Subject: Position Paper #2 Peer Editing Guidelines
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@buffalo.edu>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:03:33 -0500 (EST)

Reminder:

The peer editing guidelines for tomorrow are online at:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/584/S10/peered2.html

Please familiarize yourself with them. 

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Subject: Re: Position Paper #2 Peer Editing Guidelines
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@buffalo.edu>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:53:16 -0500 (EST)

A student writes:
"For this position paper you name 6 points. In our discussion on
"what is computation", do I have to evaluate all 6? Or just the
first argument? Because that seems a lot longer than just 2 pages."

Reply:  
By 6 "points", I assume you're referring to the 6 statements that are
part of the argument. Yes, you need to evaluate all 6. Even if you were
"just" to evaluate "the first argument", that would be 5 statements to
evaluate.

If you write 6 paragraphs (one per statement), with each one containing
between 40 and 80 words (say, about 4-8 sentences), you should be able
to fit it all on 2 pages. Some of the evaluations ought to be fairly
short and straightforward. For example, my guess is that most of you
will agree with Knuth's definition of "algorithm". So all you'd have to
say is something like, "I agree with Knuth's definition, because it is
close to what Prof. Rapaport presented in lecture", or "I agree with
Knuth's definition, because it is close to Turing's definition of a
Turing machine". That's only about 16 words.

On another matter, I really hope that you've already finished doing
this and aren't just starting now (at almost 9pm the night before it's
due :-), when you've had all week to work on it. (If you had evaluted
one statement per night, you would be finished by now :-)

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Subject: Re: Position Paper #2 Peer Editing Guidelines
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@buffalo.edu>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:55:08 -0500 (EST)

A student writes:
"Its just that it seems they are two different conclusions;
how can you agree with two separate conclusions?"

Reply:  
There are two different arguments here:

I. An argument from premises 1,2,3, & 4 to conclusion 5.
II. An argument from premise 5 to conclusion 6.

You should evaluate them separately.