If you present a paper: one critique of a different paper than the one you will present (10% of final mark)
If you do not present a paper: three critiques (10% of final mark for each critique)
To be done individually (i.e., no team)
Due date: at 11:59 pm on the day before the paper is scheduled for discussion (see schedule)
Submission: via LEARN
Format
At most 2 pages
Put yourself in the shoes of a reviewer for a conference or journal
Give constructive feedback to the authors
For every criticism, make a suggestion to improve the paper
Mention also the good aspects of the paper
If you don't understand something, explain what is unclear about the paper and how clarity could be improved
If you'd like to see examples of reviews of papers submitted to major Machine Learning conferences, have a look at OpenReview. For instance, you can see the reviews of papers submitted to ICLR-2022 (International Conference on Learning Representations).
Suggested questions to structure your critique
Overview
In your opinion:
What is the paper about?
What are the contributions?
What is the take home message?
Significance and originality
In your opinion:
Are the ideas novel/original?
Are the contributions significant?
Soundness
In your opinion:
Are the ideas presented technically correct?
Are the proofs accurate?
Are the algorithms correct?
Evaluation
In your opinion:
Are the ideas/algorithms empirically or theoretically evaluated?
If some assumptions are made, are they realistic?
Is scalability demonstrated?
Related work
In your opinion:
Is the paper properly situated with respect to related work?
Is there a brief survey of related work?
Do the authors explain similarities and differences with previous work?
Readability
In your opinion:
Is the paper well structured?
Does the abstract properly and accurately summarize the paper?
Do the introduction and conclusion clearly explain the contributions and the take home message?
Is the flow of ideas easy to follow?
Is the paper well written?
Are all the technical terms and abbreviations explained?