18-742 Paper Presentations and Summaries

Paper Summaries

An important component of 18-742 is critical reading of the assigned papers and coming to class ready to discuss them. To help you in this process, we require that you submit a short review of each paper before the beginning of the class during which we will discuss the paper.

Your summaries should:

• State the 3 most important things the paper says. These could be some combination of their motivations, observations, interesting parts of the design, or clever parts of their implementation.
• Describe the paper's single most glaring deficiency. Every paper has some fault. Perhaps an experiment was poorly designed or the main idea had a narrow scope or applicability. Being able to assess weaknesses as well as strengths is an important skill for this course and beyond.
• Describe what conclusion you draw from the paper as to how to build systems in the future. Most of the assigned papers are significant to the systems community and have had some lasting impact on the area.

We do not want a book report or a repeat of the paper's abstract. Rather, we want your considered opinions about the key points indicated above. Of course, if you have an insight that doesn't fit the above format, please include it as well. Summaries should be short, between 1/4 and 1/2 a page.

A representative example of a good summary is Zuckerman2021-model-summary.

Summaries must be submitted on Canvas.

All summaries will be counted, and a random sample of the summaries will be graded. Do not skip class or come late just to finish a summary—we expect that everyone will miss a few, though skipping more than 10% will have a negative impact on your grade. You are not required to turn in a summary on the day of your in-class paper presentation (see below). You will get credit for having done it.

Student Paper Presentations

While the instructors will lead the in-class discussions for most of the papers, there will be seven times during the semester when groups of students come prepared to lead the in-class paper discussions.

• Groups of 2 students will sign up to present one of the papers assigned for the day, either the required reading or the optional reading.
• Each student will do one presentation during the semester, as part of their grade.
• Each of the two papers will be presented/discussed for roughly half the class time (40 minutes each). The required reading paper will go first.
• Students presenting a required reading paper will gear their presentation towards students who have read the paper. The presentation should mimic the format of the regular lectures by including time for small group discussion and report backs to the entire class for each of the pros and cons of the paper. Plan for 25 minutes of lecture presentation and 15 minutes total for discussion.
• Students presenting an optional reading paper will gear their presentation towards students who have not read the paper, although students may have indeed read the paper. Plan for 30 minutes of lecture presentation and 10 minutes of class-wide discussion (no breakout groups).
• Students in a group should split the presentation so that each student does between 1/3 and 2/3 of the presentation.
• Students are free to use whatever presentation software and slide template they prefer. After class, please send a pdf of your slides to Prof. Gibbons for posting on the syllabus web page.

Last updated: 2025-01-19 23:02:34 -0500 [validate xhtml]