Assignment 1 ------------ Please review this paper critically. One of the main goals of this review is to help you understand how program committees come to a decision about accepting or rejecting a paper. The sentences in parenthesis should help you with the review. 1. Does the paper present new or innovative ideas or material? YES/NO: 2. Is the information in the paper factual and accurate? YES/NO: If no please explain why: 3. Rate the paper on its contributions. none=1, important=5: What is the major contribution of the paper? 4. Rate how well ideas are presented. very difficult to understand = 1, very easy to understand = 5: 5. Rate the overall quality of the writing. very poor = 1, excellent = 5: 6. Acceptance. reject = 1, marginal reject = 2, neutral = 3, marginal accept = 4, accept = 5: 7. Explain in a couple of paragraphs the choices you have made above. (Start by making a short but critical summary of the paper so that it is clear that you understood the paper and its significance or novelty. Then describe what you like or dislike about the paper. Specifically, explain why you have made choices in questions 1, 3, 6 above). 8. Specific comments to the authors. (Any other thing you want to tell the authors. Example, please spell check your paper! you are making a statement without qualifying it in Section 2, para 4) Some tips on wording the review ------------------------------- 1. If you identify a shortcoming in the paper, you should suggest a solution. ("Experiments would be more convincing than simulation.") This is the heart of constructive criticism. If you find a problem but can't think of any suggestion or solution, then you're not being helpful. 2. Your criticism should be directed at the paper, not the author. "The paper did not cover..." is preferred to "The authors did not cover..." 3. Sometimes you will get a paper that had a good idea but was hopelessly executed and written. The right thing is to end your review with something to the effect that you thought it was a good idea, though possibly premature, and you look forward to reading a future version. If it's a bad idea and badly written, don't encourage them to rewrite it. 4. You should not indicate who you are.