MSc Thesis — QK-Norm at Small Scale
Working title: When Does a Small Language Model Need QK-Norm? An Isolated Learning-Rate Characterization of Query–Key Normalization at <100M Parameters
Organised copy of the project, made 28/10/2026. Everything here is a copy — the
originals are still in the parent folder, and the CS6513 git repo
(../Research Project/, github.com/NikScorch/MSc_Research_Project) is untouched.
This folder is not a git repo yet.
Layout
| Folder | What's in it |
|---|---|
00-supervisor/ |
Supervisor meeting notes and to-dos |
01-proposal/ |
CS6513 proposal pitch: Marp slides (pitch-slides.md), script, exported PDF, recorded video |
02-literature/ |
qknorm-research-findings.md — prior-art scan and novelty verdict (24/07/2026) |
03-cs6513-paper/ |
CS6513 Introduction + Lit Review paper (IEEE format), see below |
04-cs6513-notebook/ |
CS6513 research notebook (.rmd source + exported PDF) |
05-course-materials/ |
CS6513 lecture slides and set readings (wk1 methods, wk2 lit review incl. Xiao 2017 SLR guidance) |
03-cs6513-paper/ — which file is which
| File | Status |
|---|---|
draft.md → draft.tex / draft.pdf |
The submitted paper. Cormac's own prose; .tex is a format conversion of the .md |
main.tex / main.pdf |
Earlier bullet-point scaffold (AI-assisted outline, not submitted) |
ref_draft.tex / ref_draft.pdf |
Personal AI-assisted reference draft — never for submission; kept out of the git repo |
build.sh, IEEEtran.cls, README.md |
Build tooling: ./build.sh draft |
Not copied
../Research Project/msc-research-notebook-outline.md— byte-identical duplicate of the.rmd.obsidian/,.DS_Store,.git/— editor/system/VCS metadata