Basic rules and guidelines for your presentation

Steps to prepare for both presentations


    1. Selection of your topic (for the midterm) 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-serve 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% (i.e., by one grade level, 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 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).
Not all of 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

Paper selection

First, let me explain how the process of your selection of a paper will work.
You are to send me links to the papers you think might be good candidates. (I can accept pdf files
if for some reason a link may not exist or work.) I will review them and get back to you either
with an approval or with a brief explanation of why I think this paper will not work. If you very
strongly disagree with me, please come to my office and make your argument in person. Otherwise,
continue looking while keeping my feedback on previous papers in mind.

I will very likely reject a few of your initial proposals. I will do so not with the intent to hurt you, but,
rather, with the intent to enforce the criteria that the paper must satisfy, as described in the next paragraph.
Furthermore, I will not be "nice" and approve your paper just because the deadline may be approaching:
   Lack of planning by you will not constitute an emergency for me.
Remember:  If you fail to get your paper 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.

Note that bombarding me with a heap of papers will not do you any good. Part of the reason why
the final talk is worth more than the midterm one is that you have to invest a considerable time
selecting a paper. This means, you have to carefully think whether:
 - it contains enough math, and yet
 - is presentable to your peers in just 15-20 minutes, in a way that it would be understandable to them.
If you put the burden of selecting a paper on me, then I will insist on your sharing your grade with me.
While I am not specifying a maximum number of papers that you can send me, you should keep in
mind that this number will be around 5. As you approach this limit, I will tell you that you have just
one more paper to propose without consequences to your grade. Each subsequent paper over this limit
will result in a reduction of your final course grade by 1% per paper.

Please note:  I will not bear any responsibility for your selection of the paper, even though I
approve it.  With several students in the class, I can only afford to screen a paper to see that it
satisfies the criteria stated above. I cannot afford to actually read it and understand what it presents.
Thus, it may so happen that as you start preparing your presentation, you may find that the paper
is lacking in a number of aspects (e.g., is very unclearly written, or has insufficient material).
You may even have to change the paper after my initial approval. So, as a matter of being prudent,
start looking for a paper as early as possible, and remember:
The responsibility for selecting a paper lies entirely with you.

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).

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. However,
routine derivations themselves (if they are based on the standard undergraduate mathematics,
like the solution of a linear differential equation), need not be presented.

Technical details of the selected paper

The above being said, you are still 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 15 minutes, practice your presentation to
be for 15 minutes, not for 15+2=17 minutes. Something always goes wrong at the actual talk, and it ends up
being a minute or so 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.