CSC 581A/482A Information about Readings

Submitting Comments on Readings

Readings are required unless indicated otherwise, and they're also very important to get the most out of this course. For most readings, a set of reading questions will be posted. By midnight before class, students are required to post their comments on the readings. The comments should include honest-effort answers to the reading questions. In addition, for readings that are research papers, there also should be general comments. Some examples of general comments are responses to

• What are the core contributions?
• What are some insights (if any!) that you get from this paper.
• What are the main techniques? Try to express this at a high level rather than getting too immersed in details.
• Is this work important? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What assumptions do the authors make? Are the assumptions reasonable?
• Does it seem like any assumptions could be relaxed?
• Do you have high-level ideas about potential follow-up work?
• How does this paper connect to other major ideas in the literature?
• Does the paper connect to any concepts we saw in class?

Undergraduate students will likely need more time to read a research paper as compared to graduate students. Therefore, among the readings that are research papers, undergraduate students may be required to submit comments only for a subset of those readings.