Writing for Computer science Flashcards
What is the scope of a paper and why it is important?
It is what you plan to write up in your paper. it is necessary to make choices about what to include, and thus it is necessary to identify what might be included.in this stage your research has become focused on the investigation of a small number of specific questions, and you have preliminary experimental or theoretical results that suggest what the core contribution of the work is going to be
What are the questions that you can ask yourself to define what you need or how to start?
- Which results are the most surprising?
- What is the one result that other researchers might adopt in their work?
- Does it make sense to explain the new algorithms first, followed by a description of the previous algorithms in terms of how they differ from the new work? Or is the contribution of the new work more obvious if the old approaches are described first, to set the context?
- What assumptions or definitions need to be formalized before the main theorem can be presented?
- What is the key background work that has to be discussed?
- Who is the readership? For example, are you writing for specialists in your area, your examiners, or a general computer science audience?
How to choose where the work might be published?
Many factors should be considered when making this decision, such as relevance to your topic and how your work measures against the standard for that forum. In particular, the venue partly determines the scope of a paper.
For example, is there a page limit? Are there specific conventions to be observed? Are the other papers in that venue primarily theoretical or experimental? What prior knowledge or background is a reader likely to have? Do the editors require that your code be available online?
What is Telling a Story when you write a paper?
A cornerstone of good writing is identifying what the reader needs to learn. A strong thesis or paper has a story-like flow, with a sequence of concepts building from a foundation of knowledge assumed to be common to all readers up to new ideas and results.
What is the structure that you can follow to write a paper like telling a story?
There are several common ways to structure the body of a paper:
- Chain in which the results and the background on which they build dictate a logical order for the presentation of the material. First might come, say, a problem statement, then a review of previous solutions and their drawbacks, then the new solution, and finally a demonstration that the solution improves on its predecessors.
- Compression for fast external sorting, the demonstration is a series of graphs and tables based on experiments that compare the costs of sorting with and without compression.
- One option is to structure by Specificity, an approach that is particularly appropriate for results that can be divided into several stages. The material is first outlined in general terms, then the details are progressively filled in.
- Another structure is by Example, in which the idea or result is initially explained by, say, applying it to some typical problem. Then the idea can be explained more formally, in a framework the example has made concrete and familiar.
- A final alternative is to structure the body by Complexity. For example, a simple case can be given first, then a more complex case can be explained as an extension, thus avoiding the difficulty of explaining foundational concepts in a complex framework.
Some other structures are inappropriate for a write-up. For example, the paper should not be a chronological list of experiments and results. The aim is to present the evidence needed to explain an argument, not to list the work undertaken.
What do you need to make your paper organized for your reader to understand or quickly scan it?
Scientific papers follow a standard structure that allows readers to quickly discover the main results, and then, if interested, to examine the supporting evidence. Many readers accept or reject conclusions based on a quick scan, not having time to read all the papers they see.
- Describe the work in the context of accepted scientific knowledge.
- State the idea that is being investigated, often as a theory or hypothesis.
- Explain what is new about the idea, what is being evaluated, or what contribution the paper is making.
- Justify the theory, by methods such as proof or experiment.
Why do you write a draft?
- you may find it helpful to write freely without particular regard to style, layout, or even punctuation
- you can concentrate on presenting a smooth flow of ideas in a logical structure.
- A consequence of having a sloppy first draft is that you must edit and revise carefully; initial drafts are often awkwardly written and full of mistakes.
- Writing is a stimulus to research, suggesting fresh ideas and clarifying vague concepts and misunderstandings
- Gaps in the research may not be apparent until it has been at least preliminarily described in the draft.
What is the next stage after the Draft?
The next step is to prepare a skeleton, choosing results to emphasize and discarding material that on reflection seems irrelevant, and then work out a logical sequence of sections that leads the reader naturally to the results.
When can you change From Draft to Submission?
- When the body and the closing summary are complete, completion of a paper tends to focus on the writing of the whole document.
- With a reasonably thorough draft completed, during drafting and revision, ensure that the topic of the paper does not drift.
- If you feel that you need to write something that is not relevant to your original aims, then either establish the connection clearly or alter the aims. Changing the aims can affect the work in many ways, however, so only do so with great care.
What is Co-authoring?
- In computer science, most papers are co-authored. The inclusion of several people as authors means that, in principle, all these people contributed in some significant way to the intellectual content of the paper. In many cases, it also means that the task of writing was shared.
- for example, for an advisor to use a student’s thesis as the basis of a paper, in which case both advisor and student are listed as authors. In this process, the advisor may well dramatically revise the student’s work.
- In cases where researchers are working more or less as equals, one strategy is to brainstorm the contents of the paper, and then for each author to write a designated section. Another strategy is to take turns.
What is a thesis?
- A thesis (or dissertation) is how research students present their work for examination. A thesis may have longer-term importance as a description of significant research results, but your primary goal should be to produce a piece of work that the examiners will pass.
- The questions that examiners respond to are much the same as those a referee would ask of a paper. That is, the examiners seek evidence of an original, valid contribution developed to an appropriate standard. However, it is a mistake to view a thesis as no more than an extended paper.
- A paper stands (or does not stand) on the strength of the results. A thesis passes (or fails) on the strength of your demonstration of competence; even if good results are not achieved, the thesis should pass if you have shown the ability to undertake high-quality research.
- A thesis with negative results can, if appropriately written, demonstrate the ability of the candidate just as well as a thesis with positive results. The outcomes may be less interesting, but the capability to undertake research has still been shown.
What is the difference between a Thesis and a Paper?
- The difference between a thesis and a paper is that the former may report on a series of more or less independent research discoveries. In contrast, a typical paper concerns a single consistent investigation. A thesis may, moreover, include work drawn from multiple papers.
- The scope of a thesis is more substantial than that of a paper, the introduction should be broad in topic and conversational in tone. It could introduce a whole area rather than a single problem. Another reason to develop a substantial introduction is that a thesis is a more thorough, detailed document than a paper.
Problems that make it certain that the paper will be rejected.
- Irrelevance
- Inconsistency, Inadequacy, and Incompleteness
- Incomprehensibility
- Ugliness
- Ignorance
Irrelevance
(I cannot figure out what this paper is about)
There is a lack of connection to the literature on any particular topic, and thus no sense of what the author is trying to achieve. In some cases, the author has proposed an elegant solution, but it is not obvious what the problem is, in some papers, there is no obvious research question, no statement of aims or goals, and no claimed contribution.
Inconsistency, Inadequacy, and Incompleteness
(the experiments are inadequate- parts of the paper are missing)
There may be an interesting method, but the experiments are trivial or uninformative, and fall far short of supporting the claims; often, in these cases, the problem is that the data
set used is too artificial to allow any interesting conclusion to be drawn. Or a small data set may be used to support claims for applications at an entirely different scale. Or the data set may not be relevant to the problem at all.
