Paper Reviews and Reading Groups in CS598CZ
Mini Reviews
In order to make the most of our in-class time, you will be expected
to submit a "mini review" of the paper or answer some discussion
questions about a reading or paper before it is discussed in class.
The purpose of these write-ups is to encourage you to think deeply
about the paper and how it relates to other material covered in the
class.
Discussion Groups: To test fly your ideas and clarify any
difficult material in the papers, you will meet in groups of three to
five students to discuss the paper before writing your reviews. The
discussion group will not produce any written document; instead, each
member will write their own mini review. You will be allowed to
select your own groups, but I encourage you to try to get class
members with both architecture and compiler backgrounds in your
disscussion group.
Mini-Review Format:
In the mini reviews you will outline the
contributions of the paper, talk about the strengths and weaknesses of
those contributions, and suggest extensions to the paper or relate the
paper to other material covered in the class. In addition, please
describe what you found most interesting and challenging in the paper.
For the sake of consistency, the review will consist of 5 SHORT
paragraphs, in the following order:
- Paraphrased summary of the paper: What problem does the
paper solve? How? Don't regurgitate the author's summary, but
re-evaluate the results of the paper yourself. Did the paper really
solve the problem?
- Cool or significant ideas:What are the main contributions
of the paper? What are the strengths of the proposed techniques?
- Flaws and fallacies: Did the authors disregard any
assumptions (theoretical, practical (implementation complexity or
influences of evolving technology) that make their approach less
appealing? Do you expect the technique to be more or less useful in
the future?
- New ideas and relationships to other material: How could this
paper be extended? Can the flaws be fixed? Do the techniques enable new
approaches to other problems? How does the approach in this paper relate
to other approaches?
- Difficulties: What was the most difficult concept in the
paper to grasp? Was it a conceptual problem or a presentation problem?
How could the idea be better formalized or presented more clearly be
more easily understood.
The mini reviews need not be long (each paragraph should be 3-4
sentences), but you should edit the reviews to ensure clarity of
thought and organization. Reviews are due on the date & time
specified on the schedule. Shortly after that time, the
reviews will posted on the web, so that all students can read all of
the reviews; you are encouraged to read reviews by other students
before coming to class.
I will periodically evaluate your mini reviews and assign them a
rating ranging from 0 to 3:
- 3: unusually insightful
- 2: solid review
- 1: disappointing paraphrase
- 0: not submitted