How I write

1. How I write Joshua KnowlesProfessor of Natural Computation j.knowles@bham.ac.uk

2. Thanks for coming this far!

3. I’m ok, you’re ok There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway

4. Contact me You may have comments and questions by the end • Drop by my office, 1.38 in the CS building, for a chat (especially in weeks 2-5) • Office hours: Tuesdays 9.30-10.30 am; Wed 9.30-10.30 am • J.knowles@bham.ac.uk to arrange a chat any other time.

5. Contents • Audience thoughts • Writing the Introduction, and rules concerning prose style • Interlude on the Fear of Writing & overcoming it • Writing the Abstract – a formula from Simon Peyton-Jones • Rhetorical devices • Other advice on Method, Results, Conclusion, and other writing hints all a bit crammed in!

6. Audience thoughts The purpose of writing is to communicate your ideas to the largest possible audience Comments: • Write for you mum or a friend who is not a CS person • Use few acronyms, avoid jargon • Start with as general a beginning as you can muster!

7. Audience thoughts

8. Audience thoughts You might worry whether you will forget all the audience who are CS experts, or patronise them. But don’t patroniseanyone, including your Mum! Just write in Classic Style[1], which means that you assume the reader is intelligent and interested, that the language is sufficient to communicate, that clarity of thought is the main authority you need, and that you should use words sparingly and in proportion to the importance of the ideas you want to convey. Don’t write “filler” or tell all your background reading, thoughts, and plans! Add an example or figure if you must fill space. *Sorry for the Don’ts. There are a lot of Don’ts in writing well References are at the end

9. Writing the Introduction Let’s have a go: I. Introduction Search is about searching for something. Hmmm: General, but feels a bit tautological and trivial, doesn’t it?

10. Writing the Introduction Let’s have a go: I. Introduction Search is about finding something. Better, but not much...

11. Writing the Introduction Let’s have a go: I. Introduction Search is about finding something efficiently from within some well-defined set. Now we are cooking: It looks like we have found a very general statement, and uncontroversial, but with just a smidgeon of detail to show we are rigorous, concerned with efficiency, and sane!

12. Writing the Introduction Let’s have a go: I. Introduction Search is about finding something efficiently from within some well-defined set, for example a house for sale within 3 miles of the University of Birmingham. Now we are cooking: Cooking even better, as we have now given an example to further add sophistication, but also clarify and make our uncontroversial idea concrete. eral state

13. Writing the Introduction Let’s have a go: I. Introduction Search is about finding something efficiently from within some well-defined set, for example a house for sale within 3 miles of the University of Birmingham. No one in search can explain how some humans are so apparently efficient at it, however, for example how Mozart could just sit down and rattle off an opera of sublime quality. Turning up the gas: Now we’ve added a controversial statement and one with some serious “balls”. Sentence two is all we’ve done, but we’ve already grabbed the attention of the reader, I reckon. Perhaps we should worry about what comes next, but let’s not today....

14. The Fear of Writing On the next slide, I am going to show you the scariest thing some of you have ever seen. Are you ready? Credit* for this slide idea goes to: Jonathan L. Shapiro (Manchester) *Always give credit where credit is due

16. Overcoming the fear • Start • Then Push Through to the other side • Then plan, get organized, get comfortable, etc • Then improve your writing and keep improving it until you can improve it no more. Let’s look at steps 1 and 2 from a professional ...

17. Overcoming the fear Kristin Cashore, bravely showing us her “process” of getting a first draft going! This was from her novel, Bitterblue.

18. Overcoming the fear More from Kristin Cahore

19. Overcoming the fear (next steps) 3. Plan, get organized, get comfortable, etc. My comments: Find out when you write best (what time of day) Find out where you write best – be comfortable What do you need on your writing desk? Five minutes a day for a year = your first novel* *And you don’t need to write a novel, just an 8-page paper!

20. Overcoming the fear (next steps) 4. Then improve your writing and keep improving it until you can improve it no more.

21. Writing the Abstract More people will read the Abstract than any other part of your paper*, therefore it is the most important part Simon Peyton-Jones (Microsoft Research) gives a formula for writing it, which I always follow.... * Okay, arguably the Title might win, but then write a catchy title (of course).

22. Writing the Abstract Use four sentences (although you can double them up) §1: State the problem §2: State the context, or why the problem is important and unsolved §3: State your solution §4: State the conclusion of your work, i.e. how the world beyond your paper has changed as a result of your work, or at least how it might change. ::The Simon Peyton-Jones method::

23. Writing the Abstract(an outstanding example) Extraneous factors in judicial decisions Abstract: Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the decisions of judges and that psychological, political, and social factors influence judicial rulings. We test the common caricature of realism that justice is what the judge ate for breakfast in sequential parole decisions made by experienced judges. We record the judges two daily food breaks, which result in segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct decision sessions. We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ∼65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ∼65% after a break. Our findings suggest that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables that should have no bearing on legal decisions.

24. Rhetorical devices Rhetoric is concerned with the art ofpersuasionin writing or speech. Classically, it is split into three main appeals (Aristotle): Ethos: the authority of the writer Logos: sound (logical) argument and evidence Pathos: emotional content There is debate whether scientists use rhetoric. Do they try to persuade, or do they write only to inform and present objective evidence? Kuhn, Feyerabend and other philosophers have argued that science is social and subjective to at least some degree.

25. Rhetorical devices Ethos: The authority of the writer is best established immediately by writing high-quality sentences in the Abstract and Introduction, as well as having famous co-authors! Logos: Sound (logical) argument, and/or evidence is essential. Keep asking yourself whether your argument is sound ALL THE WAY THROUGH, or does it have some Swiss cheese moments?! Pathos: Emotional content should be kept minimal, or kept well hidden. But little jokes, examples that the reader can relate to, or stuff about judges whose decisions are more lenient after lunch ALL help the reader enjoy your paper ;-)

26. Further advice: the Method section • Just don’t labour it. • It isn’t that important, as long as it is honest, replicable, and is basically logical and internally well-justified.

27. Further advice: the Results section • Just don’t labour it. • It isn’t that important, as long as it is honest, replicable, and is basically logical and internally well-justified. • You might need statistics! (see final lecture in this series) • Don’t put every result of every experiment there, for goodness sake. Be selective.

28. Further advice: the Conclusion section • Very important section • It is NOT only a summary • It is NOT only future work • It IS the place where you explain the consequences of your work (and the limits or weaknesses of it)

29. Further advice: writing rules Write like Hemingway. This means use few adjectives, fewer adverbs, and with carefully chosen verbs. Poor example: The man ran quickly down the street and was very frightened at what he saw when he finally got there. Good example: The man ran down the street. Gasping, he could see the body as he approached. What he found would stay with him for the rest of his days. Note: The latter is certainly rubbish compared to Hemingway but it is my simulation, and it is better than the first attempt, isn’t it?

30. Further advice: Great verbs for science writing • Suggest • Propose • Indicate • Test (e.g., a hypothesis) • Refute • Provide • See • Simplify • Clarify • Bolster (an argument or pos’n) • Survey • Consider • Investigate • Meet (an argument) • Firm up • Underpin • Describe • Rehearse (an argument)

31. Further advice: Great verbs for science writing • Underline • Emphasise • Reorganize • Speculate • Review • Satisfy • Conclude • Put forward

32. Further advice: adverbs The road to hell is paved with adverbs. - Stephen King

33. Further advice: from Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell's example of editing to achieve brevity and force: “ “Human beings are completely exempt from undesirable behaviour-patterns only when certain prerequisites, not satisfied except in a small percentage of actual cases, have, through some fortuitous concourse of favourable circumstances, whether congenital or environmental, chanced to combine in producing an individual in whom many factors deviate from the norm in a socially advantageous manner''. Let us see if we can translate this sentence into English. I suggest the following: “All men are scoundrels, or at any rate almost all. The men who are not must have had unusual luck, both in their birth and in their upbringing." This is shorter and more intelligible, and says just the same thing.” (from How I Write, B. Russell)

34. Further advice: from Russell and Hemingway Start sentences, and paragraphs even, with “And” and “But”. Ignore stupid rules that say you can’t. Never write a sentence where the beginning of the sentence leads the reader into an expectation that is contradicted by the end of the sentence. You are leading the reader on a path (don’t ambush them!). Hemingway famously uses sentences with lots of “and” connecting words, not “however” or “nevertheless” or other horrible words!

35. Final Further Advice Sleep Walk Let your thoughts have space; go outside Breathe properly, eat properly Be patient with yourself Enjoy your reading, and all your leisure time Wear comfortable shoes Don’t do boring “pastime” time-wasting activities like surfing the internet or reading too much news half-interestedly

36. Good Luck! • Contact me for questions • If you liked this, you may also like www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jdk/aphorisms.html

37. References (to be completed) [1] Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner, “Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose”... [2] Ernest Hemingway, “The sun also rises”... [3] William Shakespeare, “Henry V”... [4] Simon Peyton-Jones, “How to write a great research paper”... [5] Bertrand Russell, “How I write”.