notes

How to read a paper

https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~akella/CS740/S12/740-Papers/paper-reading-keshav.pdf

Three-pass Appraoch

First Pass

A quick scan to get a birds eye view of the paper.

Time: 5-10 mins

Steps

  1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and ![[]]introduction
  2. Read the section and subsection headings (ignore everything else)
  3. Read the conclusions
  4. Glance over the references, mentally check off the ones youve already read

You should be able to answer the 5 Cs

  1. Category - What type of paper is this?
  2. Context – Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem?
  3. Correctness – Do the assumptions appear to be valid?
  4. Contributions – What are the papers main contributions?
  5. Clarity – Is the paper well written?

Second Pass

Read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. It helps to jot down key points or make comments in the margin.

Time: 1 hour

Steps:

  1. Look carefully at the figures and illustrations
  2. Mark relevant unread references for further reading

Third Pass

The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper (as if you wrote it yourself)

  • Make the same assumptions
  1. This pass requires great attention to detail
  2. Critically challenge assumptions
  3. Jot down ideas for future work

Time: 4-5 hours for beginner, 1 hour for more expereinced reader