Design Notes

A "design note"¹ is a piece of writing which is just slightly more formal than an email and represents tangible forward progress in understanding what we're trying to do. Design notes should have a title, date, author and whatever content the author cares to provide for posterity. Content is not strictly limited to design. Things like postmortems, or optimization stories, are encouraged - anything with bearing on the design of a new system.

Google Docs are the medium of choice as comments can be directly related to text and can be used either as a discussion (left in place) or as editorial suggestion (resolved after repair).

Add new notes to the top.

Status is one of the following:

• POR: plan of record, things we are actively trying to do, implies "reviewed"
• Proposal: something intended to become plan-of-record
• Reviewed: someone else has read and understood. Reviewers add their names to the "Reviewed:" header. Review does not indicate agreement or approval.
• Draft: work in progress
• Live: document attempts to track current reality
• Obsolete: the obsolete document should have a link to the replacement in the header.
• null/blank: none of the above, informal note

¹ This format was borrowed with permission from Scott Meyer

Date	Status	Link	Author	Description
2018-aug	Proposal	Learning to Rank in Photon-ML	@joshvfleming	Design proposal for learning to rank objectives
2017-apr	POR	Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization in Photon-ML	@joshvfleming	Design proposal for a hyperparameter tuning module
2017-mar	POR	Photon-ML Parameters and Client Refactor	@ashelkovnykov	Proposal to refactor the way drivers in photon-client handle command line input.
2017-feb	POR	Photon-ML Module Refactor Proposal	@ashelkovnykov	Proposal to split the code contained in the photon-ml module into multiple modules.
2016-aug	POR	Distributed/Non-distributed Code Split Plan	@ashelkovnykov	Proposal to split the OptimizationProblem class into two: one for distributed fixed effect problems and one for localized random effect problems.
2016-jul	Live	GAME Fixed Effect Additions Performance Evaluation	@ashelkovnykov	Performance comparison between pre-123 Photon and post-143 GAME (fixed effect only).
2016-jun	POR	Modified Objective Function Design Plan	@ashelkovnykov	Proposal for the refactor of the current (June 2016) objective function structure.
2016-apr	POR	Photon / GAME Optimization Design Proposal	@joshvfleming	Photon / GAME Optimization Design Proposal
2016-apr	Obsolete	Objective Function Design Plan	@ashelkovnykov	Upon second consideration, this plan is not optimal. It has been abandoned in favor of a more rigid factory pattern. If necessary, we can return to it in the future.
2016-apr	POR	Photon-ML / GAME Design Plan	@joshvfleming	A very high-level outline for the merged design of Photon-ML and GAME