A total of 15-20 pages, single spaced, excluding references.

Why: 	An introduction of the problem and a critical survey of current methods
	Why is the problem interesting and important?  (significance)
	Why are the current techniques not sufficient? (motivation)

What: 	Problem statement 
	What is the exact problem you are trying to solve?
	The scope should be narrow enough to investigate the problem
	sufficiently/thoroughly and finish it within a reasonable time frame.
	The scope should be wide enough to be significant.

How: 	Description of your techniques and initial results 
	How are you solving the problem?
	How do you evaluate your results to determine success?
	Are your initial results supporting your ideas?  (are they
		better than current techniques or do they work
		in areas not explored before?)
	Are your techniques viable to pursue?

When: 	Research Plan
        Summary what has been done.
	What's left to be done?
	What additional software, theorems, analyses, results are needed...
	Provide a rough time table.  

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Sample Organization


Sec1  Intro
         background
         problem statement: overall, five (at least) specific research issues

Sec2  Related work
         current techniques that try to address the five research issues
	 (point out weaknesses and strengths)

Sec3-7 Five (at least) research issues
         what: assumptions, given what (input), produce what (output)
	 why: improve upon current techniques's weaknesses 
              (specify measure of improvement), or 
              the issue not addressed at all
	 how: proposed new techniques
	 feasibility: results for at least one/two of the issues

Sec8  Conclusions
         summary of progress so far
         summary of possible contributions
	 plan: rough time table for remaining work