ENG3302

October 15th, 2014

To: Dr. Cecelia Musselman
From: Phaelyn Kotuby
Subject: Timothy Rupprecht U2D1 Peer Review
Summary
The paper first explains human interest in artificial intelligence and establishes ants as an inspiration in
recent advances in the field. It then explains how ants exhibit a very efficient form of pathfinding and
how this characteristic bridges a gap between computer science and biology. Then, the source articles
are discussed in greater detail. The conclusion leaves the reader with some ideas of further applications
of ant-inspired artificial intelligence.
Major points
The text reads like an essay as opposed to a literature review; the tone is a bit too informal for this
setting, as it should be aimed towards people in the field instead of a general audience, and the paper
primarily analyzes article-by-article instead of across many at once. The citation style contributes to
this feeling, too I'd recommend only using post-sentence citations instead of prefacing information
with author names or article titles. Much of what the author has already could be kept, but attention
should be drawn to similarities and differences between articles as much as to their contents alone.
Finally, at least one other source should be added and discussed to meet the assignment parameters.
Minor points
The author should include an acknowledgments page, section headings, and a heading for the
referenced works page. Instead of capitalizing WHY in the second paragraph, the author may wish to
italicize the word instead. All other minor points I noticed will likely be taken care of when the rest of
the paper is formalized (for example, the word nope and the occasional use of second person).
Conclusion
This paper covers a very interesting topic and is a good start, but needs a lot of content added and
reorganized. It would benefit greatly from more formal language and a crosswise approach to
discussing sources, as well as at least one more source.