Instructions for COMS 6998-7 Spring 2025

Reading response instructions

Assigned readings for a given date are listed in the schedule above. The reading response is due at 7:00 AM Eastern Time of the given date. (It is okay to be late or miss a few of these, but if you miss more than a few, you will be in jeopardy of receiving a "bad grade" in the class!)

1. Do the assigned reading (all papers listed as "Assigned reading", including the ones with a leading asterisk). Taking notes as you read is strongly recommended!
2. Open your favorite text editor and type up your thoughts on the assigned reading. If you don't have any original thoughts, then a very brief summary that demonstrates your understanding of the reading will suffice.
3. It is completely fine if you don't understand everything in the reading! But do make an effort: read things multiple times if necessary, consult other sources to fill in gaps in your knowledge. Include any lingering questions you have in your reading response.
4. Post your reading response on EdStem under the appropriate subcategory under "Reading responses" before the deadline.

Paper presentation instructions

The assigned readings with a marked with a leading asterisk are for student presentations.

The goals of the paper presentation are:

• to recapitulate key ideas in the paper, especially those that might have been subtle or difficult for the reader to grasp;
• to put the paper in context of the rest of the course so far;
• to present your own insights about the paper's topic (if any); and
• to stimulate discussion from the audience.

Here are the general instructions:

1. Read and take extensive notes on the paper.
2. Make a plan for the presentation on the paper in consultation with the instructors or TAs.
   • Keep the presentation short (20-25 minutes) to leave plenty of time for questions and discussion.
   • Stick to the most important parts; the instructors/TAs can give guidance on this.
   • Strive for clarity and simplicity as much as possible!
   • The presentation should be understandable by students who have been following the course.
   • The presentation should put the paper in context with the rest of the course.
3. Prepare the presentation (slides or notes for whiteboard talk).
   • Some useful guidelines.
   • More useful guidelines.
   • Even more useful guidelines.
   • If you are using slides, a rough guideline is to use at most 10 slides (not counting title / transition slides). Even fewer if some of your slides are "dense".
4. Deliver the presentation!
   • See the linked guidelines above for tips about delivery.

It is possible to work in pairs for the paper presentations if the paper is on the "heavier" side. In this case, you should also produce "scribe notes" that go into a bit more depth about the paper, giving more background and filling in missing details (from the presentation and also from the paper). Ideally, this would be available to the rest of the class at the time of the presentation, and definitely should be finalized within a week after the presentation.

You must meet with the instructor or a TA to discuss the presentation prior to the date of the presentation. Please contact them to request a brief meeting (30-45 minutes).

Exceptions: Daniel's office hours on Tuesday, March 4 will be moved to Friday March 7 @ 9-10am.

Feedback on paper presentations

After every student presentation, everyone will fill out a Google Form to give feedback to the presenter. Although the Google Form will collect your emails, we will remove it before sending the feedback to the presenter. (As with the reading responses, it is okay to be late or miss a few of these, but if you miss more than a few, you will be in jeopardy of receiving a "bad grade" in the class!)

Note: If you are unable to use the Google Form (because of LionMail nonsense), then for each student presentation, email me your responses to the following:

1. Your UNI
2. Very briefly describe one thing you learned from the presentation.
3. What is one thing that you especially liked about the presentation?
4. What is one thing that could be improved in the presentation?

These will be due at 6pm of the Tuesday after the presentations.

Course project

The course project is an opportunity to engage in research on theoretical foundations of (large) language models. You are free to pick any topic you like, within reason.

Some examples of suitable project "types" are as follows.

• Prove a new and interesting theoretical result in a new or existing model. You can be ambitious, but do also aim for something interesting to show by the end of the semester.
• Simplify an existing but complicated result in a new and non-trivial way.
• Conduct a new and interesting experimental study inspired by theory. (I hope you have your own computing resources to do this.)

You may work in individually, or in teams of up to three. The expectation for the project naturally scales with the size of the team.

Deadlines:

• 3/14 by 5pm EST: Submit a project proposal on Gradescope.
• 4/14 by 5pm EST: Submit a brief progress report on Gradescope that explicitly refers back to your project proposal: what has been accomplished, what goals should be revised, etc.?
• 5/5 by 5pm EST: Submit a final project report on Gradescope. Please limit its length to at most eight pages (plus whatever is needed for references); quality and clarity are more important than quantity.

Instructions for the proposal, progress report, and final report (shamelessly taken from Dave Blei's class). The only substantive change is that you can go up to eight pages for the final report. (You can add an "appendix" that doesn't count toward the eight pages, but it might not be read.)

Here is a LaTeX template you can use.