Reading and Commenting Guidelines

CS 208 Spring 2019

For many of our class meetings, we will assign advance readings, which you are supposed to comment on using the collaborative annotation tool NB. You should always post at least one comment, ideally more. Your comments should be posted by midnight the night before lecture. Here are some examples of things to think about when reading and commenting:

• How would you summarize the main points in a few sentences?
• What points do you find particularly confusing?
• What are the key notions and concepts introduced (in both high-level and technical terms)? Why are particular choices made in the definitions? What would happen if things were defined differently?
• What are the main results? How would you describe the conceptual messages underlying the formal mathematical statements? Why are the results interesting (or not)? How could they possibly be improved?
• What are possible connections or relevance to the other readings or anything else you have seen (inside or outside this course)?
• Do you agree or disagree with any of the opinions expressed?
• What interesting questions does the material bring to mind (not just the explicitly stated open problems)?

If you are uncomfortable posting some comments to the forum, you may post them as a private comment on Piazza. We will also post some of the supplementary reading on NB, as it can be convenient to use NB to ask questions about it.