Abstract and Conclusion

1
Abstract and Conclusion

• Gerry S. Doroja, MSCS
• Associate Professor
• Department of Computer Science
• Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan
• gsd_at_xu.edu.ph
• January 7, 2005

Adapted from Writing up research online,
Language Center, Asian Institute of Technology,
Bangkok, Thailand, 2003 (http//www.languages.ait.
ac.th/EL21OPEN.HTM)
2
Purpose of the Abstract

• For conference papers, research papers, theses
  and dissertations, you will almost always be
  asked to write an abstract.
• The main point to remember is that it must be
  short, because it should give a summary of your
  research.
• In fact, not only are abstracts short, they must
  almost always be a certain, specified length
  (e.g. 200 words) and you should come close to -
  but not go over - this limit.
• Abstracts that exceed the maximum word limit are
  often rejected because they cannot be used for
  databases, summaries of conferences, etc.

3
What the Abstract Includes?

• An abstract should briefly
• Re-establish the topic of the research.
• Give the research problem and/or main objective
  of the research (this usually comes first).
• Indicate the methodology used.
• Present the main findings.
• Present the main conclusions

4
What the Abstract Includes?

• It is essential that your abstract includes all
  the keywords/key terminologies of your research.
• Obviously if you only have two hundred words, you
  can only cover each of these areas briefly.
• The emphasis is generally on the main findings
  and main conclusions since these areas are of
  most interest to readers.

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Abstract Common Problems

• Too long. If your abstract is too long, it may be
  rejected - abstracts are entered on databases,
  and those is usually a specified maximum number
  of words. Abstracts are often too long because
  people forget to count their words (remember that
  you can use your word processing program to do
  this) and make their abstracts too detailed (see
  below).
• Too much detail. Abstracts that are too long
  often have unnecessary details. The abstract is
  not the place for detailed explanations of
  methodology or for details about the context of
  your research problem because you simply do not
  have the space to present anything but the main
  points of your research.

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Abstract Common Problems

• Too short. Shorter is not necessarily better.  If
  your word limit is 200 but you only write 95
  words, you probably have not written in
  sufficient detail. You should review your
  abstract and see where you could usefully give
  more explanation - remember that in many cases
  readers decide whether to read the rest of your
  research from looking at the abstract. Many
  writers do not give sufficient information about
  their findings
• Failure to include important information. You
  need to be careful to cover the points listed
  above. Often people do not cover all of them
  because they spend too long explaining, for
  example, the methodology and then do not have
  enough space to present their conclusion.

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Abstract and Introduction Comparison

• At first glance, it might seem that the
  introduction and the abstract are very similar
  because they both present the research problem
  and objectives as well as briefly reviewing
  methodology, main findings and main conclusions.  

8
Abstract and Introduction Comparison

• However, there are important differences between
  the two
• Introduction
• Should be short, but does not have a word limit
• Main purpose is to introduce the research by
  presenting its context or background.
  Introductions usually go from general to
  specific, introducing the research problem and
  how it will be investigated).
• Abstract
• Has a maximum word limit
• Is a summary of the whole research
• Main purpose is to summarize the research
  (particularly the objective and the main
  finding/conclusion), NOT to introduce the
  research area.

9
Purpose of the Conclusion Chapter

• To give a summary of
• What was learned (this usually comes first)
• What remains to be learned (directions for future
  research)
• The shortcomings of what was done (evaluation)
• The benefits, advantages, applications, etc. of
  the research (evaluation), and 
• Recommendations.

10
Conclusion Chapter Common Problems

• Too long. The conclusion section should be short.
  Often the conclusion section is as little as 2.5
  of an entire piece of published research.
• Too much detail. Conclusions that are too long
  often have unnecessary detail. The conclusion
  section is not the place for details about your
  methodology or results. Although you should give
  a summary of what was learnt from your research,
  this summary should be short, since the emphasis
  in the conclusions section is on the
  implications, evaluations, etc. that you make.

11
Conclusion Chapter Common Problems

• Failure to comment on larger, more significant
  issues. Whereas in the introduction your task was
  to move from general (your field) to specific
  (your research), in the concluding section your
  task is to move from specific (your research)
  back to general (your field, how your research
  will affect the world). In other words, in the
  conclusion you should put your research in
  context.
• Failure to reveal the complexities of a
  conclusion or situation. Negative aspects of your
  research should not be ignored. Problems,
  drawbacks etc. can be included in summary in your
  conclusion section as a way of qualifying your
  conclusions (i.e. pointing out the negative
  aspects, even if they are outweighed by the
  positive aspects).

12
Conclusion Chapter Common Problems

• Lack of a concise summary of what was learned. In
  order to be able to discuss how your research
  fits back into your field of study (and the world
  at large) you need to summarize it very briefly.
  Often the summary is only a few sentences.
• Failure to match the objectives of the research.
  Often research objectives change while the
  research is being carried out. This is not a
  problem unless you forget to go back and rewrite
  your original objectives in your introduction so
  that they accurately reflect what you were trying
  to accomplish in your research (not what you
  thought you might accomplish when you began).
  Here is an example of an objective and conclusion
  that do not match

13
Conclusion Chapter Common Problems

• Objective The main objective of this study was
  to assess the impact of roadbuilding on villages
  on rural communities.
• Conclusion The model produced in this study can
  accurately predict the social and economic impact
  of road-building on villages in northern Laos.
• If we rewrite the objective to match what we
  actually did (we developed a model), it will fit
  the conclusion
• Rewritten objective The main objective of this
  study was to develop a model to predict the
  social and economic impact of road-building on
  rural communities.

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Abstract - Examples

• A Comparative Study and Implementation of Network
  Security
• Abstract
• Companies without controlled doors cannot ensure
  the security and safety of their employees, nor
  can they prevent piracy and theft. Networks
  without controlled access cannot guarantee the
  security or privacy of stored data, nor can they
  keep network resources from being exploited by
  hackers. This study adopts several different
  firewall programs and uses Windows 2000 Server as
  the platform to test, and ultimately compare in
  detail, two different facets of each program,
  functionality and performance. Network security
  is always the most important issue of the
  company. From this study, recommendations will be
  provided through the testing of the firewall
  programs. When a company starts to use a firewall
  or other security measures, the performance of
  the network will be reduced. Trade-offs between
  security of the network and ease of access must
  be resolved. However, the solution to the
  negative aspects of firewalls is another issue to
  be dealt with in the future.

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Abstract - Example

• A Survey and Implementation of E-Commerce in
  Supply Chain Management
• Abstract
• With the growth of the Internet, more and more
  companies are dedicated to e-business. Supply
  chain management has been deemed as one of the
  useful tools for businesses to promote their
  competitiveness, and to build up their trust
  relationship with up and down stream businesses.
  In order to link the whole value chain,
  information technology (IT) application has
  already been essential for enterprises. This
  study adopts a database-oriented approach and
  uses a server side program, Java Servlets, to
  manage a web-based inventory management system.
  The idea is to make information readily and
  easily available to people who are interested in
  the data. Once a company integrates the
  all-internal systems, it can further combine its
  up and down stream businesses. In conclusion,
  enterprises must converge enterprise resource
  planning (ERP), electronic supply chain
  management (E-SCM), and customer relationship
  management (CRM) systems to win competitive
  advantage. Usually, it may take couple of years
  to build an integrated ERP system and E-SCM
  system. Information technology provides a more
  efficient way to build the system.

16
Abstract - Example

• CSQS Computer Simulation of Queueing Systems
• Abstract
• Simulation generally involves some kind of model
  or simplified representation. During the course
  of a simulation, the model mimics important
  elements of what is being simulated. A simulation
  model may be a physical model, a mental
  conception, a mathematical model, a computer
  model, or some combination of all of these.
  Computer simulation is currently used in a wide
  range of applications, since physical models are
  often relatively expensive to build and unwieldy
  to move. Queuing systems are used to characterize
  a broad class of processes sharing a common
  mathematical structure but which may include many
  diverse physical realizations. All these
  processes are stochastic processes with three
  characteristics, which can be used to describe
  the system an input process, a service
  mechanism, and a queue discipline. The presence
  of uncertainty is the thing which makes these
  systems challenging to analyze and design, since
  randomness in one or more of these three
  characteristics is the rule rather than the
  exception. Furthermore, the distributions used to
  describe these events may be nonstationary, which
  adds further complication to their study.

17
Abstract - Example

• An Online-Banking System Using Java and Corba
• Abstract
• The Common Object Request Broker Architecture
  (CORBA) is the Object Management Group's answer
  to the need for interoperability among the
  rapidly proliferating number of hardware and
  software products available today. Simply stated,
  CORBA allows applications to communicate with one
  another no matter where they are located or who
  has designed them. Object Management Group (OMG)
  introduced CORBA 1.1 in 1991. It defined the
  Interface Definition Language (IDL) and the
  Application Programming Interfaces (API) that
  enable client/server object interaction within a
  specific implementation of an Object Request
  Broker (ORB). The purpose of this project is to
  introduce the CORBA architecture, services, and
  IDL. I have built a system using Java based on
  CORBA to demonstrate its powerful client/server
  architecture.

18
Abstract - Example

• An Implementation of A Spatial Query Language for
  Multiple Data Sources
• Abstract
• To support the retrieval, fusion and discovery of
  visual/multimedia information, a spatial query
  language for multiple data sources is needed. In
  this paper we describe a spatial query language
  interpreter which is based upon the a-operator
  sequence and in practice expressible in an
  SQL-like syntax. The algorithm for the a-query
  translator is explored in detail. The
  implementation of the algorithm including data
  structures, pseudo-codes and source codes in C is
  presented. Query examples handled successfully by
  the a-query implementation are also given out.

19
Abstract - Example

• The Implementation of Web-Databases by the
  Approach of Java Database Connectivity JDBC
• Abstract
• Web database publishing is a new way to publish
  information electronically. A typical Web
  database publishing system has a Web browser as
  its user interface, a database server as its
  information store, and a Web server connecting
  the two. The basic idea of this project is to use
  JDBC to search databases directly from an
  Internet Web browser. The database is kept on a
  SUN Web server. JDBC is used to interact with Web
  pages. This project uses a simple interface to
  help the Some security issues are discussed also.
  There are four purposes of this project 1.To
  study a real time database system 2.To design a
  Web-Oriented user interface 3.To discuss Web
  security 4.To practice network communication.

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Abstract - Example

• Digital Video Transmission over Wireless Channels
  
• Abstract
• Wireless technology has become the most exciting
  area in telecommunication and networking. The
  rapid growth of mobile telephone use, various
  satellite services, and now the wireless Internet
  are generating tremendous changes in
  telecommunications and networking. Wireless is
  convenient and often less expensive to deploy
  than fixed service, but wireless is not perfect.
  There are limitations, political and technical
  difficulties that may ultimately prevent wireless
  technologies from reaching their full potential.
  Regardless of the design of the transmission
  system, there will be errors, resulting in the
  change of one or more bits in a transmitted
  frame. In this thesis, we focus on different
  characteristics of wireless channels and their
  applications to video transmission framework.
  Channel coding and interleaving techniques have
  long been recognized as an effective technique
  for combating the deleterious effects of noise,
  interference, jamming, fading, and other channel
  impairments. The basic idea of channel coding is
  to introduce controlled redundancy into the
  transmitted signals that is exploited at the
  receiver to correct channel induced errors by
  means of forward error correction. Channel coding
  can also be used for error detection in schemes
  that employ automatic repeat request (ARQ)
  strategies. ARQ strategies must have a feedback
  channel to relay the retransmission requests from
  the receiver back to the transmitter when errors
  are detected. ARQ schemes require buffering at
  the transmitter and/or receiver and, therefore,
  are suitable for data applications but are not
  suitable for delay sensitive voice applications.
  Problem of video transmission over wireless
  channels has been addressed in literature. In
  this thesis, we will present a review of these
  techniques. However, we will mainly focus on
  different characteristics of wireless channels
  and their implications on video transmission
  framework.

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Conclusions - Example

• Digital Video Transmission over Wireless Channels
  
• Conclusions
• In this paper, we reviewed many tools that are
  used for efficient video transmission over
  wireless channels. Most of these tools can be
  used in combination with others. In many cases
  they offer significant improvements in
  performance with little overhead and complexity.
  Some of them are already included in current
  standards such as MPEG-4. As potential
  applications are numerous and will be widely
  used, the research in the field is expected to
  continue. However, now the major obstacle is the
  quality vs. bandwidth trade-off, which is
  expected to be lessened by the introduction of
  new generation wireless systems. The next
  challenge for video transmission may arise by the
  introduction of Internet protocol (IP) to
  wireless devices. In that case, IP related
  problems, such as network congestion, have to be
  faced together with current problems of wireless
  channels.

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Conclusions - Example

• The design and implementation of javahelp system
  for java client application service
• Summary and Conclusions
• With so many options for online help systems,
  developer may wonder why he should use JavaHelp
  or how it compares with other help systems.
  JavaHelp may be not only the best online help
  system to use with Java applications or applets
  but also a great source for providing online
  documentation in general.
• If developer is designing online help for Java
  application, JavaHelp is the best help system
  for the job. Since JavaHelp is written in Java,
  it is platform independent and guaranteed to run
  in any environment in which associated Java
  applications. Also, since JavaHelp is
  implemented using Java Foundation Class (JFC)
  components, Java programming can customize
  JavaHelps interfaces and functionality.
  JavaHelp offers many online help-presentation
  options. Developer can design it for standalone,
  context-sensitive, or embedded modes developer
  can also use other standard help features such as
  pop-up windows, secondary windows, and multimedia
  integration.
• Finally, JavaHelp is easy to merge and update.
  If developer has different software applications
  with different HelpSets, he can merge them so
  that users see a single, integrated online help
  system. If he ever has to update his JavaHelp
  topics, he can easily do so since JavaHelp uses
  standard HTML files for its help topics.