Table of contents

1. What is the Impossible Project?
2. OK, so what is our Impossible Project?
3. This is not your usual project
4. Group Formation
5. Logistics
   1. Deadlines
   2. Group meetings
   3. Group submissions
      1. Common questions
      2. Grading rubric
   4. Unit 1 Group Submission
      1. Resources on infographics
      2. Submission Contents
      3. Submission Logistics
   5. Unit 2 Group Submission
      1. Submission Contents
      2. Submission Logistics
   6. Unit 3 Group Submission
      1. Submission Contents
      2. Submission Logistics
   7. Poster Presentation (Bonus)
   8. Finale presentation
      1. Submission Contents
      2. Submission Logistics
   9. Individual Score
      1. Survey Details
      2. Peer Survey
      3. Submitting the survey
      4. How the individual score will be calculated

What is the Impossible Project?

The Impossible Project is a radical pedagogical paradigm created by Prof. Dalia Muller. Y’all are in for a treat since this Impossible project collaboration with Dr. Muller’s Rage Against the Machine and Kenny+Atri’s ML and Society course.

Rage will cover the origins and combating white supremacy while ML and Society will cover various aspects of how (machine learning) algorithms and society interact. In class, we will do this via lectures, activities and discussion. However, you do not really get the material unless you get “your hands dirty.” The Impossible project is meant as an opportunity for y’all to take what you have learned in both the classes and use it to work on your impossible project. The hope is that y’all will be able to connect your chosen project to the material we cover in the two classes and indeed, take advantage of the latter to improve your project!

OK, so what is our Impossible Project?

Ending White Supremacy!

The impossible project that y’all will be tackling this semester is Ending White Supremacy.

This is not your usual project

Most of you are probably used to assignments and projects with a well defined goal and outcome. Specifically, there is always a right or wrong answer and at the end of the project, you are expected to come up with a functioning artifact. Not so here.

It is the Impossible Project!

As the name suggests, your project (to end white supremacy) is in some sense impossible. It certain is impossible to achieve (at least in its letter) in a semester. So in some sense you are expected to “fail.” Or more precisely, you are very likely to fail if you use the same metric of success that you are used to in your other classes.

This uncertainty can be scary: embrace this open endedness of the Impossible Project!. We will definitely help y’all along the way but you do need this mindset shift to succeed uni (each of your) classes.

What if we “fail” at the end of the semester?

As mentioned above, your group is more likely to fail to produce a “result” (at least in the traditional sense) by the end of the semester. So you might be worried about what happens to your project grade then?

First of all, take a close look at the requirements of various components of the Impossible Project in the rest of this webpage. You would notice that most of the emphasis in grading is on the PROCESS and not the results.

More importantly, for us, you “failing” in the traditional sense is more than fine. We learn more when we fail than when we succeed. We are hoping that this experience will help you go forward and work on ending white supremacy (to the extend that you can/want to). More pragmatically, for the grading as long as your group carefully documents how and why your proposed solution failed and what would be your group’s next steps if you could work on this project after the semester is done, you will be fine!

Opportunities after the semester is done

The top one or two projects from the course will be invited to carry on the work beyond the semester (most of the work will be in Fall 2024 but some work can start in Summer 2024. This work will be funded.

Group Formation

We expect to form groups of size three (or four depending on class size). One student will be from the Rage Against the Machine and the remaining two to three students will be from the ML and Society course. Kenny, Dr. Muller and Atri will form the groups before the combined class on Tuesday, January 30.

If there is another student in ML and Society that you like to have in your group, please email Kenny and Atri your choice by Sunday, January 28. There is no guarantee that we will be able to honor your request but we will try.

Logistics

Contribution of your project score to final grade

The project in total is worth $50\%$ of your final grade.

Here is how the $50\%$ weightage for the project will be further divided down:

Project Component	$\%$ of FINAL course grade
Unit 1 Group Submission	$5+5=10\%$
Unit 2 Group Submission	$5+5=10\%$
Unit 3 Group Submission	$5+5=10\%$
Finale presentation	$10+10=20\%$

Group Score vs. Individual score

For each of the four components of the Impossible problem is divided $50\%$ into groups score and $50\%$ for individual score.

Everyone in the group will get the same score for the group score for units 1-3 and the final presentation. Note that this is worth $25\%$ of the total grade and for future reference, we will refer to these points as group score.

We will talk about the individual score (which is based on peer surveys later on.

Deadlines

For your convenience, below are all the relevant deadlines. The relevant documents are due by 11:59pm of the due date.

Deliverable	Documents Due Date
Unit 1 Group submission	February 24
Unit 2 Group submission	March 16
Unit 3 Group submission	April 13
Finale presentation submission	May 11

In addition to the above the finale presentation will be on May 15.

The above deadlines are also on the schedule page.

Group meetings

We expect each groups to meet up regularly. We have built in specific in-class meeting times in the schedule to get y’all started but we expect y’all to regularly meeting outside of class as well.

Trust but verify

We will not micro-manage when everyone meets but the group submissions are setup such that your group will have to talk about these meetings.

Doing research outside of class

Y’all are expected as group to research outside sources that we do not cover in any of our lectures and/or assignments. Specifically, in your projects y’all will have to come up with problems within specific domain. Our lectures and assignments (see the schedule for more details) will cover material related to three domains (health care, policing and mis-information) but to have effective group submission y’all will have to look at source material beyond what is covered in the lectures and assignments.

Group submissions

Next few sections, will talk about the group submissions and about the groups score (again we will talk about the individual score later).

These are submissions by the entire group

These submissions are Combined for both courses. In other words, these submissions will be done by the entire group. There will be some separate Rage submissions as well as ML-Soc submissions related to the impossible project as well.

Common questions

All of the Combined group submissions will ask your group to answer the following questions:

The common questions

1. Problem What is the problem you have identified and what contributed to this formation? Of course your high level problem is to end white supremacy but what is the “narrower” problem that you will tackle. Also the domain of the problem that you will choose has to be within the three domains we will cover in our classes: health care, policing and mis-information. You can choose to combine one or more of these. Further, we expect your problem to have the following two parts:
   • Tell us about your problem, at a high level (the zoom out). How does your problem represent a (hopefully major) impediment in the Current world to reaching that vision of the world articulated in Future world below?
   • Tell us about your problem, at a narrow level (the zoom in). What chunk of high level problem from the bullet above did you choose to bite off, and why?
2. Current world Given the problem y’all have identified in the previous question, what is it that has led to and that sustains the problem that you wish to address?
   • Also include a discussion of any prior work that has been done on your chosen problem.
3. Future world How will your problem/domain look like in your imagined future world with no white supremacy?
   • Specifically, what does your ideal world with no white supremacy look like? Be imaginative and bold here. The future does not have to look anything like the current world (in fact if your future world is similar to the current world then you have not gone far enough!)
4. History+Tech For both Current world and Future world, your group must specifically address both of these:
   • What are the historical roots?
   • How is tech (ideally ML but we can discuss other CSE related tech) involved?
5. Plan What is your group’s proposed plan to go from Current world to Future world? Why will it be effective?
   • Your plan should start off from the specific zoomed in problem above in the Current world and end up in the zoomed out Future world with no white supremacy. What are your first steps in this process? What are the medium-term steps in this plan? What are the long-term steps in this plan? What needs to happen so that each of these steps are successful?
6. Tools How do all the Rage tool(s) and (all) the ML+Soc tool(s) that y’all learned in this unit/semester help you address at least one of Current world, Future world or Plan?
7. Logistics This part will vary based on the submission but basically we’ll ask for some accountability to make sure y’all are working outside the class as a group and that everyone is contributing to the submission.
8. Presentation This part will also vary based on the submission but this for how “polished” your group submission is.

The order above is not rigid

Even though the above list presents various components in an ordered list, your group submission do not have to present components 1-6 in the same order as above. As long as your submission addresses all of the components y’all will be good!

However, if you do some “sign-posting” of the above components then that’ll help us grade your submission and more importantly, give y’all better feedback!

Grading rubric

Below is the split of points for each of the group submissions for each of the required components:

Component	Unit 1 Group Submission	Unit 2 Group Submission	Unit 3 Group Submission	Finale presentation Submission	Finale presentation
Problem	10	5	5	5	10
Current world	15	10	5	5	10
Future world	10	15	15	15	15
History+Tech	20	20	20	20	20
Plan	10	15	20	20	25
Tools	20	20	20	20	20
Logistics	5	5	5	5	0
Presentation	10	10	10	10	0

Presentation points for the finale presentation

Even though formally Presentation is allotted zero points for the finale presentation, it will be implicitly used to judge the other categories. In other words, all categories for the finale presentation will be graded both for context and presentation quality.

Unit 1 Group Submission

Unit 1 group submission is an infographic

Unit 1 group submission has to be in form of an infographic.

See below for some resources on infographics.

An Appendix is allowed

If there are details that you could not include in your infographic but you think will be useful for us while we grade your submission, you can include it with an appendix. The appendix can be at most three (3) pages and has to be in PDF format.

Create the appendix first

We recommend that y’all prepare the 3 page appendix first and then distill its content to the infographic.

The infographics will be made public

As a heads up, your unit 1 group submission infographic (but not the appendix) will be posted publicly on the course website.

Resources on infographics

Thanks to Yen Azzaro!

All the material in this subsection is from the amazing Yen Azzaro.

An example infographic

The infographic that Yen as part of graphic recording of January 31, 2024 class discussion is an excellent example of an infographic:

A bit more about the process

Yen recommend that y’all write down what will go in your infographic. I.e. create a “script” first and then create your infographic.

An an example of the above, Yen used this “sample script” to create the following final infographic:

Submission Contents

Below is what we expect to see in your infographic in addition to the generic group submission instructions:

1. Problem At the end of unit 1 we will not have covered all the three domains in class. Feel free to read through the assigned readings for Units 2 and 3.
2. Current world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
3. Future world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
4. History+Tech Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
5. Plan Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
6. Tools For this submission y’all should focus on the tools covered in unit 1 in Rage and ML-Soc.
7. Logistics Tell us when y’all met as a group. In addition tell us about the following for each group member:
   • Roughly how many hours did they spend on the group submission?
   • What were their specific contribution(s) to the group submission?
     Finally, tell us your answers to the following questions that you’ll need to prepare before y’all meet with the librarians:
   • What data and/or prior work have y’all already collected/organized?
   • What are the gaps in the data and/or prior work have y’all already collected/organized?
   • What questions (both in history and tech) that y’all have formulated?
   • Based on the questions from the previous bullet, what are you research needs (in both history and tech)?
8. Presentation For unit 1 submission, we will mainly be looking at how “eye-catching” the infographic is for the presentation part.

How much details should be put in our submission?

The infographic must be engaging, which means if you have too much detail in the infographic it would be hard to follow and hence not engaging. For the details that y’all decide not to put in the infographic put them in the appendix!

Submission Logistics

What and where exactly should we submit?

The infographic as well as the (optional) appendix should be in PDF format.

The Rage student must email the PDFs to Dalia.

The ML-Soc students must submit the PDFs on Autolab (there will be a group submission setup for the ML and Society so only one of the ML and Society student needs to submit.

Note that the submissions to Dalia and Autolab should be identical.

How will the two copies of the submission be graded?

Dalia and Kenny/Atri will grade the two copies of the submission separately to generate two scores. The final group score for unit 1 group submission will be the average of the two scores.

Unit 2 Group Submission

Unit 2 group submission is a report

Unit 2 group submission has to be in form of a report.

The report should be at most 3 pages excluding references and the appendix (see below for more on the appendix). There is no limit on the number of pages that contain the references.

An Appendix is allowed

If there are details that you could not include in the main part of the report but you think will be useful for us while we grade your submission, you can include it with an appendix. The appendix can be at most three (3) pages and has to be part of the report PDF.

This is where the Problem is finalized

You can change the Problem from the unit 1 group submission. However, after unit 2 submission, your group’s chosen problem cannot be changed

Of course refining the chosen problem as y’all progress in the semester is fine but after this submission, your group cannot decide to pick a completely different problem.

The reports will be made public

As a heads up, your unit 2 group submission report will be posted publicly on the course website.

Submission Contents

Below is what we expect to see in your report in addition to the generic group submission instructions:

1. Problem At the end of unit 2 we will not have covered all the three domains in class. Feel free to read through the assigned readings for Unit 3.
2. Current world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
3. Future world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
4. History+Tech Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
5. Plan Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
6. Tools For this submission y’all should focus on the tools covered in unit 2 in Rage and ML-Soc.
7. Logistics Tell us when y’all met as a group. In addition tell us about the following for each group member:
   • Roughly how many hours did they spend on the group submission?
   • What were their specific contribution(s) to the group submission?
     Finally, tell us about your meeting with the librarians:
   • When did you meet the two librarians
   • Summarize the two meetings for us
8. Presentation For unit 2 submission, we will mainly be looking at how well written the report is for the presentation part.

How much details should be put in our submission?

See above for the page limit on the report. Feel free to use the points distribution to decide how much detail to add to each of the components.

Submission Logistics

What and where exactly should we submit?

The report (along with the optional appendix) should be submitted as a one file.

The Rage student must email a Word file to Dalia.

The ML-Soc students must submit a PDF (with the same content as the Word file above) on Autolab (there will be a group submission setup for the ML and Society so only one of the ML and Society student needs to submit.

Note that the submissions to Dalia and Autolab should be identical.

How will the two copies of the submission be graded?

Dalia and Kenny/Atri will grade the two copies of the submission separately to generate two scores. The final group score for unit 2 group submission will be the average of the two scores.

Unit 3 Group Submission

Unit 3 group submission is a poster

Unit 3 group submission has to be a poster.

An Appendix is allowed

If there are details that you could not include in your poster but you think will be useful for us while we grade your submission, you can include it with an appendix. The appendix can be at most three (3) pages and has to be in PDF format.

What should be in the poster?

The poster presentation should address the first six questions: i.e. Problem, Current world, Future world, History+Tech, Plan and Tools.

Note that some details of the six questions could be handled in the appendix (we ask that y’all address the Logistics in the appendix only). We very very strongly encourage y’all to use as little text as possible in order to make the poster as engaging as possible.

Formatting requirements

One side of the poster has to be 24”. Y’all can decide on other side but we recommend that y’all create a 24”$\times$36” sized poster.

If y’all want a template to start off, use the UB template for a research poster.

The posters will be made public

As a heads up, your unit 3 group submission poster (but not the appendix) will be posted publicly on the course website.

Submission Contents

Below is what we expect to see in your poster in addition to the generic group submission instructions:

1. Problem Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
2. Current world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
3. Future world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
4. History+Tech Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
5. Plan Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
6. Tools For this submission y’all should focus on the tools covered in unit 3 in Rage and ML-Soc.
7. Logistics Tell us when y’all met as a group. In addition tell us about the following for each group member:
   • Roughly how many hours did they spend on the group submission?
   • What were their specific contribution(s) to the group submission?
8. Presentation For unit 3 submission, we will mainly be looking at how engaging the video is for the presentation part.

How much details should be put in our submission?

See above for the page limit on the report. Feel free to use the points distribution to decide how much detail to add to each of the components.

Submission Logistics

What and where exactly should we submit?

The Rage student must email a PPTX files for the poster and a Word file for the appendix to Dalia.

The ML-Soc students must submit a PDF file (with the same content as the PPTX and Word files above) on Autolab (there will be a group submission setup for the ML and Society so only one of the ML and Society student needs to submit. In addition, please email the poster PPTX to Kenny and Atri.

Note that the submissions to Dalia and Autolab should be identical.

How will the two copies of the submission be graded?

Dalia and Kenny/Atri will grade the two copies of the submission separately to generate two scores. The final group score for unit 3 group submission will be the average of the two scores.

Note that during grading we will not grade anything beyond what is in the poster and first three pages of your appendix.

Poster Presentation (Bonus)

Here’s a bonus opportunity for y’all. There will be a visit from Mozilla foundation (who are supporting the development of this course) in our class on Monday, April 22.

What do we have to do?

We very strongly encourage y’all to present a poster on April 22 during class time on the current state of your group’s project. If your group ends up doing this then y’all can earn bonus points (see below for more on this).

The poster will be the same as the poster y’all submit by April 18 for unit 3 group submission.

Note that each group will get up to five (5) minutes to present (in front of their poster) so some of the six questions could be handled verbally. We very very strongly encourage y’all to use as little text as possible in order to make the poster as engaging as possible.

As mentioned, there are bonus points involved:

Bonus Points!

Your group can earn up to two ($2$) bonus points (towards your final course score of $100$). Everyone in the group will get the same score. Specifically,

• For ML-Soc students, the score on the poster presentation will contribute to the Bonus part of the grade.
• For Rage students, the score will used to calculate your final letter grade.

If your group is interested, here are other logistics:

The logistics

Please email the three of us by 5pm on Monday, April 8 to let us know if your group wants to participate.

You will not have to pay for printing the poster: we will print out the poster that y’all submit on April 18 and will bring the printer posters with us to class on Monday, April 22.

As mentioned above, this is not a requirement but we really do hope that y’all participate. This is an opportunity for y’all to get external feedback on your project, which will help y’all sharpen your finale presentation on May 15.

Finale presentation

Finale presentation has two parts

The first part is submitting the slides of your finale presentation. The second part is the actual presentation itself during the finals week (May 15 at 9am in NSC 228).

The actual presentation is for at most six (6) minutes.

An Appendix is allowed

If there are details that you could not include in your presentation slides but you think will be useful for us while we grade your submission, you can include it with an appendix. The appendix can be at most three (3) pages and has to be in PDF format.

Points for submission vs. actual presentation

The slides will be worth $7\%$ of your final grade while the actual presentation will be worth $3\%$ of your grade.

ALL group members have to be present during the final presentation.

Submission Contents

Below is what we expect to see in your finale presentation (both the slides and the actual presentation) in addition to the generic group submission instructions:

1. Problem Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
2. Current world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
3. Future world Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
4. History+Tech Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
5. Plan Nothing specific beyond generic group submission instructions.
6. Tools For this submission y’all should focus on the tools covered in ALL units in Rage and ML-Soc.
7. Logistics Tell us when y’all met as a group. In addition tell us about the following for each group member:
   • Roughly how many hours did they spend on the group submission?
   • What were their specific contribution(s) to the group submission?
8. Presentation For finale presentation submission, we will mainly be looking at how engaging the slides/presentation is for the presentation part.

How much details should be put in our submission?

See above for the page limit on finale presentation duration. Feel free to use the points distribution to decide how much detail to add to each of the components.

Submission Logistics

What and where exactly should we submit?

The slides as well as the (optional) appendix should be in PDF format.

The Rage student must email the PDF to Dalia.

The ML-Soc students must submit the PDF on Autolab (there will be a group submission setup for the ML and Society so only one of the ML and Society student needs to submit.

Note that the submissions to Dalia and Autolab should be identical.

How will the two copies of the submission be graded?

Dalia and Kenny/Atri will grade the two copies of the submission separately to generate two scores. The final group score for unit 3 group submission will be the average of the two scores.

Individual Score

Survey Details

Each group member will fill in a survey rating their own and their other Combined group member’s contribution to the impossible project.

Peer Survey

Peer Survey Questions

Each Combined group member will rate their group mates (including themselves) under the four categories below. These scores will then be used to divide the team’s points so that individual students’ survey grades reflect how well they contributed to the overall result. The table below explains what the different numerical values for various categories mean.

Category	0 points (Strongly Disagree)	1 points (Disagree)	2 points (Agree)	3 points (Strongly Agree)
This team member was reliable	This team member missed all meetings and did not contribute deliverables	This team member missed some meetings and turned in poor quality work	While this team member may have missed a meeting, they provided useful contributions	This team member was consistently present and prepared, delivering quality work
This team member contributed in a way that respected other group members	N/A: This team member did not interact with the group in any capacity	This team member was unkind or regularly disagreed disrespectfully	This team member was mostly courteous and respectful	This team member was always courteous, or made others feel welcomed and valued
This team member was open to feedback and compromise	N/A: This team member did not interact with the group in any capacity	This team member was unwilling to listen to others and did not compromise	This team member often collaborated but could sometimes be dismissive of other viewpoints	This team member consistently collaborated and incorporated feedback
This team member's participation was important to the success of the group	This team member did not contribute, or contributed in a way that undermined the group	This team member contributed but their contributions lacked quality or relevance to the group's success	This team member often contributed in a way that advanced the group	This team member frequently contributed, or their contributions were essential

Submitting the survey

The peer evaluation survey will have to be filled on https://cse.buffalo.edu/teamwork . You will evaluate yourself and your group mates in all the categories in the final rubric.

You will submit the peer-survey four times. They are due by 11:59pm on the following dates:

Deliverable	Peer-Survey Due Date
Unit 1	February 24
Unit 2	March 16
Unit 3	April 13
Finale presentation	May 15

The workflow

Here is the workflow for each of the four peer survey submissions:

1. Between 11:00am three days before the deadline and 11:59pm on deadline date the website above will be ready for you.
2. Log in with your UB login credentials.
3. You will then fill in the survey: the website will ask you to evaluate yourself and your group mates.

For what time is the peer survey for?

Since there are multiple peer survey, for each peer survey rate yourself and your group mates for the work done since the last peer survey.

How the individual score will be calculated

Survey part of the Impossible Project grade

Each of your peer survey scores will be converted into a fractional score $\rho\in [0,2]$. We will reveal the exact algorithm after the surveys are submitted but roughly if everyone in the group did equal work (as reflected by the survey responses), then all group members will have $\rho=1$. Otherwise, those that did more work will have a $\rho$ value closer to $2$ and those that did less will have $\rho$ value closer to $0$.

For each of the four submissions, the individual score part of the grade will be calculated as $\rho\cdot$group score.

What if all the individual scores exceed $25\%$ of the grade?

It is possible that the total of all the four indivudual scores in total exceeds $25\%$,

• For ML-Soc students, the excess will contribute to the Bonus part of the grade.
• For Rage students: the excess will contribute to the Bonus part of the grade (please email Dalia if it seems like you will be have excess points for the indivudual score.