Colloquium Speaker Reviews
Overview
Your weekly assignment will consist of reviewing each
speaker. These summaries will have several components
(see grading rubric below):
- Title Section (required): This includes a
title of your paper, your name, and the date of the
talk or when you wrote the summary. A title such as "A
review of the talk by David Reimann" or "A review of
the talk on tessellations of the plane by David
Reimann" is a reasonable title. Your title you contain
the speaker's name and possibly a shortened version of
the speaker's talk title.
- Talk Summary (required): The talk summary
will provide an overview of the content of the
speaker's talk, including any ideas or concepts you
found interesting. It should have four paragraphs as
follows:
- A paragraph summarizing the speaker's background
and content of the talk. This information is
available from the talk abstract and the student
introduction. Provide a bibliographic citation for
the talk in this paragraph.
- Three paragraphs, each containing an important
topic from the talk. Some talks may require you to
look up information about the topic. One great
source for information on mathematical topics is MathWorld.
Wikipedia also contains many good articles about
mathematical topics, but should not be considered
the definitie answer on a topic; you should use
the peer-reviewed sources listed for such answers.
Professors can also help clarify the content of
the talk, so ask us if you need additional
information.
- Question and Answer (Extra Credit): Following the
talk, protocol allows a brief question and answer
period. If you ask the speaker a question following
the talk, you can earn extra credit by writing a
paragraph on the question you asked and the speaker's
response. Asking good questions may require you to do
a littel reading about the topic before the talk. Many
topics can be studied with on-line resources and from
books in the department. You can also ask one of your
professors about the topic. Questions can range from
clarification of expansion of technical points to
asking a speaker about the motivation behind their
work, graduate school oportunities at their
institution, or for general academic advice. Students
instroducing a speaker can also earn credit for this
without writing an entire review.
- Worked problems (Extra Credit): If the speaker
provided additional exploration problems, you can earn
some extra credit by providing a solution (in LaTeX)
as a part of your review.
- Personal Response (required): Write a
paragraph containing your personal response. It will
provide your personal reflection of the speaker,
including your attitudes toward the speaker and the
material presented. Consider the following questions
as you formulate your writing:
- Why was this talk interesting to you?
- What ideas from the talk can be used in your
current or future courses?
- What new knowledge did you gain?
- What existing knowledge did you apply in a new
way?
- What, if any, information was missing from the
talk?
- Did the talk inspire you to investigate the
subject or related subjects in more detail?
- Could you envision yourself doing a FURSCA
project, independent study, or REU on the subject?
- Were there any ethical or philosophical issues
raised?
- Bring a friend (Extra Credit): Include a one
sentence paragraph in your personal response with the
name of your friend and if they liked the talk. For
example, "I brought my friend Leonardo da Vinci to
colloquium this week and he enjoyed the talk."
- Bibliography (required): A BibTeX format
bibliography containing at least the citation for the
talk.
Summaries will be due at the next regularly scheduled
class meeting time unless otherwise specified. You must
submit a paper hardcopy of your response, email is not
acceptable.
Good communication is a vital part of any profession.
One goal of this course is to help instruct you on how
to effectively communicate as a mathematics or computer
science professional. Your written summaries can form
the basis of a portfolio that can be used by you to
demonstrate to others (future employers, etc) your
ability to communicate. Take these writing assignments
seriously! Spell check your work. Take the time to
correct any issues you have once the marked papers are
returned to you.
Your review must be written in LaTeX, which is the
standard for professional communication in both
mathemtics and computer science. Many of our speakers
will have prepared their talks using LaTeX! Each week
you must demonstrate your skill at using several
features of LaTeX to produce some interesting formulae,
set of symbols, or other material related to the talk.
You should use this as an opportunity to learn more
about using LaTeX. LaTeX is a superset of TeX and both
use a nearly identical syntax. LaTeX is available in the
Sleight (Palenske 231) and Putnam 251 computer labs via
MikTeX. LaTeX is freely
available for linux, mac, and windows, so go ahead and
get your own copy! More information is available on the
main course page.
First, download and save the following files:
- Gauss.tex
- colloquium.bib
- Gauss.jpg
- cv.bst
These will produce Gauss.pdf.
Mathematica can produce TeX/LaTeX code that can be
placed inside mathematical mode in your TeX/LaTeX file.
You can use the TeXForm
function to do this conversion. This is particularly
useful when producing a TeX/LaTeX document using results
obtained from Mathematica.
The Albion
Math/CS Colloquium Schedule page contains links to
the BibTeX citations for each of the talks this
semester, which can be placed into your .bib file and
cited. Google
Scholar has an option to provide BibTeX formats
for citations by setting this option in the Google
Scholar Preferences. Once a search is complete,
you can click on the "Import inot BibTeX" link which
will display a BibTeX entry that can be included in your
.bib file. Because these citations are automatically
created, sometimes these citations may need a little
editing to provide a correct form.
Grading Rubric
Grade
Element |
Comments |
Possible
Points |
Earned
Points |
Introduction
Basic overview, speaker information, BibTeX
citation.
This should be several sentences. |
|
2 |
|
Summary
clear and interesting review of material
presented, description of interesting concepts
and ideas, importance/significance of talk
material is presented, demonstrated knowledge of
subject, no omissions of important concepts, no
factual errors, no padding with tangential
material
This should be between 100 and 400 words. |
|
6 |
|
Personal Response
your attitudes of the speaker's talk
This should be between 50 and 200 words. |
|
2 |
|
Structure, Language, Grammar, Mechanics, use
of LaTeX
well organized, appropriate style, fun to read,
good flow and trajectory, good balance of
presentation, smooth transitions.
Good word choice, correct audience, proper tone,
active voice, vibrant language, lack of
redundancies, no slang, precise.
Grammatically correct, no punctuation errors,
sentences match in subject and verb, no run-on
sentences, paragraphs well constructed.
No typos, no misspellings, no capitalization
errors, sources are properly cited, double
spaced, proper margins, appropriate length,
appropriate font, no other oddities
Proper and sufficient use of LaTeX. |
|
2 |
|
Bring a Friend
You can earn extra credit by bringing a friend and
writing about it. |
|
2 (semi-optional) |
|
Speaker Question and Answer
You can earn extra credit by asking the speaker
about the content of the talk and writing a
paragraph containing the question you posed and a
summary of the answer (at most one per speaker).
Points awarded will be based on the the depth of
the question and your ability to write about your
dialog with the speaker in a clear and concise
manner.
This should be between 50 and 100 words. |
|
2 (semi-optional) |
|
Solutions to posed problems
You can earn extra credit by solving one or more
problems posed by the speaker. The solution must
be provideed in writing using LaTeX. Points
awarded will be based on the the hardness of the
problem, the quality of your solution, and your
ability to present it in a clear and concise
manner. |
|
0-4 (optional) |
|
Total Points |
|
12-20 |
|
Copyright 1996-2010, David A.
Reimann. All rights reserved. |
|