Summer Semester 2013
-
Scientific Writing
Block seminar, 70404
- Instructors: Stefanie Wuhrer and Tino Weinkauf
- Semester: Summer 2013
- Full-day lectures offered in a block seminar:
- Dates: August 12 - 14, 2013
- Times: 10:00 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 17:00
- Location: MMCI Building (E1 7), Room 0.08
- Office hours: Appointments can be coordinated via e-mail
- Class materials: available for download
Announcements
The template for the papers can be downloaded.
The seminar is fully booked. We do not accept new students at the moment.
Overview
Mathematicians who merely think great theoremshave no more done their job thanpainters who merely think great paintings.Paul Halmos (1916 - 2006)
Written communication is the main tool for sharing research results and building a personal standing within a scientific community. The ability to communicate clearly and concisely is essential for successful scientific writing. Furthermore, writing good explanations often helps the author to organize his/her thoughts and leads to better understanding of the material, and potentially even to further discoveries. When writing about scientific research, there are commonly accepted practices that restrict the ways in which scientists communicate. We will try to give an insight into these practices in computer science.
The main goal of the seminar is for students to get hands-on experience in writing a research report in order to learn how to write a research paper. To this end, each participant is expected to work on the presentation of his/her own project.
This implies that each participant needs to have a project that he/she can write about. The seminar focuses on how to organize and present scientific material. Hence, the technical details, experimental evaluation, and literature search related to the project need to be completed before the start of the seminar.
Schedule
Schedule for the seminar.
Deadline for submitting the report: September 6, 2013
Deadline for revised report: September 27, 2013
Target Audience
- Ph.D. students (e.g., in the preparatory phase)
- Master students
- advanced Bachelor students
Requirements & Expected Work
- Prerequisite: you need to have a project that you can write about. This can be a project that you do as part of your studies or a project that you do in your free time.
- Register by e-mail and through HISPOS.
- Attend the seminar.
- Submit your research report by September 6, 2013.
- After you received feedback, make the suggested changes and submit the final report by September 27, 2013.
Additional Resources
Books on Academic Writing
- Justin Zobel. Writing for Computer Science, Second Edition. Springer, 2004. (Both high-level advice on academic writing in computer science and some advice on style and grammar)
- Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, Joseph Williams. The Craft of Research, Third Edition. University of Chicago Research Press, 2008. (High-level advice on organizing and writing research.)
- William Strunk. The Elements of Style. Plain Label Books, 1918. Url: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~jms/doc/elos.pdf (Classic writing advice, mostly on style and grammar.)
- Lynne Truss. Eats Shoots & Leaves. Gotham Books, 2008. (Writing advice, mostly on style and grammar.)
- Franco Vivaldi. Mathematical writing for undergraduate students. The University of London, 2013. Url: http://www.maths.qmw.ac.uk/~fv/books/mw/mwbook.pdf (Gives writing advice for math authors, mostly on style and grammar.)
Blogs on Academic Writing and Presenting
- Richard Reis, Postings related to scientific writing on Tomorrow’s Professors Mailing List. Url: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
- Jim Kurose. Top 10 tips for writing a paper. Url: http://www-net.cs.umass.edu/kurose/talks/top_10_tips_for_writing_a_paper.ppt
- Jonathan Shewchuck. Three Sins of Authors in Computer Science and Math. Url: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jrs/sins.html
- Jonathan Shewchuck. Giving an Academic Talk. Url: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/speaking.html
Disclaimer
The structure of the seminar and the course material are adapted from Ivo Ihrke's seminar on "Scientific Writing."