[metrics-team] M.Sc projects at Edinburgh

[William Waites]

On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 12:14:46 +0100, Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> said:

    > 1. Grammar for Tor descriptors

In particular I agree with Nick Mathewson's comment that such a
grammar should be considered the spec. That suggests that it might be
interesting to approach from a protocol specification point of
view. Or better, a literate-programming approach to protocol
specification with this as an example. Because the problem is annoying
and everywhere -- RFCs are full of EBNF grammars for things and yet it
is very rare to directly use them as an explicit input into a software
build.

    > 2. Append-only log for ExoneraTor

This is cool. It also sounds like it might be interesting to explore
blockchain-like approaches to have such a log distributed and
resistant to modification, possibly even with some level of
trustworthiness. Maybe too complicated.

    > 3. Exposed bad relays
    > 4. Analytics Project
    > 5. Confidence intervals for user number estimates

These three sound like they would fit well in the "data science" area
where the school has a programme.  #4 is probably too wide as it is
but there could easily be sub-projects. It does sound right down the
Data Science Centre for Doctoral Training's alley, and it might be
worth seeing what interest/resources there are there in parallel with
the M.Sc project story.

Cheers,
-w