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Understanding Research Papers Critically - Enhancing Your Research Skills

Explore fundamental problems in networked systems, analyze research papers, and improve your critical thinking. Learn to evaluate the importance, assumptions, and impact of published papers. Enhance your reading strategies and engage in discussions to enhance your research capabilities.

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Understanding Research Papers Critically - Enhancing Your Research Skills

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  1. Reading Research Papers Critically Brad Karp UCL Computer Science CS M038 / GZ06 19th January, 2009

  2. Why are we here? • Learn fundamental problems in networked systems • Design for scalability, robustness in large-scale, aggressively distributed systems • Gain perspective on competing designs • Learn to think critically about quality of research papers; so you can do good research yourself; acquire taste • Ground rules: • Feel free to criticize or defend a paper, or my take on it! • Any comment can lead to (bounded) discussion!

  3. Evaluating a Paper • Important, relevant problem? Clever? Orthogonal! • Reasonable assumptions and models? • Longer ago published, more you can judge based on impact: • Does everyone now use systems derived from it? • Recent papers: more on cleverness, promise • Other contributions possible: thorough investigation of complex phenomena; comparison that brings sense to an area

  4. How to Read a Research Paper Critically • Take notes as you read • Question assumptions, importance of problem, important effects not mentioned by authors • Write questions to track what you don’t understand • Don’t let ideas or design details pass until you understand them • May need to re-read a paragraph or section many times, or even discuss with peers • You can’t fully decide if design is good unless you understand all details! Be vigilant. • Don’t presume authors’ assumptions or design choices correct simply because paper published!

  5. Assessment: One-Pagers • Papers must be read before lecture to ensure good discussion • To motivate staying on top of reading, we assign a one-pager for each paper: short essay question on paper • Question posted 48 hours before lecture • Due at start of lecture when paper discussed • Answers limited to 200-500 words • 0-1-2 marking scheme • Overall contribution: 5% of class total marks

  6. Assessment: Paper Presentations • Students form groups; each group chooses one paper from class web page: • Presents paper as a group in last week of class • Each individual student turns in own writeup evaluating work’s worth • Papers given on first-come, first-serve basis: form groups, choose papers quickly! • Overall presentation/writeup contribute 10% of class total marks

  7. Today: Geographic Routing(Ad hoc Routing) • Ad hoc Routing: reachability among nodes in a highly dynamic topology • Your task: “Why?” • Why multi-hop? • Is routing the hard or relevant problem? • Why won’t previous routing algorithms work? • See through fads in research!

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