|
Reading and Responding to Research PapersStrategies for ReadingTia Newhall's advice for reading research papers. When you read a research paper, you will almost certainly encounter some terms or arguments that you don't understand. One of the important skills that you will develop as you gain experience is choosing whether you should pause and try to resolve your confusion or keep going in the hope that it will become clear later or that you can still get something out of the paper without understanding that point. Both extreme strategies (dive deep on every little confusion, or blow by every in a sprint to the end) are Bad Ideas™, because you'll either never reach the end or get nothing out of the paper. So just monitor yourself. If reading a particular paper is taking forever, let a few things go. It may be better to read to the end and start over again. If you find that you've completely lost the thread of the paper, slow down, look up some definitions, see if you can pick it back up again. Different communities have different styles ... [in progress] Paper ResponsesFor each paper we read (except the one for which you are the discussion leader), you will write a short response. The purposes of this exercise are:
The written responses will be in the form of a few questions about the paper. Here are the kinds of questions that are appropriate.
The point of all the good/bad example pairs is that you should spend a little time (maybe 5-20 minutes) following up on your own question and writing down what you find or think of. For each paper you should aim for about 3 questions and about a half a page of total text. The intention is that generating and writing down these questions should take no more than about an hour per week. The grading for these questions will be a simple pass/fail. As long as you turn in something that demonstrates a little more thought than one one-line question, you'll be checked off. Handing InYou should write your responses in LaTeX and compile them to a pdf file. Please organize your personal CS97 repository as follows:
Each response should include your name and userid along with your questions. Indicate which kind each question is (comprehension, challenge, broader implications) and try to avoid sticking to a particular kind for all of your questions. Here is a very simple LaTeX starter file that you are welcome to use. You are also welcome to get as fancy with LaTeX as you like.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document} \title{Questions for ``A Super Monkey Collider Built with Valgrind and Pin''} \author{Benjamin Ylvisaker - bylvisa1} \date{} \maketitle Here is my first question Here is my second question Here is my third question \end{document} To turn in your response, do the following:
cd my repo directory/PaperResponses
pdflatex pXX git add pXX.tex git add pXX.pdf git commit -m "Response questions for paper XX" git push NOTE: The first time
you push to an empty git repository you have to
type: Your response is due at 5pm the evening before we are scheduled to discuss the paper in question (i.e., Mondays and Wednesdays). There are two reasons for this:
The instructor will use an automated script to tag everyone's repositories at the appropriate time. Whatever is in your repo at that time is what you turned in. Team-Choice PapersTBA |