<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px">Hi Ryan,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px">I want to give an update about my current situation as application period for GSoC opens from tomorrow. Last few days, I couldn't spend much time on preparing an early draft of my proposal due to(<span style="font-size:12.8px">may be it is some bad luck) the reason that I have exams from coming Monday (right when application period starts :-/) Therefore, I was busy preparing for it and hence couldn't devote fair amount of time to interact in the project community. </span><i style="font-size:12.8px">I seriously apologize for that. I do have full intentions to not to lose grip on this side of my focus due to exams. </i><span style="font-size:12.8px">I have actually planned the rest of my days in the following manner :-</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="font-size:12.8px">I will do some small but crucial tasks in the exam week like reading required papers and try to gather as much information I can which will help me later on</i><i style="font-size:12.8px">. </i><i style="font-size:12.8px">Although, good thing is that the exams will get over by 18th March which gives me 7 days(18 - 24th March) before the application period ends to refine my proposal.</i><i><span style="font-size:12.8px"> I will direct my full attention, time and energy towards working on this project from 18th evening. So, I'll get my first rough draft ready and request to get feedback by 20th March. </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><i style="font-size:12.8px"><br></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">I know it might be less time but I can literally devote my whole day into getting my proposal in good shape once my exams get over in order to get up to speed quickly. Also, since I have everything set up already now, I'll get familiar with in's and out's of the code base and how to use it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px">I hope you understand my situation.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px">Have a nice day!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px">Thanks,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:small;line-height:13px">Vivek Pal</span><br></p><div class="gmail_extra"><p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:13px"><br></p><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 9:11 PM, Vivek Pal <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:vivekpal.dtu@gmail.com" target="_blank">vivekpal.dtu@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">Hello,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">I hope your day is
going well! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Vivek Pal. I'm
an undergraduate majoring in Computer Science Engineering at Delhi
Technological University in New Delhi, India. I have been taking up
number of courses on Machine Learning from various MOOC platform like MITx, <span style="line-height:100%">Coursera, Edx and Udacity. Also, I have more than 4 years of coding
experience in C++, C and python. I took my first course on Computer
Science in high school and started writing working programs in C++
since then.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">I have keen
interests in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. I have
read atleast half a dozen research papers related to different
algorithms, implementation models and framework over the period of
last 5-6 months. I also started contributing to different projects
like OpenCog recently. However, those were minor contributions. Here's my
Github profile link for reference: <a href="https://github.com/ivmarkp" target="_blank">https://github.com/ivmarkp</a>
. I intend to contribute in MLPack project via GsoC '16. I have been
lurking around in IRC channel to gain an insight into the code of
conduct for past few days and have also followed previous mailing
list mails. I have moderate-difficulty level experience in working on
recommender systems as I had built a recommender system for the Minor
project in college by taking cues from this research paper: A Graph-based model for context-aware recommendation using implicit feedback data. Here's the link for this paper: <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11280-014-0307-z" target="_blank">http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11280-014-0307-z</a> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">After checking out
proposed project ideas, I am quite interested in working on these
projects:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%"><font face="Liberation Serif, serif">1.
<font color="#333333">Alternatives
to neighborhood-based collaborative filtering</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%"><font face="Liberation Serif, serif"><font color="#333333">2.
</font><font color="#333333">Approximate
Nearest Neighbor Search</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">Regarding the first
project idea, I'm currently reading the paper referenced as an
alternative to k-NN for recommender selection. Would revert back if I
require more clarification. Also, if the issue #406 is taken up by
someone else what else can be done on my part to get involved deeper
into the project. And regarding the second project, no relevant
issues are mentioned yet. How can I proceed further on working on
this project? I think I could use some appropriate directions that
can help me get seriously involved into the projects. I kind of feel
lost even though I'm trying to take up open issues from Github but
most of them are already taken up and it wouldn't make sense to
duplicate the work already done. I apologize for starting off a little late but I've been quite busy with coursework in college last week. Though, it seems next week is going to be much more relaxed as per the planned schedule so expect me to be available all the time. Also, I was wondering that is it possible that these projects are already assigned to other students already on the account of their prior contributions?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">One thing I want to
make a point on is the EXTENSIVE and VERY HELPFUL guidelines for
anyone who wants to get invoved in this project. I was
able to build and install Mlpack easily on my system. Thanks so much
for putting together this documentation. I'm basically done with all
the guidelines and starting points given on this page:
<a href="http://www.mlpack.org/involved.html" target="_blank">http://www.mlpack.org/involved.html</a>,</p><p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%"><br></p><p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">Thanks,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">Vivek Pal</p><p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%"><span style="line-height:100%">B.Tech, CSE</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">Delhi Technological
University</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:100%">New Delhi, India</p></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div>