DAT315/DIT199, Period 2, 2018: The Computer Scientist in Society

Week 7:

Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 19^th 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. Read the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Course responsible

John Hughes (rjmh@chalmers.se)

Course assistants

· Simon Robillard (simon.robillard@chalmers.se)

· Maximilian Algehed (algehed@chalmers.se)

· Agustin Mista (mista@chalmers.se)

Student representatives

· 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

What is the course about?

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

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.

Exercises

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.

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.

Schema

Week 1	Lecture at 1315 on Wednesday 7^th 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 14^th 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 21^st November How to write a paper (slides). Lecture at 1515 on Wednesday 21^st 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 16^th. 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 12^th: 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 19^th 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. Read the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Recommended reading

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.