Scientific Communication CITS7200

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Scientific Communication CITS7200

• Lecture 4
• Composition

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• Composition Organisation Simplification

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Choose a suitable design

• Haiku poem
• 3 lines
• 17 syllables as 575A syllable is a single
  uninterrupted sound

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• Ame no hi ya!
• Miyako ni toki
• Momo no yada. (Buson)
• The day is rainy.
• Far from the capital is
• My peach-blossom home.

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• How beautifully
• That kite soars up to the sky
• From the beggars hut.
• (Issa)

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• No sky and no earth
• At all. Only the snowflakes
• Fall incessantly.
• (Hashin)

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Windows Haiku

• First snow, then silence.
• This thousand dollar screen dies
• So beautifully.

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• Servers poor response
• Not quick enough for browser.
• Timed out, plum blossom.

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• The code was willing.
• It considered your request
• But the chips were weak.

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• The web site you seek
• Cannot be located but
• Endless others exist.

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• Stay the patient course
• Of little worth is your ire.
• The network is down.

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• Yesterday it worked.
• Today it is not working.
• Windows is like that.

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Sonnet 14 lines, iambic pentameter10 syllables
each line, ababcdcdefefgg

• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?    Thou
  art more lovely and more temperate Rough winds
  do shake the darling buds of May,    And
  summer's lease hath all too short a date
  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
     And often is his gold complexion dimm'd And
  every fair from fair sometime declines,    By
  chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd
  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,    Nor
  lose possession of that fair thou owest Nor
  shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
     When in eternal lines to time thou growest
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to
  thee.

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Classical detective novel

• Mysterious death
• Small, closed circle of suspects
• Each suspect has motive and opportunity
• Detective central character
• Murder uncovered by logic

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Make the paragraph the unit of composition

• Paragraphunit of thought, not length
• Homogeneous in subject matter
• Can be any length, but usually fewer than thirty
  lines
• Use paragraph position and size to highlight
  importance of ideas

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• Rank ideas
• Put important ideas first
• Begin each paragraph with a sentence that
  suggests the topic, or with a transition from the
  previous paragraph.

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• Dont rely on the content of the previous
  paragraph for sense.
• In order to achieve convergence it was
  initialised to
• In order to achieve convergence the learning
  algorithm was initialised to

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Use the active voice

• active voice makes for forcible writing
• passive voice distances the writer from the
  action
• active voice makes the writing more direct and
  emphatic

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• There is a plethora of algorithms for sorting.
• Sorting algorithms abound.

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• Finally, the complexity of this algorithm can be
  seen.
• We now see the complexity of this algorithm.

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Put statements in positive form

• He did not think that studying Scientific
  Communication was a sensible way to use one's
  time.
• He thought the study of Scientific Communication
  a waste of time.

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• not honest dishonest
• not important trifling
• did not pay any attention to ignored
• did not have much confidence in distrusted

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• Words such as would, should, could, may, might
  and can suggest doubt.
• Use them only for situations of real uncertainty.

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Use concrete language

• Prefer the specific to the general
• Definite to the vague
• Concrete to the abstract

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• A period of unfavourable weather set in.
• It rained every day for a week.

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• In proportion as the manners, customs, and
  amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous,
  the regulations of its penal code will be severe.
  
• In proportion as men delight in battles,
  bullfights, and the combat of gladiators, will
  they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

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Omit needless words

• Good writing is concise
• Ideal sentence 15-18 words
• Every word should count

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• the question as to whether whether
• there is no doubt but that doubtless
• he is a man who he
• this is a subject that this subject
• the reason why is that because
• owing to the fact that since
• in spite of the fact that though

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Waffle (A but B but A but B)

• We would like to have more information about the
  high-frequency data, but our model can account
  for all the information in our simulations.
  Observations in nature are, however, all too few.
  But the fact remains that much can be learnt by
  simulation. Acquisition of real data would
  necessarily mean that we would have to correct
  our initial model. In the meantime, the work on
  improving the simulation will continue.

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Avoid a succession of loose sentences

• Refers to sentences of two clauses, the second
  introduced by a conjunction or relative

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• The image is first thresholded, and then the
  binary version is extracted for further
  processing. The Laplacian pyramid is calculated,
  and the Gaussian pyramid is also computed for
  later use. The two pyramid structures are stored
  in an image structure of type image array, while
  the image itself uses the normal image structure.
  Wavelet transformation theory can be used to do
  scale analysis, but Fourier theory is usually
  adequate for most applications.

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• The image is first thresholded, and then the
  binary version is extracted for further
  processing. Both the Laplacian pyramid and the
  Gaussian pyramid are computed for later use they
  are stored in an image structure of type image
  array, while the image itself uses the normal
  image structure. Although Fourier analysis is
  adequate for most purposes, recent research
  indicates that the wavelet transform gives much
  better results for scale analyses.

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Express coordinate ideas in similar form

• Parallel construction
• Expressions that are similar in content and
  function should have the same outward structure

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• In SIMD, the same instructions are applied
  simultaneously to multiple data sets, whereas in
  MIMD different data sets are processed with
  different instructions.

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• In SIMD, multiple data sets are processed
  simultaneously by the same instructions, whereas
  in MIMD multiple data sets are processed
  simultaneously by different instructions.

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• With lots of ideas, use a table

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Write parallel chapter titles and headings

• Chapter 1 The Problem
• Chapter 2 Solving the Problem
• Chapter 3 A First Solution of the Problem
• Chapter 4 Second Problem Solution
• Chapter 5 Why Solve the Problem?

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• Chapter 1 Problem
• Chapter 2 Method of Solution
• Chapter 3 First Solution
• Chapter 4 Second Solution
• Chapter 5 Rationale for Solutions
• Chapter 6 History of Solutions

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• Section 1 Design
• Section 1.1 Initial Meeting
• Section 1.2 Project Objectives
• Section 1.3 Time Line
• Section 2 Prototype
• Section 2.1 Why Should You Build It?
• Section 2.2 How Can You Build It?

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Use parallel entries in lists

• Hans built the kitchen cabinets using several
  wood-working techniques
• Wood carving
• Sawing of wood
• Planing the wood
• The drill
• Sanded it smooth

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• Lyn carves wooden masks in eight steps
• Select a block of hardwood
• Create a form
• Attach the block to the form
• Rough out the facial structures
• Carve the details
• Scrape the wood smooth
• Saturate the wood with thin shellac
• Sand and oil the wood

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Keep related words together

• We notice a large loop in the algorithm that is
  right in the centre.
• We notice a large loop right in the centre of the
  algorithm.

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• New York's first commercial human-sperm bank
  opened Friday with semen samples from 18 men
  frozen in a stainless steel tank.

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In summaries, keep to one tense

• Use the present tense in summarizing
• Never change tense within the same paragraph
• Can use past tense in lit review

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Place the emphasis at the end

• The simplest neural network, the perceptron, was
  introduced by Rosenblatt (1962).
• Rosenblatt (1962) introduced the simplest neural
  network, the perceptron.

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• Use italics for emphasis with care.
• Steve cried, You are disappointed that we cant
  go to the beach today? How do you think I feel?

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• The insertion that unbalanced the tree structure
  occurred in the left subtree of the left child
  of the pivot node.

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• Never use bold or underline for emphasis
• Never use bold and italic

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• Use italics for definition
• Space mating is the term used to describe
  certain of the research programs on docking in
  space.

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• Use italics to indicate you are speaking about
  the word itself
• Des once informed an overly inquisitive
  interviewer that the difference between flute
  and lute was eff off.

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Conclusion

• Start early

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• Write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, ...
• The road to wisdom? Well, its plain and simple
  to express
• Err, and err, and err again, but less, and less,
  and less.

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• Read

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• Model the reader

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• Master the medium

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• Master the material

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• Simplify
• Everything should always be made as simple as
  possible, but not simpler. (Einstein)

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• Avoid recycling

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• Aim for excellence
• It is a wretched taste to be gratified with
  mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.
  (DIsraeli)

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• ConverselyAim for excellence, not perfection.