Week 7: |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 19th December. And now for something
completely different: Ethics, from
Ancient Greece to spam mail and Wittgenstein. (slides) |
Exercise This week you should complete the final version of your own summary (see
part 3 of the exercise). The deadline is
on Friday. |
John Hughes
(rjmh@chalmers.se)
·
Simon
Robillard (simon.robillard@chalmers.se)
·
Maximilian
Algehed (algehed@chalmers.se)
·
Agustin
Mista (mista@chalmers.se)
· Saad Ahmad mian.saad.ahmad@gmail.com
· Rahel Ahmed rahela@student.chalmers.se
· Patrick Andersson patrican@student.chalmers.se
·
Raphael
Isemann isemann@student.chalmers.se
·
Denis
Furian furian@student.chalmers.se
· Oleksii Prykhodko olepry@student.chalmers.se
You will
learn the skills to find, use, and explain relevant ideas from the scientific
literature—in both speech and writing—and you will, as a part of the course,
develop a Masters thesis
proposal which you may re-use for your own thesis.
Lectures
are at 1315 on Wednesdays in HB2. Here is the schedule
in TimeEdit. There will be lectures most weeks, but
not all. They will be announced on this page in advance. The slides will be
posted here, but note that my slides are
not intended to be self-contained—they will not mean much to you unless you
attend the lecture.
Most of the
work in the course is in the exercises. Each week this page will specify the
work you should be doing; expect it to take around half your time. You pass the
course by completing the exercises satisfactorily. It is important to keep to
the deadlines for submitting the exercises, because your submissions will form
the basis of your small group tuition.
Each
student will take part in two small group tuition sessions. Each student will
give a presentation in one session, and take part in a writing workshop in
another. There will be a (limited) choice of times for your small group
session, at the following times:
·
Presentations:
November 22, 26, 27.
·
Writing
workshops: November 29, 30, December 3.
Each
session will be two hours and limited to five participants plus a tutor. A
doodle for you to book your session will be made available from each exercise
description page.
Week 1 |
Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 7th November The
Scientific Literature (slides). Birgit
Grohe will talk about preparing for your Masters
thesis in the second half of the lecture. |
Exercise You
should carry out a small literature survey,
using the methods discussed in the lecture. |
Week 2 |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 14th November Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking (slides, and some
accompanying notes). |
Exercise You should prepare a fifteen-minute presentation for your
class-mates on the papers you have studied. |
Week 3 |
Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 21st
November How to
write a paper (slides). Lecture at
1515 on Wednesday 21st November (This
lecture has been rescheduled from week 4). Reviewing a technical document (slides); writing a
proposal (slides). |
Exercise You
should write a summary for your class
mates of the papers you have studied. |
Week 4 |
No lecture this week. |
Exercise You should review two summaries written by other
students—see part 2 of the summary exercise
for details. You should also write the first draft of a Masters
thesis proposal. |
Week 5 |
No lecture this week. |
Exercise The deadline for your first draft thesis proposal is
on Wednesday. We will aim to provide feedback before next Wednesday. Please make sure also that you send your own reviews
of other students’ summaries on time—your classmates need your input. |
Week 6 |
No lecture this week. |
Exercise The deadline for the final version of your Masters thesis
proposal is on Sunday December 16th. Note that this is a different lab in the Fire system: make
sure you submit to the right one! This is also the deadline for submitting a
thesis proposal to MP-ALG, which you need to do separately. (Note that the
MP-ALG deadline was originally Dec 12th: it has been delayed by four days to provide more time for
feedback and revision in this course). |
Week 7: |
Lecture at
1315 on Wednesday 19th December. And now for something completely different: Ethics, from Ancient Greece to spam
mail and Wittgenstein. (slides) |
Exercise This week you should complete the final version of your own summary (see
part 3 of the exercise). The deadline is
on Friday. |
You should
read Joseph Williams’ book, Style: toward
clarity and grace (chapters 1—8), which is a tutorial on technical writing.
Beware: Williams wrote several other books with similar titles—make sure you
get this one. The book is out of print, but you will be able to find copies.
For example, it is available from amazon.com (but you will need to wait for
your copy to be shipped from the USA).
For presentation
stills, I heartily recommend Praktisk Retorik by Göran Hägg, to students who can read Swedish. It isn’t necessary to read this book for this
course—and it’s focus isn’t particularly on technical
presentations—but it is both hugely enjoyable to read, and hugely influential
on all presentations you will make afterwards. Unfortunately, there seems to be
no English translation, which is a real shame—it’s a gem.