JohnWitman
New member
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2026
- Messages
- 7
I'm in a graduate-level engineering course and the syllabus says we have to write "paper critiques" for every class meeting. I have no idea what that means.
I asked my professor and he said "analyze the paper, don't just summarize it." That's not helpful.
From what I can find online, a critique isn't just saying whether you liked the paper. It's analyzing the research itself — the problem, the methods, the conclusions. One source I found says to address questions like: What did I like? What did I dislike? What are future directions? What questions am I left with?
But this is for a computer science class. Does that change things? I'm so lost. Has anyone written critiques for engineering papers? What actually goes in them?
I asked my professor and he said "analyze the paper, don't just summarize it." That's not helpful.
From what I can find online, a critique isn't just saying whether you liked the paper. It's analyzing the research itself — the problem, the methods, the conclusions. One source I found says to address questions like: What did I like? What did I dislike? What are future directions? What questions am I left with?
But this is for a computer science class. Does that change things? I'm so lost. Has anyone written critiques for engineering papers? What actually goes in them?
You gotta figure out if the research actually proves what it claims to prove. For CS/engineering, look hard at the evaluation section. Did they compare against reasonable baselines? Or did they cherry-pick? Profs want to see that you spotted the weak spots. You can do it!