Paper summaries and reviews

Paper summaries (and reviews) are individual assignments. Each student writes their own summary and submits it through github. A reviewer provides one round of feedback, after which the original author can edit the summary more. The course staff will grade the final summary.

The summary should

• be <5min to read
• summarize the essence of the paper (it’s ok to relate to prior summaries or well known work)
• use your own words (do not copy from the paper)

In class, you will present your findings by presenting your summary to the rest of class.

Timeline

• Wed midnight (week prior): Initial summary due
• Fri midnight (week prior): Review due
• Sun midnight: Final summary due

We won’t have late days for the final summary. Talk to your reviewer if you really cannot make the date (this should happen very rarely).

How to write a good paper summary

• Write one sentence per line. Otherwise markdown is hard to review.
• End your summary by recapping what you like about the paper (no need to comment on things you do not like). Write three bullets.
• Be positive. Do not judge. These are notes for us, just say what you learn, there is no competition or pressure.
• Write your own words. Avoid direct quotes, ideally put things in a common mathematical formulation across multiple summaries.
• Edit, edit, edit. Keep editing and refining the summaries a few times.

Tips for reading a paper

• Do more than just read the paper
  • No paper is trivial
  • Think of what are the essential tricks that make the paper work
• Question any decision and claim made by the authors
  • It is the authors responsibility to convince you that their approach works better than prior (or simpler) alternatives
  • If a claim is not backed by experiments or a citation (or backed by a wrong citation), you may assume it’s wrong
• Think about how this fits with other peoples findings
  • Is there a larger theme across a series of papers?
  • Does it contradict other papers you know?
• Use colored markers
  • Mark important things in one color
  • Mark things you disagree with (you think are wrong) in a different color

How to submit a summary

For each week, we have a repo with summary templates. Create your own branch and create a PR to the main branch. Name your branch paper_tag+your github id.

How to use math in your summary

You can use $$\mathrm{math}$$ using $$\LaTeX$$ (inline).

$$
1+2 \textrm{ in Display mode}
$$

Make sure to place a blank line above and below.

You can preview your summary using jekyll s locally after installing jekyll https://jekyllrb.com/.

How to review a summary

Comment on the pull request.

Grading scheme

We will grade you (linearly) on four criteria

• Completeness (is everything summarized)
• Length (How compact/verbose is the summary)
• Originality (is the summary in your own words)
• Language and structure (how easy is your review to follow)

Each criterion has a weight of 5pt with a bias of -10pt (for a max total of 10pt). We will use your presentation as additional input for grading.

The reviewers grade will reflect the authors grade, unless:

• the author did not appropriately address a reviewers concerns.
• the reviewer did not write a review, or did not provide sufficient feedback