Objectives:
- Normalize struggle inherent in wrestling with theoretical material
- Promote a growth-mindset: this is a skill that is learned, not inborn.
- Teach students how to break-down paper-reading into smaller, simpler tasks
- Debunk common misconceptions about paper-reading (e.g. that papers should be read linearly, like a novel, that paper should be read whole, etc.)
Pre-class work
- Spend one hour reading and trying to get as much as you can out of the following paper:
- Negative-Weight Single-Source Shortest Paths in Near-linear Time
- Note that the paper is far too long to read entirely in one hour; use strategies like those from the paper-reading guide to figure out where to focus your attention and try to get as much value as you can in the hour. In particular, start with the introduction and try to understand what are the main contributions of the paper (both the high-level takeaways and the precise theorem statements), and then selectively delve into the technical sections as needed to improve your understanding and/or according to your interest.
- Answer questions:
- What is the high-level narrative for the paper?
- How did you go about constructing this narrative?
- Which parts of the paper did you feel like you understood? Why?
- Which parts of the paper did you feel like you did not understand? Why?
- For the parts of the paper that were difficult, what strategy did you use? or, if you feel like you didn’t have a particular strategy, how did you instinctually approach these difficult parts?
In class: [slides]
- Normalize struggle:
- It is common for people approaching theory for the first time to freeze, skip it, or get bogged down by details (which may be confusing and difficult) and therefore to miss the bigger picture.
- Being intimidated by theory is also very common – there are stereotypes for who “looks like” they would be good at theory, and it’s something we need to address as a community.
- Understanding theory papers is not something that only “special” people can do. With guidance and deliberate practice, theory papers can actually become accessible to everyone, and today, we’re going to give you both guidance and practice to get you started.
- Topics:
- How do you connect the technical (and often intimidating) statement of a theorem with the implications of that theorem?
- Oftentimes theory papers include definitions of formal or abstract objects (which can be difficult to understand): how do you gain intuition about these objects’ properties?
- How do you construct a general narrative of a very proofy theory paper without having to understand all of the proofs in detail?
- How do you critically evaluate a theory paper? What aspects of a paper should you be evaluating other than the correctness of the proofs?