The final grade will be determined based on at least one presentation in class of assigned reading material, and a written final report:
The course will be divided into four main units (see the syllabus). I have selected a few lectures to be presented by the students, whereas I will present some other lectures. Basically, the idea is that the material I am more familiar with I will let you present (so that I can help you prepare your lecture---you will not be on your own in this preparation!), whereas the material that I am interested in studying in detail myself I will present to you. Hopefully, by the end of this course we will all (you and me) know a bit more about these topics than we do now... The Romans used to say docendo discimus (teach to learn), and that is exactly what we will all be doing in this course. Also, I will wrap up each of the sections with one lecture on what I consider to be interesting open problems in each of the areas.
The Research Challenge. In this course, you can do well in one of two ways -- either by working hard on your project and by by giving good presentations of other material in class, or by solving one of the open problems. If by the end of the semester you manage to solve an open research problem, you get an A, irrespective of any other consideration.