Technical Writing

Vikram Pudi

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Dedicated to:

My Ph.D advisor

Prof. Jayant Haritsa

IISc, Bangalore

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Phases in Research

One Year Find area to work in Read papers Extract / formulate high impact problems Search for related work Usually related work is not good enough

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The Interesting Part

One Year Invent your own solutions In CS research, this translates to

algorithm design / analysis coding night-outs and coffee

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The Boring Part

3 years Write reports, papers, thesis, …

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But it is important…

It is your duty as a scientist to share your discoveries with others

Your work is understood only from what you present / publish

You are evaluated only based on what you write in your reports, etc.

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It is actually exciting!

It is your work You want others to feel the excitement you

felt when you invented the solutions

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It has ingredients of programming

Modularity As mentioned in Section 2, … As mentioned in the Introduction, …

Minimize redundancy Linear – don’t jump back and forth Clarity, elegance and flow Choose good titles (like variable names)

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Popular Misconceptions

Should have lot of math Should be hard to read Should fill all 20 pages

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Reality

Math should be used only where it is required to make things more precise / unambiguous where equivalent English is too verbose

Reviewers don’t like reading hard-to-read papers academic readers know that hard-to-read doesn’t mean weighty

matter will be able to detect when a writer is just showing off

Quality is more important than quantity It is usually hard to fit your content in 20 pages Be concise Use figures and examples to fill space if necessary

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Format of Papers / Reports

Title: Less than about 11 words Abstract: 200 – 250 words

Write this at the end Mention what you have achieved; mention key expt results

Introduction One para – background / history One para – motivation One para – your contributions One para – organization

Formal Problem Statement – some other name Mention assumptions of setting under which your solution

applies

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Format (contd.)

Background – some other name Describe background necessary to understand the rest of the

document Optional – point to other documents Use to fill space if required

Your Solution – in one or more sections Related Work

cite and briefly discuss other related work mention how it is different from your work mention their limitations but be polite people like to see their work here; so mention anything that

seems related if done by a program committee member!

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Format (contd.) Performance Model

Describe your experimental setup and metrics you used to evaluate your solution against previous work

Experiments Use graphs and tables to show results Refer the graphs / tables in the text: We see in Figure 1 that … Discuss intuition behind why the graphs are the way they are Should sound like: Due to these reasons the results are as

expected. Conclusions

Like abstract, but some more technical points like merits of data-structures used, etc. – assume reader has already read thru the document

Can mention possible future work Acknowledgements References

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Format of a Thesis

Almost like a paper Sections become chapters Sub-sections become sections In addition, it has:

a table of contents list of figures list of tables index

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Checklist

Do a spell-check Ensure figure / table / section numbers match those in

text Look at start and end of each page

E.g. A section title should be at the end of some page Use \noindent after figures / tables Ensure figures / tables are placed where you want them Give good names for your algorithms / solutions – some

nice expansions Use those names to make your title Take a printout and read thoughly

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Other tips Use LaTeX Review lots of good / bad papers; avoid their mistakes Be ambiguous in your initial abstract

Just mention what you achieve without revealing techniques Be picky about how your sentences sound & feel

Can you write the same thing in a simpler way? Can you write the same thing in a concise way? Are you moving back and forth between two concepts? A different word may be a better fit to explain this?

Expect to change your organization a couple of times Like changing a software’s design

Finish a draft of the paper at least a week before the final deadline Otherwise your chance of acceptance reduces to 20 – 30%

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Take Home

Writing a paper requires effort, time, an eye for detail, is addictive, exciting

and rewarding.