Basic rules and guidelines for your presentation

Steps to prepare for both presentations


    1. Selecting 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 somewhat more complex and is described in more detail in the section on Final project below.
        Very important:  You must select your topic and receive my confirmation (in writing) at least 10 days before the day of the first rehearsal (not presentation!) by anyone in the class.
         If you miss this deadline, the following will occur:
          -  For the midterm, I will assign you a topic that has not yet been taken. You will not be able to dispute or alter my assignment.
          -  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 (not rehearsal).  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 3.4% 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. However, the rule in item 2 above about obtaining my confirmation 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 that you have about the material. Try to answer them as you read the part again (and again, and again,...). Ask me (or AI) if you still don't know the answer after having read the part three times.
Keep in mind the important rule (which will also apply to your final presentation):
Regardless of what resources you have used to understand the material, you, and you alone, are responsible for understanding everything that you will present and explaining it to my satisfaction. If gaps in your understanding are uncovered during your rehearsal, I will guide you on how they should be mended. If (the same or different) gaps appear during your presentation, your score will be substantially reduced.

I recommend that you find and follow stylistic suggestions about giving an efficient presentation under the link "Presentation-related materials" on the course web page. 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.

I expect you to come prepared to your rehearsal. This means that you must have:
   - A plan or outline of your talk (not just an Outline slide, but a worked-out set of notes).
   - Notes for the majority of the derivations. You are responsible for understanding all the derivations in your topic. If the the assigned resources skip a derivation, you must reconstruct it. If they skip some background information, you are to research and provide it. If you cannot reconstruct a given calculation, you must ask me about it during my office hours before the rehearsal. (This, obviously, means that you must plan ahead.) I will not provide help, apart from minor one, with derivations at the rehearsal, because its focus will on your presentation, not on the technical details. To receive help with those of the derivations that you have not been able to follow before the rehearsal, you must come to my office during office hours.
   - Slides for more than a half of your talk.
These components do not need to be in their final form, of course (after all, the purpose of rehearsing your talk 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 a non-key step in the derivation of a 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 did not understand a key step of a derivation of a formula (or a concept, etc.) and asked me about it at the rehearsal (as
  (ii) You could not uinderstand a derivation  and just glance over it during the rehearsal. 
  (iii) I (as opposed to you) do not understand your derivation, after repeatedly asking for a clarification.
If these instances 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 :-)). You will need to email me those notes within 24 hours of the respective presentation; people who do not meet this deadline will receive only minimal feedback from me about their own presentations.
Your notes on your classmates's talks must be sent as plain text and be clearly separated into positive and negative ones.
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

No later than March 1, I will post a list of approved topics (containing book chapters and/or papers) from which I encourage you to select one on which you will present. When you select a topic, you need to let me know about it by email. As soon as I approve your topic (in a response to you via email), 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 also propose a paper of your choice from the two. However, based on past experience, I do not encourage 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 your proposed 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 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 two such proposals.

Remember:  If you fail to get your selection of topic approved at least 10 days before the day of the first scheduled rehearsal, 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.

Rules about your presentation

All of the rules regarding the Midterm presentation, except for your needing to relate your topic to those of other speakers, also apply to the final one. Let me briefly summarize them here:
- You will need to begin whis a motivation for, and outline of, your talk; you must also have a Conclusions slide at the end;
    > Also, as a cosmetic point, you will need to cite the full credentials of the book chapter or paper on your title page, as shown here.
- You, and you alone, are responsible for explaining the material of your topic to my satisfaction;
- Follow stylistic suggestions about clarity of the presentation found under the link "Presentation-related materials";
- You must come to the rehearsal prepared; what this means and what consequences will follow for not being prepared, are outlined above;
- You will need to send me your brief notes on your classmates' presentations within 40 hours of the final exam (this is more than for the Midterm presentation given that you have other final exams to prepare for);
- You must also send me a pdf or PowerPoint file of your presentation no later than by 11:59 pm of the day of the presentation; the consequence of not doing so, or doing so late, will be a reduction of your score by 0.5% of your overall numeric grade.

    Additional rules specific to the final presentation are as follows:
- Your goal is not to simply retell  the book chapter or paper.  Rather, you must prepare a story based on it. Your story line must clearly present the setup, main steps, and all assumptions that went into obtaining the results of the topic. You are not responsible for explaining why so and so assumptions hold, but you are responsible for explaining what every detail of your setup means. (Also, note that a picture or even pictures can help with your explanation significantly.)
- Your story must be based on the entirety of the material assigned for your topic. However, this does not mean that you must present every technical detail of it. Rather, you are responsible for identifying key concepts and presenting details for them only, while skipping details of secondary importance. Here, you should plan on consulting me both before and during your rehearsal on what details you need (versus do not need) to present. Again, you will be held responsible for having this communication with me and identifying details (if any) that can be skipped. Skipping details that have not been approved (for being skipped) by me in writing will lead to a proportionate reduction of your score.

Presenting all key derivations

This, actually, is a rule from the Midterm project. I reiterate it here to stress its importance.

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

That is, once again: You must work out all of the derivations -- 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 will on your presentation, not on the technical details. I may ask you to reproduce any derivation found in your topic, and if you cannot do it, then I will assign you to work it out later and submit it, in addition to your final presentation, on the day of the final talk.

Practicing your timing

I will moderately penalize you for going more than 2 minutes over the time limit (i.e., if you run out of time by less than 2 minutes, your score will not be reduced). Keep in mind that 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 2-3 minutes under the time limit. However, if you go more than 3 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. If you feel like your presentation is too short, it will be your responsibility to run it by me to receive my suggestions on how this should be amended.