Research Paper Presentations
 

Guidelines for Writing Critiques

You are to write a one-page critique of the selected paper and hand it in the lecture before your presentation date. We will photocopy that critique and give it to other students on the class before the paper presentation, so that they can read it and be prepared for a smart discussion.

Your critique should contain two parts:  first, a summary in your own words of the technical, scientific contribution of the paper; and second, your own view of the positive and negative aspects of the work (e.g., is there an error in the paper?, did the author(s) not consider technically relevant items?, is the argument incorrect or incomplete?, what would be interesting future research that could be done to continue this paper?).

You have to think really hard to write a concise, yet thorough assessment of the research you are presenting.  Your summary should not just paraphrase the abstract, but rather give your view of the actual research presented in the report.  Writing one-page critiques is harder than writing longer ones, so start early.  40% of the research portion of your grade is given according to your critique and 60% of the grade according to your actual presentation and discussion.
 

Guidelines for Paper Presentations

Depending on the contents of your slides, 2-3 minutes for slide is a good estimate for your presentation. Take some extra slides to class in case there are questions/extra time to present them.

This is a tentative breakdown for your presentation:

• Big picture: What is the ultimate goal of this research? Motivate the topic. (5 minutes)
• Problem Description: What exactly are the authors solving? How does it fit in the big picture? (5 minutes)
• Technical Content and Results: You need to prove that you understand the main points in the paper. (10 minutes)
• Conclusions and Related Work: Relate the results to the big picture, and compare to other approaches (5 minutes)
• Critique: What do you think about the paper (pros/cons)? What future research would be interesting to do in this area? (5 minutes)
• Discussion, Questions and Answers: Bring some questions for the audience, in case the audience does not have questions for you! (5 minutes)