CS 159

Revisiting the Paper

  • Hedgehog speaking

    There was so much stuff in that paper! How would I even begin to organize a presentation and discussion about it?

  • LParrot speaking

    That's what we're going to think about now!

There's a few reasons we picked this paper as your "first reading". One reason is that it pretty neatly connects to a topic we learned about in this class (special tokens). But another reason is that this paper has a unique feature: it comes with a blog-post-style recap by the authors!

  • RParrot speaking

    This is actually becoming increasingly common as the NLP field pushes for more transparency, though it's still not the norm.

So in this part of the lesson, we're going to revisit the paper one more time, this time through the lens of the authors' official blog-post-style recap, which covers the same material from a different angle.

The Official Blog-Post-Style Recap

Then, after you've read the post, answer the following reflection questions.

Reflection

Name at least one specific aspect of the research that you felt was more clear in the blog-post-style writeup than in the original paper. Briefly explain what made it more clear.

Name at least one specific aspect of the research that you felt was less clear (or just less detailed) in the blog-post-style writeup than in the original paper. Briefly explain what made it less clear.

Besides comparing content, we can also compare the general writing style used by the blog-post-style writeup vs the paper. Briefly talk about some stylistic differences you noticed between the two. Stylistic aspects you could consider include (but are not limited to): usage of technical vs casual terms, length of sentences and paragraphs, placement and purpose of figures, and pronoun usage.

Takeaways for Paper Presentations

  • LParrot speaking

    Hopefully you had some interesting observations about the blog-post-style writeup!

  • RParrot speaking

    Here are some of our observations, and how they relate to our future in-class paper presentations and discussions.

When you present a paper in class, it's important to bear in mind the purpose of the presentation. The purpose is not to give a complete, detailed overview of every single detail of the paper. Needless to say, it is also not to show off how smart you are by listing off all the things you managed to figure out! Rather, the purpose of the presentation is to give a general overview of the key ideas of the paper, in an accessible and easily understandable way.

In other words, your presentation should feel more like the blog-post-style writeup than the original paper!

While a presentation is obviously not the same thing as a blog post, here are some specific aspects of the blog-post-style writeup that closely match best practices for a presentation:

  • Shared Context: Notice that the blog-post-style writeup opens with a sort of background section that introduces the reader to the basic ideas of how an LLM chatbot works. This section was entirely absent in the original paper (at most, there's one or two sentences that touch on it, but they're buried in the abstract and intro rather than being their own standalone section). This is because of the difference in intended audience: while authors of a paper can safely assume the reader already has extensive technical background, the author of a blog post or presentation has to keep a more general audience in mind. Your presentations should similarly start by establishing some shared context for the audience. In particular, you should always start your presentation by recapping concepts from CS 159 that are relevant to the paper.
  • Casual Tone: The blog-post-style writeup uses a much more casual writing style than the paper. Sentences and paragraphs are shorter, fewer technical terms are used, and the author freely uses personal pronouns like "I" and "you". Your goal with a presentation is to be as clear and understandable as possible, so you should similarly use a casual tone; remember, you are presenting to your peers (classmates), not to a panel of experts or judges!
  • Effective Use of Visuals: A paper is mostly text, maybe sometimes with math or code thrown in. Papers do have figures, but figures are mostly just used to show plots and results, and the expectation is generally that they are just there to supplement the text, which is the main content. By contrast, in a blog post or presentation setting, visuals are "first class citizens"; they are not supplements but are instead core parts of the presentation. A good presentation will make heavy use of visuals to provide examples, illustrate complicated concepts, and abstract away unneccessary details.
  • Amount of Detail: This is perhaps the most important difference between the blog-post-style writeup and the paper. A paper is meant to be a complete account of the research, including all details necessary to reproduce the work. The paper therefore spends a lot of time going over every single detail of the methods and experiments. Sections 3 through 6 of the paper are all dedicated to this, and together they span 6 pages! By contrast, in the blog post, Sections 4 through 6 are about the methods and experiments, and they're much shorter (there's no real page count on a blog post, but if we were to copy that text into LaTeX, it would probably span about 2 pages). This is because the focus isn't on giving an in-depth play-by-play of the research. Instead, the blog post (just like your presentations) aims to give only a high-level overview of the work, giving only enough detail to sketch the outline of the story, and nothing more.
  • LParrot speaking

    Hopefully you found these observations useful in thinking about how you'll present papers to the class.

  • RParrot speaking

    We're looking forward to seeing your presentations in a few weeks!

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