Reading, Reviews & Presentations

READING, WRITING AND PRESENTING PAPERS

READING AND ANSWERING QUESTIONS

We will be reading two or more papers per week. The papers will be first presented to the group by one or more students and then discussed in a round-table manner.

To ensure lively discussions, you will be responsible for reading the assigned papers before each class. I will post a question about each paper 24hr before class. Your answer need only be long enough to demonstrate that you understand the paper; a paragraph should be enough. I will check your answers to make sure they make sense and they will count for part of the paper discussion grade.

Today, nearly all the papers have a video of the author’s conference presentation (I have added links to each in the calendar). Take advantage of this and watch it before attempting to read the paper.

You may find the following documents useful:

WRITING REVIEWS

At one time or another, every researcher is asked to review papers submitted for publication at a conference or journal; a process known as peer review. We will work on this skill by running a mini-conference DSCE 2022.

All class members will be part of the “Programm Committee” for our mini-conference and we will consider all papers listed in our schedule as our submissions.

Each paper will receive three reviews. We will discuss all papers in a PC meeting (towards the end of the quarter) to decide what paper “should be accepted” for publication. Each paper discussion will be led by one of the reviewers (assigned by the PC chair).

You may find the following documents useful:

To enter your reviews go to WINE 2019 (Access is restricted to Northwestern).

PRESENTING

Most class meetings will be centered around a paper presentation and discussion. Each student will be responsible for presenting one or two of the papers in the schedule (so, if you haven’t yet, please email me three ranked options).

Giving a good presentation is hard work. Please make sure to allocate enough time to prepare for yours.

I will make sure the papers you have to present are a subsets of those in your reviewing pile. You are required to present your review before the day of your paper presentation; think of it as part of your preparation!

There are some good pointers around that you may want to look at.

In general, your presentation should include the following key sections:

  • Introduction: Context and motivation for the work (why they did this?). Any background that you think the audience needs to understand the paper.
  • Methods: The methods that were used (how they did it?)
  • Results: The results obtained; the work main contributions (what did they find?)
  • Discussion: An interpretation of those results (what does this mean?)
  • Critique and class discussion: Your job as presenter is to not only present the paper, but to primarily lead class discussion of its strengths, weaknesses, and broader implications. To help focus the class discussion, end your presentation with a list of about three major questions/issues worthy of further discussion.

Beyond this, here is an incomplete list of dos and don’ts:

  • Don't try to present the whole work; there simply is not enough time. Distill the papers down to their key ideas and results.- Think of your primary audience, your classmates, to decide what/what not to expand on.- Use examples to motivate the work and approach, and illustrate the key points.- Don't just accept all of the statements in these papers at face value. Do you agree with the authors? Do their results support their conclusions?- Don't put too much on a slide - prune and then prune again.- Don't put too much on a slide - just one figure/graph per slide!- Don't put too much on a slide - don't waste the header/slide title!- Careful with use of animation - not for show, just for clarity- Seriously consider dropping the typical "overview/roadmap" slide- Saying enough without saying too much - enough depth to convey the main ideas, not so much as to overwhelm your audience