Grades and Assignments

Participation (10% of course grade)

Research papers are often poorly written, sometimes make exaggerated or misleading claims, and occasionally contain errors or major ambiguities (imagine that!). I expect students to contribute to the discussion by asking questions, making observations, and subjecting material to critical scrutiny. These skills will be useful in any area of science.

Presentations (40% of course grade)

Students will work in teams of one, two, or maybe three, and each team should plan to make two presentations. In consultation with the instructor, each team will:

Identify a topic
Identify a primary paper (or other source)
Identify secondary papers or sources

The team will give a presentation on the topic, with an emphasis on:

The basic problem or technique
A critical evaluation of the primary paper
The context and depth provided by secondary papers, and ....
Open research questions (or start-up ideas :-)

Teams are encouraged, but not required, to show their presentations to the instructor before the presentation.

Each presentation will have 80 minutes (one class period). At least one week before the presentation, the team must post the primary paper or source to the web page. At the time of the presentation, the team will deliver to the instructor some version of the presentation suitable for posting on the course web page.

Depending on the course enrollment, teams may have to present more than once.

Paper Evaluations (10% of course grade)

A paper evaluation form consists of:

Your Name
The paper or topic name
Summarize the paper (no more than five sentences
Strengths (no more than three, one sentence each)
Weaknesses (no more than three, one sentence each)
Open problem or issue (no more than three sentences)

Paper evaluations will be graded on a scale of 1 to 3. The default grade is 2. Insightful reviews get 3, and disappointing reviews get 1.

Students will submit evaluations of primary papers via Gradescope before the start of the class in which the paper is presented. Late or incomplete evaluations get no credit. Students are required to evaluate at least two-thirds of the primary papers presented.

Presentation Evaluations (10% of course grade)

You are also required to evaluate presentations. Why? First, if you have to write a review of someone else’s talk, you had better pay attention. Second, if you know that your own talk is being evaluated by the studio audience (not just the instructor), then you may try harder to appeal to them. In the Real World™, when you graduate, you will have to capture the attention of intelligent, well-educated audiences that know little or nothing about your field. Sharpen your skills now.

A presentation evaluation form must contain the following fields:

Name: Your name
Presenters: Who's talking
Vision: how well did the presenters explain why the issue matters?
Style: did the presenters mumble, fail to make eye contact, speak too quickly, too slowly, or what?
Exposition: Were the slides too busy, too ugly, or just right?
Q and A: How well did the presenters seem to know the material? Were they honest about admitting when they don’t know something?
Comments: Anything else you would like to add.

Presentation evaluations will be graded on a scale of 1 to 3. The default grade is 2. Insightful evaluations get 3, and disappointing evaluations get o1ne. Evaluations for talks where I suspect the reviewer was not physically present get zero.

Presentation evaluations are intended to be helpful. It is OK to be frank (otherwise what’s the point?) but be polite (no matter how you are provoked). I will merge and edit presentation evaluations and forward them to the presenters. Your evaluations will be kept anonymous, and I retain the right to edit or suppress intemperate or inappropriate comments.

Students will submit evaluations of presentations via Gradescope before Friday 5:00 PM in the week in which the presentation occurred. Late or incomplete evaluations get no credit. Students are required to evaluate at least two-thirds of the presentations.

You are not expected to evaluate presentations by the instructor (too hard to anonymize).

Project (30% of course grade)

The final project requirements are the same as for the presentation, except that

You work alone, not in a team, and
You write a term paper, not a presentation
You may choose to work on the same topic as your presentation, but the papers covered should not be the same Consult the instructor if there is any question.