Basic rules and guidelines for your presentation

Steps to prepare for both presentations


    1. Selection of your topic (for the midterm) or book chapter or paper (for the final).

    2. Obtaining my approval of your selection.  For the midterm talk, this will simply mean that you'll get the part that you have selected on the first-come-first-served basis. For the final talk, the process is more complex and is described in more detail in the section on Final project below.
        Very important:  You must obtain my approval (in writing) at least 10 days before the day of the first presentation by anyone in the class (the midterm presentations will be spread over several lecture periods, while the final presentations will all occur on the day of the final exam).
         If you miss this deadline, the following will occur:
          -  For the midterm, I will assign you the part of the paper that has yet not been taken. You will not be able to dispute or alter my selection.
          -  For the final, you will not be allowed to give your final presentation, and your score for it will be recorded as 0.

    3.  Scheduling your rehearsal with me.  My availability for rehearsals will be posted at least 2 weeks before the first scheduled presentation.  Your responsibility will be to book a time that will work for you. The penalty for not scheduling, or scheduling but missing, your rehearsal, will be the reduction of your final numeric grade by 3.34% of the final course grade (i.e., by one grade bracket, e.g., from B to B-). This will occur no matter how perfect your actual talk in class may be.
         You may schedule your rehearsal before selecting your topic or book chapter/paper. However, the rule in item 2 above about obtaining my approval of your selection will still apply.

    4.  Preparation of your talk.  Details are given in the respective sections below. You are welcome to work with your classmates, and you are strongly encouraged to seek help of the instructor as needed (see below).

    5.  Rehearsal.  Details are given in the respective sections below.

    6.  Modifying your talk according to the instructor's suggestions that you have received during the rehearsal. 

    7.  Delivering your talk on the scheduled day.



Rules and guidelines specific to the Midterm and Final presentations are listed below.



Midterm

In your midterm talk, you need to address two issues:
 As you read your part of the paper, jot down all your comments and questions. Try to answer them as you read the part again (and again, and again,...). Ask me if you still don't know the answer after having read the part three times. Eventually, you are responsible for understanding all of the results that you will present.

Go to the link "Presentation-related materials" on the course web page and read the suggestions about giving talks that I collected on that page. (Of course, you are welcome to use other information sources as well.) Remember: The clarity of your talk is at least as important as its content. Without your providing the former, nobody in the audience will understand the latter.

You will need to meet with me during the week prior to the "presentation week" to give a practice talk just to me.  Scheduling the meeting is your responsibility.

I expect you to come prepared to your rehearsal. This means that you must at least have:
   - an outline of your talk,
   - notes for it,
   - and slides (if you plan to use them).
These components are to be in their final form, of course (after all, the purpose of practicing your talk in front of me is to receive and implement my suggestions). You may have a few unfinished slides. You may also have questions about some derivations or concepts in the paper. However, your overall rehearsal should demonstrate that you have prepared for it reasonably well. I reserve the right, at my sole discretion, to take up to 2% off your final numeric grade for the course if I deem that your preparation was inadequate.
    Example:  Suppose you could not understand the derivation of formula (*), but you recognized this and asked me about it during your rehearsal. I will consider this adequate preparation. But, here are instances of inadequate preparation:
  (i)  You could not uinderstand a derivation of a formula (or a concept, etc.) and just glance over it during the rehearsal. 
  (ii) I (as opposed to you) do not understand your derivation, after repeatedly asking for a clarification.
If instances like (i) and/or (ii) add up to 1/3 or more of all formulas or ideas in your rehearsed part, I will consider this inadequate preparation and will reduce your score, as indicated above. To avoid this, you have to ask me questions as you are preparing to the rehearsal; that is, before the rehearsal, not just at the rehearsal.
The same rule will also apply to the rehearsal of your final project talk (at the end of the semester).

You will also need to meet with the persons who are presenting immediately before and immediately after you to make sure that the transition from one speaker to the next will occur smoothly. (Giving a practice talk in front of one another is also a good idea.)

During the presentations by others, you will need to take brief notes of what you liked and what you did not like about each presentation (except your own, of course :-)). It will still be I who will make the final decision about your grade for the talk, but I may take into account your classmates' input.

Start early, don't procrastinate, and ask question as soon as you run into them. Good luck. I look forward to hearing your talks.



Final project

Book chapter or Paper selection

First, let me explain how the process of your selection of a book chapter or paper will work.

No later than the Spring break, I will post a list of resources (containing book chapters or papers)
from which I encourage you to select one on which you will present. As soon as I approve the
student's topic, I will post it on the course webpage, and that topic will be considered "taken"
(i.e., no one else will be able to select it).

You may, in principle, propose a paper of your choice. However, based on past experience, I
discourage this option (please see below). If you still want to proceed with it, you will need to
convince me that you can follow the derivations of this paper (you must send me its pdf file
to begin with). Please keep in mind that many entincingly titled papers prove, at close examination,
to be poorly suitable for a student reader. So, please be prepared that while I will seriously consider
up to three proposals of your independently chosen paper, there is a high chance that I may reject
(with an explanation) all of them. I will not consider more than three such proposals.

Remember:  If you fail to get your selection of topic approved at least 10 days
before the day of the final exam, your final presentation will be cancelled,
and you will receive the score of 0 for it.
   Lack of planning by you will not constitute an emergency for me.


Your main goals in delivering a talk

Most of the above rules regarding the midterm presentation also apply to the final one.
In particular, you will need to explain, at the beginning, what result you are going to derive
and why it is interesting. At the end, you will need to discuss what your result means
(or work out an illustrating example). Remember, however (from the Rules for the Midterm Talk),
that these Introduction and Conclusion combined are not to take more than 20-25% of the time
of your talk.

Please note that your goal is not to simply retell  the paper.  Rather, you must prepare
a story based on the paper. Your story line must clearly present the setup, main steps,
and all assumptions that went into obtaining the results of the paper. You must also
present all of the key derivations of the chapter/paper.

Technical details of the selected book chapter/paper

[For brevity, I'll refer to the book chaptter or paper simply as 'paper'.]

You are responsible for understanding all the derivation in the paper. If the paper skips a derivation,
you must reconstruct it. If the paper skips some background information, you are to research and
provide it. There may occur exceptions to this rule, but I must consider them on a case-by-case
basis. Thus, as you are preparing for your rehearsal and cannot reconstruct or follow a
calculation in the paper, you must ask me about it during my office hours before the rehearsal.

So, you must work out all of the derivations of the paper -- asking me for help as needed --
before you come to the rehearsal. I will not provide help with the derivations at the rehearsal,
because its focus is on your presentation, not on the technical details. However, I may ask you
to reproduce any derivation found in the paper, and if you cannot do it, then I will assign you
to work it out later and bring a written account of your work on the day of the final talk.

Also, as a cosmetic point, you will need to cite the full credentials of the paper on your title page,
as shown here.

Working on your timing

I will moderately penalize you for going more than 2 minutes over the time limit . However, you may
have to strike a balance between the timing and the clarity of your explanation. Sometimes, the penalty
for giving an unclear explanation or a sketchy discussion of your results may outweigh the penalty for
going over the time limit.  (Piece of advice:  If your time limit is set at, say 20 minutes, practice your
presentation to be for 20 or even 19 minutes, and certainly not for 20+2 minutes! Something always
goes wrong at the actual talk, and it ends up being longer than your practiced time.)

I will not penalize you for going 1 or 2 minutes under the time limit.
However, if you go 3 or more minutes shorter, it is a clear sign that you didn't plan your presentation well.
In that remaining time, you could have either given better explanations or presented more material.
So, it is likely that I will penalize you for giving too short a talk. Keep this in mind when planning it.