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Writing Research Papers

Writing Research Papers. Andreas Paepcke adapting and augmenting notes by Jennifer Widom. Decision Dynamics. Decision Dynamics. Outline It!. Title Abstract Intro [Related Work] System Experiment Discussion [Related Work] Conclusion. Outlining: Not Just For High School.

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Writing Research Papers

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  1. Writing Research Papers Andreas Paepcke adapting and augmenting notes by Jennifer Widom

  2. Decision Dynamics

  3. Decision Dynamics

  4. Outline It! • Title • Abstract • Intro • [Related Work] • System • Experiment • Discussion • [Related Work] • Conclusion

  5. Outlining: Not Just For High School • What do you want to communicate? • What goes where? • Figures

  6. Title Options: • Descriptive: “A Tool for Measuring Interaction Speeds on Small Devices Under Varying Lighting Conditions” • Snappy: “Interaction Speeds on Small Devices” • With hook: “Floosy: Twofold Increase in PDA Reading Speeds”

  7. Abstract • Don’t just grab text from paper • State problem • Your approach/solution • Main contribution • Very little background/motivation • Include the main numbers/results

  8. Introduction: Five Elements • What is the problem? • Why is it interesting and important? • Why is it hard? (e.g., why do naive approaches fail?) • Why hasn't it been solved before? (Or, what's wrong with previous proposed solutions? How does yours differ?) • What are the key components of your approach and results? Include any specific limitations.

  9. Example Intro: Cursor Trails • People lose sight of cursor • Efficiency cost; confusion • Large cursors are found, but disrupt work • Problem worse on new large displays • Cursor leaves visual echo while movedSignificant gain in re-acquisition performance. What?Why bad?Why hard?Why now?How solved?

  10. Other Intro Pitfalls • Don’t start with Adam and Eve • No cliché in first sentence:V1: “With the explosion of the Web...”V2: “Forty-five million news pages are read online every weekday.” • Don’t rile the reviewer • Be interesting

  11. Related Work • Pro Early: • Critical to be defensive • Short enough • (Do mention most significant in Intro) • Pro Late: • Want reader to reach meat • Comparison understood only w/ body of paper

  12. Related Work (cont) • Group similar approaches: “Several approaches animate the cursor continuously or on demand [5,6,7,8,9]. Others do away with cursors and magnify selected targets [10,11,12].” • Good rel work section contrasts with your work. Often: no space. • Check coverage of program committee

  13. Main Body • Briefly introduce required foreign material • Introduce a running example • Organize around figures • Guide reader smoothly across thoughts; reader should want each new section.“These initial results suggested the need to verify that the red color does not harm...” EXPERIMENT ...

  14. Experiments: What to Measure? Options: • Completion times • Latency • Sensitivity to important parameters • Scalability for: • screen size, • #of collaborators, ... • Subjective preference • Others?

  15. Experiments: What to Show Options: • Performance usable? • Relative performance to naive approaches • Relative performance to previous approaches • Relative performance among different proposed approaches • Others?

  16. Experiment Setup Section • Goal (should be mostly clear by now) • What did you do? • Type of experiment (within/between) • Task • Data/Equipment used: How big, how fast, how much, preprocessing/cold-start? • People: how many, age range, gender, social distribution,... • Don't mention IRB unless relevant

  17. Example Experimental Section GoalWhat?EquipmentParticipants • “We compared cursor trails against blinkies...” • “In a within-participants design we had participants...” • “On a 2560×1600 30” display participants acquired...” • “Ten women and twelve menranging in age from ...”

  18. Results • Only facts • The numbers • Failure cases • Statistics • Active vs. Passive Voice

  19. Discussion • No new facts • Implications • Describe • How convincing? More studies needed?

  20. Conclusion • Short summary • Drive home your main results • Future work • Say what you’re planning next • List promising directions

  21. Bibliography • Use a tool for consistency • Check result carefully

  22. Selected Challenges • That and Which: • That defines:The experiment that failed was well designed. • Which elaborates: The experiment, which failed, was well designed. • And others  Et aliter  Et al. • Use etc. only when blatantly clear • Avoid: for various reasons...

  23. Selected Challenges Continued • Vary your non-technical words:“We see that the row that differs most from the other rows is the third one.” “The third row maximally differs from others in the table.” • Avoid thing and other globalities:“The thing we notice is that ...” “Observe that...”

  24. Selected Challenges Continued • Avoid far-referential use of this, that, these.“All participants committed many errors. That shows how fragile cognitive...” Those errors show... This fact shows... We conclude from this outcome that... • Try it!

  25. Finally... Don’t start the paper too late

  26. References • The Elements of Style. Strunk and White(Grammar; sentence-level) • Made to Stick—Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Chip Heath & Dan Heath.(Presentation level)http://www.madetostick.com/ • Jennifer Widom’s paper writing page:http://infolab.stanford.edu/~widom/paper-writing.html

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