CS 15-199: Discovering Logic (Spring 2011)

Presentations

The purpose is for the presenting students to develop their research and presentation skills, and for the students in the audience to develop their critiquing skills. Each presentation will last 20 minutes, and there will be 2 each recitation starting the third week of class. Presentations are individual, unless the class turns out to be very popular in which case we will have group presentations instead.

How do I go about a presentation?

Select your topic (see below) and a delivery date. Do so at least 2 weeks in advance and in consultation with the instructor.
Research your topic by using the web, the library, or whatever will give you a sufficient understanding. You are expected to be able to explain this topic to your peers at a level where they can in turn tell their friends and answer questions they may have. You are not expected to become an expert :-)
Prepare a 15 minute presentation using PowerPoint or equivalent software. Note that in 15 minutes you will not have time for many slides. One week before you presentation date, submit a draft to the instructor and get feedback. Finalize your slides.
On the selected date, give your presentation.
Both the instructor and your peers will give you feedback on your presentation.

How are presentations evaluated?

We will be using a rubric to evaluate each presentation. The rubric will be filled by both the instructor and the students in the audience and will be used to give feedback.

For presenters: Presentations account for 30% of the grade in the class, so it is very important to prepare them very well.
For the audience: The quality of the feedback will contribute to the 15% participation portion of the grade.

As the semester progresses, presentations are expected to be better and better.

Example presentation topics

The following are some examples of presentation topics. You are encouraged to propose others!

People

Gottfried Leibnitz
Gottlob Frege
Georg Cantor
Ludwig Wittgenstein
David Hilbert
Henri Pointcaré
Kurt Gödel
John von Neumann
Alan Turing
...

Logic

Modal logic
Hoare logic
Epistemic logic
Hilbert's program
...

Others

Set theory
Hilbert's problems
...

The following topics were presented in past editions of the course. It is unlikely that the instructor will let you use them as presentation topics.

People

Christos Papadimitriou
George Boole

Logic

Theorem proving
Temporal logic
Fuzzy logic
Paradoxes

Others

Mathematics in the 19th Century
Non-euclidean geometries
Illuminism and Positivism
Dadaism