Assignment 5: Asking Good Questions

Before you begin

• Go over the module Skill: How to ask good questions if you did not attend the lecture on Week 5.

Description

For this assignment you will practice asking questions about academic research. While there can be many contexts in which questions arise, we will focus on questions you might have when you first start becoming familiar with someone's research. For this exercise, you can choose one of the following scenarios:

• (A) A graduate student hands you a paper and asks you to read the introduction and prepare some questions you'd like to ask them.

• (B) You go to a research presentation at a colloquium, and you prepare questions as you are listening. At the end of the talk you raise your hand to ask one question. Later, you meet the speaker and can ask more question.

For either scenario, we recommend continuing with the paper you have been reading in Assignments 3 and 4. For B, you will need to find a video presentation of the paper. Many recent papers have video presentations, either a recording from the conference or a pre-recorded video to be shared in a virtual conference. However, it is possible that the paper you chose does not have an available video.

For Scenario A, re-read the introduction of the paper that you chose pausing to note down questions. Reflect once you are finished reading about additional questions you are left with.

For Scenario B, watch the video of the talk and pause at the end before hearing the Q&A (if applicable). Write down as many questions as you can think of. Then select your favorite question that you'd like to ask when you raise your hand.

In your submission include:

• Title and author of the paper, link to a PDF of the paper, and (if applicable) link to the video that you watched.

• List of all questions you came up with and (if applicable) source of inspiration for the question.

• Your favorite question and why you think it is a good question.

You can get inspiration for the types of questions you can ask from materials covered in class:

• Fong. Synthesis questions from Reading a Computer Science Research Paper

• Alan Bundy. Questions to ask of AI systems

Submission

This assignment is due on November 7, 2022 Monday 11:59pm.

Please submit a text entry with your answers on Canvas here.