(F20-CS 598) Learning to Learn: Assignments

Grading breakdown: 10% Piazza Posts + 10% In-class Discussion + 40% Presentation + 40% Project

Piazza Posts

For each regular class, you are required to make at least one post on Piazza about the reading by 10:00PM the night before the class. Please don't just summarize the paper, but instead try to engage in a discussion with your classmates.

All the students will post under the given topic's Piazza thread. Typically, we have three papers within a topic. You are free to comment either of the three pappers (or all of them!). Students who come later should avoid repeating the same arguments/comments that the previous posts have already covered. Each post needs to have some original comments that are different from others.

The presenters are encouraged to incorporate some comments from the posts in their presentations.

Here are some things to think about

What might be the limitations of the approach and its assumptions: where might it fail, even if all of its components work as intended?
What might this paper have done that was previously impossible?
What are broader take-aways from the paper that can be applied elsewhere?
What's the most important part of the paper or the method?
Do the experiments justify the paper's argument?

Remember also that while criticizing (especially in hindsight) is often easy, it's equally important to defend a paper.

Presentation

Students will form groups of up to three (1-3) and jointly develop a presentation on an assigned topic. Each group member must deliver a portion of the presentation. Each student should present twice during the course. The grade will be averaged over the two presentations.

Signup: Shortly after the first lecture on August 26, an email will go out to all the registered students with the link to a signup sheet (the link will also be posted on Piazza). Topic assignment is first come, first served, though in case nobody signs up for some topics, we may ask some students to switch to ensure coverage. Each student should sign up two topics.
After the deadline for registered students, any unregistered students interested in taking the course are free to sign up for the remaining spots. The presentation schedule will be finalized by the end of August 28.
Practice presentation (5% of grade): Yuxiong or Raj will schedule a time for your practice presentation approximately a week before your presentation date. The goal is to enable feedback to ensure the highest possible quality of the in-class presentation. All group members must attend. The practice presentation is not expected to be polished or 100% complete, but the grading will be based primarily on evidence that the group is taking the preparation seriously.
Slides (15% of grade): By the day before the scheduled presentation, the group must post the link of the slides on Piazza, to be made available to all the students. (The slides can be further polished before the class). After the presentation, the group must submit the slides in PowerPoint or PDF format to Yuxiong and Raj, and we will make them available on the course webpage. Late submission of the links or slides will forfeit this portion of the grade.
In-class presentation (20% of grade): The presentations will be graded based on clarity, technical depth, successful synthesis of content from multiple papers, ability to involve the students, and responsiveness to feedback from the practice presentation. Presentations will be recorded and made available to other students registered for the class.

Here are two important guidelines

Within each topic, three papers are typically listed. The key objective is to identify a coherent story over these papers. Your presentation typically should not be organized as a sequence of separate single-paper summaries. You are also not expected to cover every part of every paper.
Use of external sources: It is not allowed to use an entire slide deck from another source "as is" as the basis for your presentation. It is fine to "borrow" some slides, graphics, or demos. However, please explicitly give credit whenever you use material from other sources.

Timeline:

Aug 27, 10:00PM: Presentation signup (for registered students) due.
Aug 28, 10:00PM: Presentation signup (for unregistered students) due.
One week before the presentation, specific time to be scheduled: Practice presentation due.
The day before the presentation, 10:00PM: Links of presentation slides due.
The presentation day, 10:00PM: Presentation slides due.

Course Project

This is an opportunity to try out the ideas discussed in the class. Meta-learning is a rapidly developing field. We are looking for projects that get you to think about things differently: a well-motivated and well-executed crazy idea that experiments show doesn't work as well as existing methods will receive a higher grade than adding predictable features to an existing method and getting a performance gain. We will also provide a list of project topics for reference, but you are free to come up your own projects. Students will form groups of up to three (1-3) for projects.

An ideal project should

Be different. Take this as an opportunity to try something new and exciting that might not work.
Be the result of a considerable amount of effort in terms of thinking and working. You should be able to explain why you're doing what you're doing.
Be described by a polished report and presentation. Remember: we see the report and presentation and not your code and the hours you put in.

Timeline:

Sep 27, 10:00PM (5% of grade): One page project proposal due.
Oct 27, 10:00PM (10% of grade): Two page mid-term report due.
Dec 9, Class (15% of grade): Final project presentations.
Dec 11 (10% of grade), 10:00PM: Four page final report due. Use CVPR/ICCV format (Latex+Word Templates here).