Written Critiques
Total Weight: 20%
Description
For each class in which assigned papers will be discussed, a written critique
must be handed in right before the class begins. The purpose of the critiques
is twofolds. First, it will prepare you for the class discussion. Secondly,
it helps the instructor to evaluate the quality and efficiency of your
reading of papers and to organize the class discussions.
A critique is typically a short written description of the key contributions
and weaknesses of a paper, and why you think so. It should address several
or possibly all of the following issues.
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What is the most important point of each one of the papers.
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Why the work is notable or novel or neither.
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Why the problems tackled by the paper are or are not important.
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Why is the proposed solution potentially useful or not useful.
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Are the assumptions clearly specified and are they reasonable and practically
valid.
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Point out additional contexts in which the same idea or technology could
be applied, relate the work to another paper that you find during your
literature search.
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How are the proposed ideas evaluated, and how thorough is that evaluation.
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Identify a list of possible future research tasks to make the proposed
work even better, develop a different solution strategy, or to drop some
of the given assumptions, and so on.
Ocationally, a question or a problem may be posted to help you organize
your thoughts. However, an important part of the assignments is for you
to figure out what questions to ask and to answer by yourself.
To prepare for the written critiques, you may work on the papers in
groups. However, your collaboration with other students must be limited
to
discussions of main points of the papers. Everyone is still required
to write up and hand in his/her critiques individually. It is suggested
that
when you study the papers, you would make a list of the points that
you find particularly confusing, ambiguous, interesting, controversial,
etc., and try to formulate your own comments, possible answers, and examples
to address those points. These points and related materials can be
a part of your critique. In general, you may be asked to address
those points in class. Thus your critiques and other relevant informaiton
should be in your mind rather than just on paper when you arrive in class.
Critiques should be typed.
Grading of critiques.
All assigned critiques will be collected by the instructor, however only
some of the critiques may be graded. You will not know beforehand if or
if not a critique is graded, so you better do a thorough job on all of
them.
The grading will be based on a 0-5 scale with 0 for not handed in, 1
for a very weak effort, 2 for a minimal effort critic, 3 for reasonable
critical understanding of material, 4 for excellent evaluation of material,
and 5 for very nice insights and independent critical thoughts.
No late critiques will be accepted - as we will be discussing
the material in class that very day.