Working on a Mini-Project
Anders P. Ravn/Arne Skou
Computer Science
Aalborg University
February 2011
Schedule wrt. Analyis sand
Design course
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February 28 – Preliminary version to ASk
March 4 – Preliminary presentations
March 18 – Status presentations.
April 3 – Papers to ASk
April 8 – Presentation at Oral Exam
The Paper
Try writing it as a research paper!
• Title
A Paper:
The title defines the context and the essence of the contribution.
A trick I learned from Peter Naur is to write a long complete
sentence about it and then remove less essential words until you
have something that will fit on a line.
Abstract
The abstract is a few sentences that gives: The context - what is the
problem area? The contribution - what problem is solved? What
does the solution achieve? What is the perspective of the solution.
I usually rewrite the abstract at least three times: Once in the
beginning to get my ideas on paper, once when the body of the paper
has been written, and a last time when I have concluded.
BODY
Body
1. Introduction
2. Technical Parts
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N. Conclusion
Back Matter: References and Appendices
Introduction
a) Motivation: Why is this problem area and the specific problem that we attack
interesting for the assumed reader? An example is very good, and I try very hard to
find a figure that can illustrate it. Note the example should be short and illustrate the
idea - it should not be a full case study with lots of details that is for the technical
parts.
b) The Idea - the contribution. What is the original idea that we present to solve the
problem? I try to explain the idea briefly using a minimum of formalism. It may be
a good idea to summarize the contributions in a list.
c) Related work: Short pointers to related work and a brief sentence about how they
are related. I find Simon Peyton Jones' slides [1] on "How to write a great research
paper" delightful and very helpful; but I disagree about postponing related work to
the conclusion. I agree that a detailed discussion must be postponed. However, a
reader that knows the field may find it helpful to see that the author knows central
works from the area.
d) Overview: Short sentences giving the structure of the remaining sections. I like
Peyton Jones' idea: to distribute it in a final write-up over the previous parts; but try
writing it in a first version, because then you motivate a structure.
Technical Sections
The body explains the idea and the solution in detail. It may have
several sections:.
It must start with a precise description of the problem, including any
assumptions that are made. If precision requires formalism, present
the relevant special theories. That is, theories which the reader
cannot be assumed to know. Exemplify the theory if it is less known
with simple examples, and don't forget to use it on the problem!
Explain carefully how you use the theory to solve the problem.
Explain and discuss experiments, if any. Summarize quantitative
data in a way so it easy to compare different experiments, e.g. scale
execution times to a 'yardstick' program, give a meaningful number
of significant digits, use graphs to display trends.
Conclusion
It is a summary and assessment of the contribution.
It typically contains:
a) Summary
Recapitulate the result. Remember to discuss related work
details. How does this work improve on them?
c) Perspective
Limitations of the idea, recall the assumptions that were
made in the body. How can they be lifted in further work?
Back Matter
Give Complete References, please. Check
for instance a textbook for the form.
[1] Simon Peyton Jones: How to write a good
research paper , Powerpoint slides, October
2004. Found (Feb. 2006) at:
http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm
A Paper - summary
• Introduction – motivation, example, overview
• Analysis – problem domain, application domain,
related work
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Design – theory, data structures and algorithms
Implementation
Test and Experimentation
Conclusion – summary, assessment, further work
About writer’s block
`Do not worry. You have always written
before and you will write now. All you have
to do is write one true sentence. Write the
truest sentence you know.´
E. Hemingway: A Moveable Feast, Arrow Books, 1996,
In the short story Miss Stein Instructs, p. 12.