The final project accounts for 34% of the grade.
Student examples are published anonymously unless otherwise requested.
Option 1: Oral Presentation
You are encouraged to give an oral presentation to the class about a topic of your choosing (relating in some way to category theory of course). It could consist of:
- explaining to the class some scientific topic in terms of the techniques we develop in class
- discussing how you think category theory might be valuable for new research in your field
- teaching a difficult concept from class that you finally understood, or
- something else
Student Examples
English to Olog Transation or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the Olog (PDF)
Illustration of Category Hilb with examples in Atomic and Optical Physics (PDF)
Proving Causality in Social Science: A Potential Application of Ologs (PDF - 1.3MB)
Option 2: Publishable Document
Instead of an oral presentation, your final project can consist of handing in a well-typeset and accurate document relating to the class. It should be publishable, either on MIT OpenCourseWare or in some other form. That is, it should be something you would be proud to put your name on and make public. It must be complete and turned in by the end of classes.
One option is to write an essay. Such an essay may be intended to carefully explain the virtues and limitations of category theory in science, or it may be intended to dive deeply into a subject using a categorical approach.
A second option is to typeset a document in which you solve 80 of the exercises in the course textbook. If more than one person chooses this "exercise write-up" option, the set of such people should consult each other to reduce overlap. If two people choose this option, their write-ups should span 120 problems; three people should span 160 problems; four people should span 200 problems.