Reaction Notes

For most papers we read, you will post reaction notes prior to our class meeting to help prepare you for discussing the paper. You will also have an opportunity read other student's reaction notes prior to the class meeting.

Reaction notes should should reflect your critical reading of the paper. Some questions to think about as you read: Did the authors do what they said they were going to do? What are the important ideas (just because an author says something is important doesn't mean it necessarily is)? Do their results make sense? Are their methods sound? Are there weaknesses in their solution? What assumptions are they making? How does their work fit in with other similar work? What improvements and/or extensions to the area do they contribute? Are there terms, ideas, techniques, that you don't understand? Your reaction notes should be structured in the following way:

1. Summary:
   A 1 paragraph summary of the paper. A summary of what the work is, what problem(s) it addresses, and the results or new technique (if applicable). Also, include a short list of the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and list how it is related to other work we have read (when applicable).
2. Answer to Specific Question(s):
   A 1-2 paragraph answer to any specific question(s) associated with this paper.
3. A list of questions you have about this paper:
   If there are terms, ideas, techniques that you don't understand, list them here. However, for terms you don't understand also try to find the answer yourself by using on-line sources. If you find an answer, please leave the listing of the term on your reaction notes; it is helpful to me to see which terms are new to students so that I can make sure that we discuss their meaning.

Submitting Reaction Notes

The papers listed below should be read prior to the class meeting for which they are assigned, and your reaction notes should be submitted using handin97 before 8 pm the day before each class:

1. Use update97 to create a handin directory for each day's notes
2. Write up your reaction notes in an ascii file.
3. Submit them by running handin97 before 8:00 pm the day before each class meeting
4. By 8:10 pm you can run update97 again to get a copy of every student's reaction notes. These are good to look at prior to our class meeting to help prepare you for discussion.

For guidelines on how to read a research paper, check out Prof. Newhall's reading tips.

Viewing and Printing Papers

You can view most postscript files (and gziped postscript files) using gv on our system:

% gv file.ps.gz

gv cannot handle some versions of compressed postscript, in this case you should save a copy of the paper.ps.gz file, gunzip it, and then either view it using gs or convert it to pdf and view it using acroread:

% gunzip file.ps.gz
% gs file.ps
% ps2pdf file.ps
% acroread file.pdf

You can print postscript using lpr, or print 2-up postscript files using mpage and lpr:

% lpr file.ps
% mpage -2 -M-10 -dp file.ps | lpr

You can view (and print) pdf files using acroread:

% acroread file.pdf