Course talk:CPSC522/Online Pattern Analysis by Evolving Self-Organizing Maps

I believe that providing a general overview of the topic and the motivation behind the work before diving into the technical details can really help readers ease into the subject. The abstract is a great place for doing this which was still missing. Including brief descriptions for the technical concepts or keywords would make it easier to understand the algorithms (e.g. reference vector, age, etc.). It is always a good idea to introduce the technical aspects in simple words before presenting the mathematical details. This way, you can establish the purpose in a clear way and facilitate navigation. The wording of some sentences was a bit too complex which militated against a smooth reading (e.g. “Where we have the centres matters for which centres we find to be the closest to the input data and therefore which we connect to form topology”). Overall, it was a good page, and I liked how you provided your own opinions in the discussion section.

(5) The topic is relevant for the course.

(4) The writing is clear and the English is good.

(5) The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds).

(3) The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand.

(3) The abstract is a concise and clear summary.

(4) There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear.

(5) There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code.

(5) It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic).

(5) It is correct.

(5) It was neither too short nor too long for the topic

(5) It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page).

(4) It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki.

(4) The references and links to external pages are well chosen.

(5) I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic.

(4) This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate.

If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 17.5/20

The scores refer to the page I’m reading now while I’m critiquing, and I think some parts are still under construction, as suggested in the to add section. If the page will be changed in the meantime I think the scores will change as well :) I think the page is missing a “common” structure, something that can help the user to understand the links between the two papers between diving into the details. It would be useful to better explain the connection between the two papers. The Summary, Abstract, Related on, Built on and Discussion sections might be still under construction, as suggested in “To Add”? And I agree that some images or diagrams might help the reader to understand the topics or the algorithms better. Paper 1 English is not clear in the “Conclusion” section; maybe it is possible to use some rewording to make it more clear and easy to follow. Paper 2 English not really clear in the “Introduction”. I think there might be a typo (artefact instead of artifact) in the “ESOM” section. In the introduction it says that the paper attempts to solve the problem of processing online data streams, but it doesn’t give any further explanation or information, which can be interesting. The “Simulation” section contains a lot of information, but some things can be either explained better or taken out; for instance for colour image quantization as online data clustering, at some points it mentions 2 natural images without giving any explanation.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "strongly disagree" and 5 means "strongly agree" please rate and comment on the following: • The topic is relevant for the course: 5 • The writing is clear and the English is good: 2 • The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds): 4 • The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand: 3 • The abstract is a concise and clear summary: - • There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear: 3 • There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code: - • It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic): 5 • It is correct: 5 • It was neither too short nor too long for the topic: 5 • It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page): 5 • It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki: - • The references and links to external pages are well chosen: - • I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic: 3 • This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate: 3 If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 15

You are supposed to fill in an abstract ;^) Often doing this early helps focus the descriptions.

You need to define (technical) terms before you use them, eg., what is a "centre"? You dive into the details without giving us the big picture. The background is supposed to explain what is going on, so we can use the definitions to understand the rest. I cannot understand the background; you need to tell us the background to what you are doing.

How does the second paper build on the first paper?

Why do you believe "Model [sic] that offer these are neural network models."? (Why is it in bold?) Again you jump into the details without giving us the big picture.

Pretend you are explaining this to an intelligence person who only has the background we can assume of a 522 student. It needs to be more of a story that we can understand. Eg., in the simulations, you give what looks like extraneous details (e.g. "epsilon value was set to = 0.4." What is epsilon?), but miss the big picture. One of your goals is that someone who reads this should be able to explain what is going on. I doubt they could at the moment.