Assignment 4: Research Paper Critique
DUE WEDNESDAY NOV 25 AT 11:59PM.
Table of contents
Critique Format
Your critique should adhere to the following format:
A. SUMMARY
Provide a one-paragraph overview of the main idea and contributions of the paper:
- What is the paper about?
- In what way did it advance the state of the art? – make a bulleted list of three major contributions and write a sentence or two for each.
- One or two key insights or performance details from the evaluation (in a bulleted list)
B. NOVELTY
- Evaluate the novelty of the paper. Select all that applies and include a brief justification of your choices:
- Novel problem
- Novel solution
- Novel application existing of solutions
- Novel evaluation
- Other: please specify
C. STRENGTHS
Identify at least three strengths of the paper, considering the following questions (choose the most important ones and provide a bulleted list with brief explanations). Note: your judgement of what you consider “most important” is a part of the evaluation of this question. Every paper will not necessarily have strengths in all listed areas.
- Is there a new theoretical insight or a significant empirical advance?
- Did they solve a standing open problem, or a good formulation for a new problem?
- Are the experiments well formulated and executed? What are their important results?
- Did they develop a faster/better solution in terms of a system solution? If so, list what advances they made or what novel techniques they implemented.
- Any good practical outcome (code, algorithm, technique, language etc.) that is widely applicable? What is it and where will it be applicable? If the result is a commercial product, comment on how much impact it has and what is its status (may require you to do some investigation on the Web).
D. WEAKNESSES
State at least one weaknesses of the paper. Every question below may not have a valid answer for each paper. These questions will help you think of the weaknesses. You are NOT required to answer each sub question below.
- Did they make any assumptions that limit the scope of what they did? If so, what limiting assumptions can you state and how do they limit the applicability of this paper?
- Are there major drawbacks in the way they conducted the experiments?
- Are there any odd design choices in the approach or the algorithms?
- Did they ignore any important issues related to the work? Does the paper have a very limited application?
- Any other weaknesses you can point out.
E. OVERALL IMPRESSION
Summarize your overall impression/opinion about this paper in one paragraph. Here you can include additional points that you want to add beyond what you listed under strengths and weaknesses.
Submission and Grading
Submit a PDF with your paper critique using the required format on canvas. Please use the listed questions above to structure your critique properly. If you write a long piece of text without proper structure, it will affect your grade negatively.
This is an individual assignment and counts for 5% of your grade.