be 8-12 pages and should detail design choices you made with your system (you don't need to go into deep detail, your README.md will accomplish the detail)
Your report should reference the readings assigned (and by reference I mean meaningfully reference with some purpose in the required sections).

This report can have several sections, but should have some similar to these main sections:

• Introduction
  • Where you introduce the problem brought to you by the commisioner, your design, the readings, and some revisions you made
  • ~1-2 pages
• System Design
  • Where you provide an overview of your system design and provide a few (2-3) examples of your visualizations
  • ~2.5-4 pages
• Discussion
  • Where you discuss the your system in the context of the readings for this phase. You also should discuss how your revisions address topics from the readings.
  • A few possible questions to address (just to give you a possible starting point if you're stuck):
    • What do you think the O'Neil reading tells us about what we should do as designers and developers?
    • Do you think that you would have approached things differently had you read the chapter first?
    • What do you think about the title of the starter code's main class?
      • How do you think the family of the most policed neighborhoods would view that naming?
      • Do you think naming it that way affected your initial approach to the task?
    • Reflect upon the way crime is handled where you're from. Do you think these AI systems that predict where to send police would be a good thing? (Why or why not)
  • ~3.5-5 pages
• Conclusion
  • Bring it home and provide some concluding remarks
  • ~0.5-1 page
• References
  • This section isn't included in the expected report length.
  • You should, at the least, have the four readings in here assigned during this phase
  • You can pick any style for referencing (APA, ACM, etc.), but I do want a coherent style used for referencing in your report and this references/bibliography section.
    
    

Final Phase Presentation

Each team will be required to give a ~20 minute presentation on their implementations and the visualizations that they've created for the Final Phase.
These presentations should give a good background on your design choices and the reasons for those choices. It will also be your chance to discuss issues you have had to navigate w/ the project.

5. Final Phase Reflections

This is your individual reflection (submitted separately by each group member)

Your delivered work should be coherent and reasonably organized.