Summary exercise
DAT315 The
Computer Scientist in Society
You have
already studied a paper in its context, and prepared a short talk about it. In
this exercise, you will write a summary of the paper’s key ideas, and relate
them to the other papers you have read. Your goal is to write a short article
suitable for your fellow students, which will enable them to quickly learn
about the topic.
This
exercise is in three parts, each with
its own deadline.
1. Write a first draft of your summary, to be submitted on 22nd
November at the latest. Take part in a writing
workshop led by one of our course assistants, at which your first draft
will be discussed in a small group.
2. Peer review: read
and review the summaries written by two other students. Your reviews will be
sent to the other students to provide additional feedback. Your reviews are due
on 29th November. You should also receive two reviews of your own
summary on that day.
3. Revise your own summary in the light
of the writing workshop and the reviews you received; your final version is due
on 6th December.
Detailed
instructions for part 3 will be added to this web page in due course.
Before you start
Start by
watching the following two excellent videos on writing a paper:
·
Simon
Peyton-Jones https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870
·
Derek
Dreyer at PLMW 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_6xoMjFr70
They are
each around 30 minutes: it will be time very well spent! You’ll notice they do
not entirely agree—you will need to make your own choice as to whose advice you
follow.
Read Peter Damashke’s guide to avoiding trivial writing
mistakes.
Our main
source for detailed writing guidelines is Joseph Williams’ book:
The
material in Chapters 1-7 is particularly important—a brief overview was given
in the lecture. You should obtain a copy of this book if you have not already
done so, and read those Chapters in parallel with writing your first draft.
(You should not delay starting writing until you have finished Chapter 7;
however, you will find the material immensely helpful as you write, so you
should aim to finish Chapter 7 during the next week).
Part I: Your First Draft
Write a
summary of the papers you have read. The title of your summary should be “A
Summary of <main paper’s title> by <authors of the main paper>”.
Make sure you include your name and email
address in the title part of your summary. Your summary should be aimed at
your fellow students (so, an audience generally knowledgeable about computer
science, but not this speciality), and you should make sure to explain clearly
·
What
problem your main paper of choice is solving
·
Why
this problem is important
·
The
key ideas in the paper
·
Why
this paper is important (with reference to the papers that came before and
after).
Try to
illustrate your points with examples.
You have a page limit of four pages, plus
references. This
means that all your text, excluding the “References” section at the end of the
paper, must fit within four pages. Page limits are common in paper-writing,
although four pages is very short—and almost certainly much shorter than the
paper you are summarizing. This will force you to be selective, and make sure
you choose the most important
material to include.
Your
submission for this exercise is a first
draft—that is, we expect you to revise it in the light of feedback. As
such, it’s ok if some parts are incomplete—but then you should clearly indicate
what is missing, by writing something such as “The final version will contain a
discussion of the relationship to [4] at this point”. Try to make your first
draft as complete as possible—even if the writing is rough in places—so that
you get feedback on as much of the document as possible.
I advise
using LaTeX to prepare your document (although this
is just a recommendation, not a requirement). You will find plenty of
information about how to use LaTeX online, and you
will find ways to install it under virtually any operating system. However, if
you are not familiar with LaTeX yet, then you might
like to use this template as a starting point.
Your first
draft is due on November 22nd, and should be submitted through the
Fire system. Only PDF files can be submitted. Make sure you select as your
reviewer the course assistant leading the writing workshop you have booked (see
below: obviously you must book a writing workshop before submitting your
draft).
Writing workshops
You should
attend a writing workshop, at which your first draft will be discussed by a
course assistant and a group of your fellow students. Each workshop is two
hours long (or rather, one and three quarter hours, since we will finish at
quarter to the hour in the mornings, and start at quarter past the hour in the
afternoons). You should attend the entire two hour
slot that you book; around 20 minutes will be spent discussing your own
writing, and you should expect to spend the remaining time reading other
students’ summaries and making helpful suggestions. Please bring enough copies of your draft on paper for everyone at the
workshop to have a copy to read.
The times
and locations of writing workshops are as follows:
|
Date |
Course
assistant and room |
Time
slots |
|
Thursday, 23 Nov |
Inari 5213 |
10–12, 13–15, 15–17 |
|
|
Simon 5215 |
10-12, 13-15, 15-17 |
|
Friday, 24 Nov |
Inari 5213 |
8–10, 10–12, 13–15 |
|
|
Jonatan 5215 |
8–10, 10–12, 13–15 |
|
Monday, 27 Nov |
Simon 5213 |
10-12, 15-17 |
To book a
time, use one of the following links:
|
Inari Listenmaa |
|
|
Simon Robillard |
|
|
Jonatan Kilhamn |
Part 2: Your reviews
You should
receive two other students’ summaries by email from the course assistant that
you submitted your own first draft to. Your task is to read each summary, and
write a review for the author, following the structure and advice covered in
the lecture. Your reviews may be submitted either as a text file (with
extension .txt), or as a PDF. Include both your reviews in one file, but start
each review by clearly stating the title and author of the summary you are
reviewing.
The deadline for your reviews is six days after you receive the
summaries to review—so if you receive those summaries on Thursday, then you
should submit your reviews the following Wednesday. You should submit your
reviews using the Fire system (https://css-lp2-17.frs.cse.chalmers.se/), and send a copy of your review to each summary author at the same time (their email address
ought to be given at the top of their summary). Note that your deadline for
this is individual—the deadline in the Fire system is after everyone should
have finished submitting summaries. Of course, if you submit your reviews
early, then we (and the authors of the summaries you are reviewing) will just
be happy.
Our goal is
to send summaries for review the weekday after they are submitted (i.e. not at
the week-end), to other students who submitted their own summary on the same
day—so if you are late submitting your summary, then you will still have six
days to do your own reviewing, but of course you won’t get reviews on your own
work until your own reviewing deadline.
Part 3: Final version
On the day
your own reviews are due, you ought to receive two reviews of your own draft
summary from your fellow students, and you should have had feedback at a
writing workshop. Now it’s time to polish your summary into its final form,
taking into account the feedback you have received. Don’t forget that your
final summary should not only explain the key idea in the main paper you chose
to work with, but also explain why it is important with reference to the papers
that came before and after. Check your list of references: are there at least
three papers there? If not, you’re not done!
Your final
version is due on the 6th December. Note that this is a different exercise in the Fire
system—it’s not a resubmission of the first draft. So make sure you submit to
the correct exercise!