Paper Tips Overview Introduction Writing technical papers is not - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Paper Tips Overview Introduction Writing technical papers is not - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Paper Tips Overview Introduction Writing technical papers is not easy Types of papers Students often have little guidance or training in technical writing Paper organization The purpose of these slides is to give you some tips

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SLIDE 1

Types of Papers Papers in this class are generally fall into one of three categories

  • 1. New Methodology: papers that propose a new methodology to

solve a specific problem

  • Development of a new algorithm
  • 2. New Application: papers that apply existing methodology to a

new application, typically with the purpose of developing a new application

  • Prediction
  • Estimation
  • 3. Scientific Paper: papers that apply the scientific method to

create new knowledge

  • Do people with Parkinson’s disease have associated cognitive

impairments?

  • These papers typically include the application of one or more

hypothesis tests

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Paper Tips Overview

  • Types of papers
  • Paper organization
  • How to conduct a literature search
  • Peer review
  • General tips
  • Assessment criteria
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Types of Papers: What Not to Do

  • You should NOT write a paper that tries to do more than one of

these tasks

  • Such a paper should be divided into separate papers
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Introduction

  • Writing technical papers is not easy
  • Students often have little guidance or training in technical writing
  • The purpose of these slides is to give you some tips on how to
  • rganize and present your papers
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SLIDE 2

Algorithm Design

  • This section is only included in papers that propose a new

algorithm

  • Typically this section completely describes the algorithm
  • If the algorithm is especially complicated, mathematical proofs

and other lengthy details are sometimes included in an appendix

  • The goal of this section is to completely and clearly describe the

new algorithm

  • Do not describe components of your algorithm elsewhere
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Paper Organization Papers typically consist of the following sections

  • Abstract: Should be written last
  • Introduction
  • Methodology/Design
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion/Summary
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Methodology: Scientific Papers

  • This section describes how the experiment was conducted to test

the hypothesis

  • Includes

– How the data was collected – How the data was analyzed – What type of hypothesis test was used – The level of significance

  • Essentially, all of the details of what you did to collect and analyze

the data belong in this section

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Introduction The introduction should meet the following objectives, usually in this

  • rder
  • Define the problem to be solved/question to be answered
  • Explain the practical significance of solving the problem.

– Who will be affected by the answer?

  • Summarize the prior, published work of other people who have

attempted to solve this problem

  • Distinguish your work from prior work

– Your problem is different, or – Your solution is better (more accurate, or more robust, or requires fewer conditions and assumptions, etc.)

  • If the paper has objectives other than solving the stated problem,

they should be stated here as well

  • Optionally, describe how the paper is organized
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SLIDE 3

Discussion

  • The objectives of this section are

– To interpret the results – To discuss possible explanations for any anomalies in the results – To speculate about the impact of the results

  • In scientific papers, this section is also used to compare the results

with those of other studies and suggest possible explanations (hypotheses) for any discrepancies

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Methodology: New Algorithm, Application

  • This section describes how you assessed the performance of your

algorithm or new application

  • Assessment often doesn’t receive sufficient attention
  • Must think carefully about how to demonstrate your algorithm

works better than one of the following: – Previous techniques published by others – The best current practice

  • Whenever possible, the assessment should be prospective

– Use new data to measure performance – Reduces favorable bias

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Conclusion/Summary

  • This section should concisely summarize the final results of the

paper

  • For scientific paper, typically one or more conclusions can be

drawn

  • For new methodologies, a summary section may be more

appropriate that summarizes – What was proposed – How well it performed – What other advantages & good features it has

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Results

  • Typically, this section is also full of detail stating the results of

your work

  • For this class, results will often be plots, tables, or the results of

hypothesis tests

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SLIDE 4

Literature Search

  • You should conduct a literature search for your project
  • Purpose: to determine what other people have written about your

topic

  • Literature only includes PUBLISHED papers
  • It does not usually include web pages or textbooks
  • You cannot conduct a literature search with Google or any other

web search engine

  • The PSU library has web access to several literature databases

that you can use to find papers on your topic

  • Probably the best ones for this class are

– Web of Science (http://isi4.isiknowledge.com) – Compendex via Engineering Village 2 (http://www.engineeringvillage2.org) – IEEE Xplore (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore)

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Abstract

  • The abstract should be a concise summary of the entire paper
  • It is not an introduction
  • Should include a statement of the problem, summary of the

methods and key results, and the conclusions that you made

  • This is usually easy to write once you have written the rest of the

paper

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General Tips

  • Readership

– Should be written for someone that understands the key concepts and methods covered in this class – You may assume the reader is a first year graduate student in an engineering program

  • In general, try to avoid passive sentence construction

– If you don’t like using first person pronouns (“I”), you can

  • ften use “this paper” or “this report” as the subject

– For example, “This paper describes an analysis of. . . ” – Not “An analysis of . . . is described” or “I describe an analysis

  • f . . . ”
  • Try to use simple declarative sentences, “The model achieved an

MSE=3.27 (1.75–8.83 with 95% confidence).”

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Organization

  • Required: Abstract, Introduction, Results, Conclusions, &

References (if any)

  • Optional: Acknowledgments and Appendices
  • Prohibited: Source code and raw data in printed form
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SLIDE 5

General Tips Continued

  • Figures

– Label your axes. – Describe the figures in words using a caption below the figure – Be sure to use the IEEE format for the caption.

  • Tables

– Remember to use units – The captions go above the tables

  • Citations

– Include relevant citations – Use review articles to avoid a lengthy literature search – Each reference number should be enclosed in square brackets – Do not begin a sentence with a reference number

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