This week we have finally gotten around to working on the code base that has been provided by the previous project group. Some things have cropped up while looking through the code, such as what composes the convolutional neural network. There is a severe lack of documentation that clarifies what the Resnet18 is made up of. As such, it is hard to see whether the network has essentially components like batch normalization or dropout. These layers are essential for preventing overfitting of the model when training. Not knowing whether they are included or not can lead to our teams detriment as attempting to include them will lead to underfitting the model if they are already contained within the model.
We are also beginning to develop our timeline. This is a particularly difficult thing to decide as it’s hard to tell how long it will take to tune the hyper parameters. Along with this, the model itself could be flawed, meaning that the model may be scrapped if that cross roads is come to. This culminates into many things that are really beyond our ability to foresee. However, I will be discussing with my teammates Travis what the best option will be when moving forward. It shouldn’t really matter in the long run, as a timeline is just a best estimate for how long it will take, and any roadblocks can be discussed with our sponsor.
Finally, we’ve been discussing what our first steps will be when it comes to implementing changes to the code base. Github will be our primary centralized version control, along with pep8 and black to handle the documentation style. One thing that most of our team agrees upon is the lack of style that the previous code has needs to change. The most common complaint that I personally have is the fact that random semicolons are added throughout the program. This is unnecessary, and was likely caused by someone who was extremely used to C style coding. Albiet, none of this really effects the program capabilities, it makes it harder to read.
