1. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 1 Lecture 6 Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen Lecture #8 – Examples, References, Citations, Boxes David Maier © 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000 Some material © Todd Leen, 2001

2. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 2 Lecture 6 Examples One of the most important parts of a paper. good examples can make up for other sins readers can often induce definitions, algorithms, proofs from good examples examples are a way for the reader to fix concepts in his or her mind I have seldom seen a paper with too many examples. Will look at different kinds of examples.

3. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 3 Lecture 6 Motivating Example Comes before the formal description of a term, algorithm, method to “set the stage.” don’t use notation that is not yet introduced Core Rule: Define terms when they are first used. the example should be easier to understand than the concept it illustrates. Can also illustrate the problem you are trying to solve.

4. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 4 Lecture 6 Illustrative Example Demonstrates a concept, method, theorem that has been introduced previously. keep it nearby the definition in the text. consider putting it between theorem and proof do a substantive, not trivial, case If there is a possibility of misinterpretation by the reader, choose an example that will disambiguate. “non-example” helps, too — an example where a theorem doesn’t apply because the conditions are not met. This can help to clarify the conditions under which the theorem holds. Also applies to applicability of algorithms. Clarifying example is similar -- distinguishes between similar concepts.

5. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 5 Lecture 6 World’s Worst Example Definition. Consider a database containing the relations R1, R2,..., Rk. Let R(A1, A2,..., An) be one of these relations, or the natural join of any subset of these relations, and let R* be the transitive closure of relation R. Then if (a1, a2,..., an)R*(a1, a2,..., an) for any tuple (a1, a2,..., an) of R, then R is said to be a cyclic relation and the database is called a cyclic database. Example 8.1. The relation {, } is cyclic

6. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 6 Lecture 6 Example Definition: A simple path in an undirected graph is a sequence of vertices, k >= 1, where (v i, v i+1 ) is an edge for 1  i < k, and v i  v j if i  j. 2 346 51 and are simple paths. The sequence is not a simple path because there is no edge. The sequence is a simple path, with k=1. The sequence is not a simple path because vertex 2 is repeated.

7. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 7 Lecture 6 Running Example A single example that is used several times throughout the text can be effective, since reader has less investment in time per concept illustrated can be hard to write as you go. It can be hard to foresee all the points that need to be illustrated.

8. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 8 Lecture 6 “Pun” Examples Avoid examples that come from the same domain as you are writing about using a user interface tool to build the interface for a user interface tool a logic program for interpreting logic programs The point is that you shouldn’t use something the reader doesn’t understand to explain something the reader doesn’t understand. If you can find an example outside of computer science, great! Also, beware of tired examples Printing “hello world”. Though there can be “standard” examples

9. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 9 Lecture 6 Illustrations Have a lexicon in mind for your charts. That is, know what your arrows and boxes mean. Query Trans- late Algebra Expr Optmize Phys. Plan Eval. DB Answer Perhaps use ellipses for data Use different arrow and box shape to distinguish DB access

10. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 10 Lecture 6 Citations What do you need to cite? Typically, not common knowledge found in introductory texts—the reader is likely to be familiar with the material and will not mistake it for your own. If you’re writing a review article, or trying to establish an historical thread, you might cite familiar material. But if material might be unknown, or from an obscure source, or should be credited as the work of another, then you need a citation.

11. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 11 Lecture 6 Citation Style Usually use in-line citation in brackets [14] or [AHU74] or [Aho and Ullman, 1974]. Format may be dictated by journal or conference proceedings. Choose one style and stick to it. If you use numbered citations, then use square brackets since parentheses may be confused with equation numbers. Fifty-three percent of cars (13) Treat it as parenthetical material that is not a sentence. Aho and Ullman [14] give a more general formulation of the algorithm.

12. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 12 Lecture 6 Citation Style Usually a good idea to mention the authors Last name usually enough. Use first name or initial to disambiguate. Don’t use titles (Dr., Professor) Sethi [16] proves the converse is false. P. Fischer [17] proved generalized tic-tac-toe is NP-Hard; M. Fischer [18] showed it is actually NP- complete. Don’t start a sentence with a numbered reference [16] proves the converse is false

13. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 13 Lecture 6 Frequency and Location Generally don’t need to re-cite in the same paragraph. Reps and Horwitz [20] present the design of a structured editor. They also observe that sometimes non-structured editing is easier [20].

14. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 14 Lecture 6 Location of Citation Not a single right place for a citation, but there are wrong places. Morris and Pratt [4] present an algorithm for string matching, with sublinear behavior. Morris and Pratt present an algorithm for string matching, with sublinear behavior [4].

15. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 15 Lecture 6 Location of Citations Location should be appropriate so information content is clear Several researchers have reported good results, but the two negative reports were from studies on much larger populations [14,18,19,25,38,42]. Several researchers have reported good results [14,18,19,42], but the two negative reports [25,38] were from studies on much larger populations.

16. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 16 Lecture 6 Groups of Papers and Authors If the text says the same thing about a list of citations, group the citations. Miller [23], Rabin and Karp [24], and Ng [25] have analyzed this randomized algorithm. Several authors [23,24,25] have analyzed this... Several authors [Miller 1975, Rabin and Karp 1981, Ng 1983] have...

17. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 17 Lecture 6 Groups of Papers and Authors If you use et al. (3 or more authors), only list one author. Aho et al. [12] proved the conjecture is false. Aho and colleagues [12] proved...

18. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 18 Lecture 6 Groups of Papers and Authors Group and order citations. [17][27] -> [17,27] [27][17] -> [17,27] Usually want citations in order given in reference list. (The reference list is the list of cited reference gathered together at the end of the paper.) If you use numbers, the reference list should be in numerical order. If you use names (e.g. “Bumpte (1975) showed” or “Bumpte [Bu75] showed”) the reference list should be alphabetical.

19. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 19 Lecture 6 Further Thoughts on Math Equations can be set with or without numbers Following simplification we obtain This shows that... OR Following simplification we obtain Equation (5) shows that...

20. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 20 Lecture 6 Further Thoughts on Math Use numbers when you will need to refer back to the equation further along in the paper. Use numbers when the equation is a primary definition or result. Recalling the expression for  in equation (3), is easier than Recalling the expression for  derived above,

21. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 21 Lecture 6 Further Thoughts on Math Numbering equations also facilitates the review process and discussion among readers. “In equation (3), the author...” is easier than “In the second equation following the first full paragraph in section 2, the author...” Core Rule: Organize to Help the Reader

22. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 22 Lecture 6 Further Thoughts on Math Use some words following equations. As for figures, you should tell the readers the important conclusion they should draw from the equation. Don’t assume that they’ll get the thrust without your making it clear. This also forces you to interpret results, rather than just state them. This is generally good intellectual process. It forces you to think about the results.

23. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 23 Lecture 6 Side Bars or Boxes Boxes or Sidebars present text that does not integrate directly into the main narrative. It may be preliminary material or enrichment material Material in boxes is often tangent to main text Boxes are used like figures and tables.

24. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 24 Lecture 6 Boxes can be used to reproduce material from other sources. –Sets it off from the main text –Shows that it is not your own work –Be sure and include citations and sources! –This is often called a credit line. Boxes should be numbered, just like figures and tables. Boxes should have a title.

25. Scholarship Skills Tim Sheard & Todd Leen 25 Lecture 6 Like figures and tables, each box should be “called out” in the main text. An example I found quite effective: –An Architecture for Extensible Code Models –By Daniel Vainsencher and Andrew P. Black. –http://www.cs.pdx.edu/%7eblack/publications/ModelExtensions.pdf