Final Project: Evaluating a Research Paper

The link of my evaluating paper:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~whitney/research/Whitney_Isailovic_Patel_Kubi_Frontiers007.pdf

1. Describe the audience for whom the paper is written. (Provide detail and do not assume that the audience is homogeneous).

a. What concern of the audience is addressed in the paper?

b. Is this concern primarily practical or theoretical?

Audience: Researchers those who had been or will be studying “Quantum Computing” technologies, especially those try to use CAD (computer-aided design) in designing the quantum circuits.

a. Automate most of the tasks involved in generating a physical layout and its associated control logic from a high-level quantum circuit specification.

b. This concern is practical.

2. How is the paper structured? How many headings does the paper use and how are these formatted in the paper? Does the paper follow the APA headings style (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/apa/parts/headings.html)?

The structure of this paper:

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2, 3: Background Knowledge

Section 4, 5: Methodologies – Common method used to control the experimental environment

Section 6, 7, 8: Methodologies in detail – Techniques used in this research

Section 9: Results

Section 10: Conclusions

The paper uses two levels of headings, and the format is:

8. DATAFLOW-BASED LAYOUTS (Level 1)

8.1 Dataflow Graph Analysis (Level 2)

8.2 Placement and Routing (Level 2)

8.3 Annotated Scheduling (Level 2)

9. RESULTS (Level 1)

9.1 Benchmarks (Level 2)

9.2 Evaluation (Level 2)

This paper does not follow the APA heading style. It follows the ACM style.

3. Does the paper contain an abstract? What kind of abstract is it? (See AWGS p. 282).

Yes. The abstract in this paper is results-driven Abstract.

4. What is the paper’ argument structure?

a. What is the paper’s main claim?

b. What reasons does the author provide to support the claim?

c. What type of evidence does the author provide?

Provide some examples of evidence.

Is the evidence quantitative or qualitative?

d. Does the author acknowledge counter-arguments? If so, how does the author

deal with the counter-arguments?

e. Does the paper contain any warrants?

a. Classical electronic circuits can be designed using the CAD (computer-aided design). So can quantum circuits.

b. Provide the quantum CAD flow and compare it with the classical CAD flow.

c. The authors conduct the experiments and get the data. Those data contains the latency and area of the designed circuits. All the data can be provided as evidence. And also, the evidence is quantitative.

d. No.

e. No. It’s about hard science and no such warrants exist.

5. Which moves does the author use in the introduction? (See Table 6 on AWGS p. 244). Identify the moves and describe them. What words or phrases mark the beginning of each move?

In the introduction, the author uses move 1, 2 and 3. The phrases “Quantum computing” in the first sentence marks the beginning of move 1, and the word “while” in the last sentence of paragraph 2 marks move 2. The words “Our goal” in the first sentence of paragraph 3 marks move 3.

6. Does the paper contain any definitions? If so, is it a gloss, a sentence definition, or an extended definition? (See AWGS p. 50-51).

No definition.

7. What is the author’s method? Using Table 22 on AWGS p. 227, give the methods section a score. Does the author justify her/his methodology/

The methods the authors mentioned in the paper are very technical, and they provided 3 kinds of methods to control the experiments. If I follow Table 22 on AWGS p. 227, I will score the method section -6. It seems that the authors didn’t justify their methods.

8. In the paper’s results and discussion sections, what examples of hedging (i.e., qualifications) do you see? (See AWGS p. 125). List at least five examples.

In fact, in this paper, not many examples of hedging can be seen. And, I try to find 5 examples which may be not good. 1^st: The exhaustive search over grids yields the best latency for all benchmarks. 2^nd: Dataflow-based place and route techniques in general produce the lowest latency circuits. 3^rd: We find that greedy heuristic tends to find the best design area-wise. 4^th: Our greedy algorithm produces good result for very simple circuits. 5^th: We found that our dataflow approach generally offers the best latency, often at the cost of area.

9. Which moves do you see in the Discussion Section? (See AWGS p. 270.)

In fact, this paper did not have a “Discussion Section”, but in the “Conclusion” section, the authors mentioned all of Move 1, 2, 3 in that section.

10. Does the author evaluate any previous research? If so, what evaluative language is used? (See AWGS, p. 188).

The author evaluate two previous research paper, discuss the method they use in designing and optimizing the circuit, and then the sentence “While this approach is quite informative in a new field, it quickly becomes intractable as the size of the circuit grows.

11. How does the author refer to the end-of-text citations? How current are most of the citations? If there are older citations, what do these refer to?

The author uses [number] format to refer to the end-of-text citation (IEEE or ACM format maybe). Most of the references cited in this paper were published in 10-15 years. The reason of this is that the “Quantum Computing” technologies were not researched before 15 years. Only one research paper cited in the article was published more than 20 years ago. This paper was cited because the theory described in it is the fundamental theory used in the article.

12. Create a summary (125-200 words) of the paper.

In this paper, the authors try to point out the most important tasks in designing and optimizing a quantum circuit and try to find one or more possible solutions by using computer-aided design (CAD). After describing the background knowledge needed to conduct the research and the common method used to control the experimental environment, three group of researching object were introduced in the paper, such as “grid-based layouts,” “greedy place and route,” and “dataflow-based layouts.” After the results of these experiments emerged, comparison of these original data was done. According to the comparison of the result, no globally optimal method was found, but each method was found to be optimal in some special circuit designing condition. Also, when doing this experiment, some possible future study was found.

The Definition of "Frame" and "Metaphor"

For Frame:


A frame is a structure which we use most frequently in our daily lifes. Just as in the classic definition, a frame should be formed with a skeleton and boundary, but in the lecture given by Professor Lakoff, two parts of a frame were defined. One part is "frame elements" and another is "scenarios." In an institution, such as a hospital, given as an example, all the people such as doctors, nurses and so on, and the space such as operating room, patient room, are all frame elements of a hospital. And the activities done in a hospital such as surgical operations and clinics, are scenarios of a hospital.

For Metaphor:

A metaphor is a link built in one's brain, which, in the case of basic metaphors, was established gradually since one's childhood. Since one's childhood, something meaningful will appear in front of him/her, and when these things repeat to be seen more and more times, the meaning and the phenomena will gradually find the shortest path by brain's activity and the neural circuit will be created. Then we will see something as a kind of metaphor of others.

Chinese Imports and Exports between 2002 and 2006

As can be seen in Figure 1, the Chinese exports and imports did not remain steady in the period. Both exports and imports, although having dips in January 2004, rose sharply and reached a local maximun, to about 38 and 32 billions dollars, in the middle of 2004. Then both declined eventually and reached the low points at about 35 and 30 billions in the end of 2004. After January 2005, the imports, although fluctuating during this period, rose gradually and reached the peak in July 2006. The exports in the same period, however, rose sharply after the middle of 2005 and reached a peak at about 40 billions in the end of 2005. After the peak, the exports suddenly fell off to 37 billions in the beginning of 2006. Before September 2006, the exports fluctuated most of the time.

Task 17 of Unit 4: Letter to Professor - as a TA

Email Title: The Possible Explanation of the Makup Exam's Result

Dear Professor:


I also noticed the big discrepancy between the regular and makeup exam. I prepared the data about the two exams in a table as an attached file. As can be seen, the makeup exam was given at 4 pm on Fri. IMHO, the students who took the makeup exam may have a weekend plan and, as a result, may have not concentrated on the exam. And, they may misunderstand the meaning of the questions without board examples, although I considered them not necessary at that time. Also, the temperature was 28'c, much higher than 20'c, the temperature when the regular exam was given. Maybe this hotter environment made the students feel uncomfortable so that they were not able to focus their attention on the exam very well. What can we do?


Best regards,

Chinfeng Wu

TA of Introductory Biology

Task Ten of Unit 4, on P.129

1. Attractive people have more favorable personal attributes than unattractive people.

In most cases, attractive people have more favorable personal attributes than unattractive people.

2. Economic sanctions are ineffective.

According to the history, most economic sanctions are ineffective.

3. Alcohol causes people to become violent.

Sometimes alcohol causes people to become violent.

4. Passive smoking causes cancer.

Many studies indicated that passive smoking may cause cancer.

5. Recycling is the best solution to the waste disposal problem.

Recycling may be one of the best solutions to the waste disposal problem.

6. Physical exercise prevents depression.

Physical exercise may be useful in preventing depression.

7. Deep tunnels are safer and less vulnerable to earthquake shaking than are shallow tunnels.

Some research shows that deep tunnels are safer and less vulnerable to earthquake shaking than are shallow tunnels.

8. Private schools provide a better education than do public schools.

In some countries, private schools may provide a better education than may public schools.

Move 2 & 3

However, most of the studies have discussed the broader topics about English learners' beliefs and the influential factors of those beliefs. Some studies focused the the research on the difference of beliefs influenced by gender, cultural backgrounds, learning contexts, and so on. Most of these studies have examined learners' beliefs in general, discussing the learners' beliefs influenced by some factors, without considering the differences between other factors. In addition to those factors discussed in those studies, since each academic department requires different English proficiency, the major fields of those students may have effect on their beliefs but not be discussed.

A further study may be conducted on learners' beliefs based on those students with similar cultural backgrounds but different major fields.

Possible Advanced Research Topic

1. The learners' beliefs of EAP students in GWU and the influence of their beliefs in learning
2. The difference of learners' beliefs between students with different major fields
3. The strength of learners' beliefs (how hard to change them) in students with different ages


People in the group:
Abdullah, Chinfeng, Domey, Patipat, Yan