Thesis for beginners 2015-10

1. Miguel Pardal Oct. 2015

2. LEIC 2000 Unisys Portugal Lecturer at Técnico since 2002 MEIC 2006 Visiting Student at MIT in 2009 DEIC 2014 First publication in 2004 Since then, about 20 more http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal

3. Share experience Provide tools Learn from you Best thing about being a teacher 

4. Read Write

5. “X is better than Y!” It needs to be grounded! Work of others Citations Own work Experimental results Statistically valid

6. Our research is only possible because of the work of others before us Actual People, Labs, Universities Keep a reference repository Save the PDF Identify each paper Author name, year, (conference acronym, keywords)

7. Technical report Workshop paper Conference paper Journal article Book chapter Book Increasing public exposure and scrutiny

8. IEEExplore: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org ACM: http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm AAAI: http://www.aaai.org/Library/library.php

9. Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/ Microsoft Academic: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ ResearchGate Mendeley Academia.edu

10. Start with the best sources Good conference ? Accept rate < 20% Only 1 in 5 submitted papers gets accepted Good journal ? Impact factor - average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal Start with the more recent papers They will cite older, relevant work in their references Find out where the community gathers

11. Title Abstract Introduction Figures Conclusion References Read related work

12. Short summary of paper Should fit in an index card What is relevant? System characteristics Assumptions Examples/scenarios ... State good and identify bad points Use note taking app with search OneNote, EverNote, …

13. Tables are great for comparing things Start with existing columns, or think of your own Add more columns if you need Empty cells remind you of what you don’t know yet System Initial Release Latest Version … Windows [Gates83] 1983 10.0 Mac [Jobs84] 1984 10.11 (El Capitan) Linux [Torvalds91] 1991

14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems

15. A model is a simplification/abstraction of a complex object To show relevant characteristics Easier to manipulate than the actual object Represent: Structure Behavior

16. Class Diagram

17. Sequence Diagram

18. The work is (almost) complete Is it worth writing? YES To write is to express thoughts into words Use the third person, past tense So that others may learn Your own learning is not complete without the “distillation process” that comes with writing

19. Use the most common science language, so that your work may reach the widest audience English What about Portuguese and other languages? Still important for scientific divulgation

20. Conference Ongoing work Journal Fully developed and final findings Journals have 3 times more citations, but It is harder to be accepted Conditional accepts Takes a long time until final publication

21. Process to increase the quality of the writing Follow sound science practices Reviews Not always constructive Do not get offended It is not about you, it is about your work You should be the first to know that there is always something to improve…

22. English quality Structure Literature review Complete and to the point Motivation for decisions Rigor Avoid misunderstandings Identify the limitations of your own work They will be found anyway (sooner or later) They are future work opportunities

23. Introduction Problem Related Work Proposal Methodology Results Discussion / Evaluation Conclusion Contributions Future Work

24. Move 1 – Establish the “territory” Claiming centrality and/or Making topic generalizations and/or Reviewing items of previous research Move 2 – Establish the niche Counter-claiming or Indicating a gap or Question-raising or Continuing a tradition Move 3 – Occupy the niche Outlining purposes or Announcing present research Announcing principle findings Indicating Research article structure http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Swalesian-Introduction

25. 3 tells Say what you will say Say Say what you said Provide guidance and context to the reader

26. Widely used Produces documents with excellent aesthetics Easy to follow template rules Built-in support for mathematical expressions. Generates the reference list automatically! BibTeX It is a programming language (with comments) These are the main contributions: % do not forget to add the prototype!

27. Science is personal and social People and communities are central Read Learn from other authors Cite them Compare what they did Write Explain in a concise way Learn from the reviewers Share with others

28. Miguel.Pardal@tecnico.ulisboa.pt Obrigado Thank you “The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” ― G.K. Chesterton

29. Guide by myself and Joana Pardal: http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal/www/doc/ quick-guide-research.pdf IEEE Authorship Series and toolbox: http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/ authors/authors_journals.html