notes

Three Pass Approach

https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/1273445.1273458

First Pass

Initial scan to get the jist of the paper

Steps

1. Read title, abstract, introduction
2. Read section and sub-section headings only
3. Read conclusions
4. Check references for what you have already read

Goals

To answer the five C’s

1. Category - what type of paper?
2. Context - what are the related papers?
3. Correctness - do assumptions seem to be valid?
4. Contributions - what are papers main contributions?
5. Clarity - is paper well written?

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Second Pass

Grasp the content of the paper with supporting evidence

Steps

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

Goals

• Be able to explain the paper with supporting evidence
• Figure out clearly what needs to be done: either give up, read more into the background or a third pass
• Be able to identify if this is a poorly written paper

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Third Pass

Recreate the paper

Steps

• Essentially virtually re-implement the paper making the same assumptions as the authors.
• Be able to identify motivations, assumptions and failings.
• Challenge each assumption in every statement

Goals

• Be able to reconstruct the entire paper from memory

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Doing a Literature Survey

Steps

1. Use academic search engine to find 3-5 recent papers in the area by keyword. Do one pass on each to get sense of the work
2. Find shared citations and repeated author names in bibliography, get the key papers and what they have published recently
3. Go to the researchers website for top conferences and recent proceedings. Compile all these papers and make two passes on each