The instructor will give an introductory lecture for each major topic, after which students will take turns presenting and critiquing articles assigned by the instructor. Demonstration of thorough understanding, rigorous presentation of algorithms, evaluation of scope, significance, applicability will be expected. Demonstrations or evaluations of capabilities of published algorithms or possible improvements will, in many cases, require the presenter's own simulations. Every student will be required to read all articles/handouts and expected to participate in the discussions. Simulations can be done in Matlab, C, using freely downloadable software, or using the instructor's research software (as applicable).

Presentation guidelines:
1. Context and significance: Give clear reasoning of what and why is being discussed, how it contributes to the field / subject (when applicable, how it connects to things we learned earlier).
2. The description of the technical approach should be rigorous and complete, without unnecessary details.
3. Interpret the facts presented, compare with other known or competeing techniques where appropriate. If possible run simple simulations to verify, experiment, better understand or reveal insights.
4. Make clear visuals: Choose the words carefully in titles, bullets, etc. to form a coherent "story". Make sure fonts in figures, tables, equations are legible, axes labeled, legends provided, etc.
5. Check your English.
6. Give proper credit, in proper form, to any individual whose work you are using in your presentation (figures, simulation, ideas, ...)
7. Provide a list of references for the works cited throughout the presentation.


Presentations will be graded and feedback given to students. After feedback, students will be required to revise their presentations and upload the final version into a designated location (TBA). Presentation files should be named according to this convention: [initials]-602_talk-[firstauthor&year].ppt and [initials]-602_talk-[firstauthor&year].pdf. For example, EM-602_talk-Kohonen1990.ppt. If the the subject of a presentation is not a specific paper, then instead of [firstauthor&year] the subject should be given. For example, EM-602_talk-SOMmagnification.ppt .
The presenter must use a commonly available software to produce the presentation in electronic format (ppt, Word, beamer, ...).

The main criteria for grading presentations will be:
- capturing the essence of a paper or the given subject clearly and correctly (5)
- demonstration of thorough understanding, quality of evaluation, criticism, insights (5)
- experiments run by the presenter to demonstrate merits, pitfalls, etc. (3)
- the quality of the visuals including correct references and credits (3)
- speaking style, correct use of English grammar/pronounciation (1)
- handling questions (3)

The approxiamate weighting for each criterion is the number (points) in parentheses. Thus the maximum possible score is 20.