Assignment
2
Probabilistic Models of
Human and Machine Intelligence
CSCI
7222
Fall 2013
Assigned Sep 12
Due Sep 24
Goal
The
goal of this assignment is to give you experience in reading research
articles involving probabilistic approaches to machine learning. You
should read the Weiss article on the class syllabus and see if you can
unpack the article on your own. If so, go ahead and write the
commentary before class on Tuesday. If it feels dense (either in
the modeling bit or in understanding the issues in human and machine
vision), you can wait to write your commentary until after class on
Tuesday when I'll give an overview of the paper.
The Task
Write a one-page commentary on the article.
The commentary should start with a summary of what you think the main
or most interesting ideas are in the article. You do not need to
summarize the entire article. You can assume that the reader of
your commentary will have read the article, but give your take on why
others should be interested in it and what research contribution it
makes.
After this summary of the main ideas, you can embellish your commentary
with one or more of the following:
- Questions about the
material
for further discussion, either
clarification questions or points of disagreement with the authors (``I
don't see how such and such will work as the author claims...'').
- Comments on how the
assigned reading relates to other
material you've read, or, if you feel ambitious, you can track down
related work in the field and discuss how the assigned article compares
to this other work.
- A critique of the work, that might include: What
are the flaws in the
ideas
presented? What are the limitations? Do the authors place their work in
the appropriate theoretical perspective? Do the authors overstate their
results?
- Your ideas for how the work could be extended or made more
interesting and more relevant.