How to write and present Technical Papers

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How to write and present Technical Papers

• C.P. Ravikumar

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Objective

• At the end of this talk, you should be in a
  position to appreciate what formal writing style
  is, and how formal paper presentations are made.

• The hidden motive To entice you to participate
  in the Controlnet internal workshop

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Outline of this presentation

• What is a technical paper?
• How does one write a technical paper?
• How is a technical paper presented?

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Writing a paper is

• A lot like chip design
• You need
• Conceptualization
• Floorplanning and layout
• Interconnections
• DRC and ERC
• Testing

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What is a technical paper?

• A brief and to-the-point document which describes
  a body of technical work
• There are many types of technical papers
• Original research papers
• Survey papers
• Journal papers
• Conference papers
• Letters

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Getting ready to write a paper

• What type of paper am I writing?
• What do I wish to state?
• Have I got all the background work with me?
• Have I organized the paper?
• What electronic format will I use?
• LaTeX, MS Word,

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Organizing a paper

• Title of the paper
• Authors, designations, and addresses
• Abstract (100 to 150 words)
• Keywords
• Sections describing the work
• Introduction (Background)
• Previous Work (Literature Survey)
• Proposed Work (Algorithm, Design, Methodology)
• Analysis (Complexity Analysis, Quantitative
  Analysis, Statistical Analysis, )
• Implementation and Results
• Conclusions

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Abstract

• Summary of your work
• Entices the reader to read on
• Must bring out the novelty of your work
• Must be brief (100 to 150 words)

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Introduction

• Introduction to the problem
• Why is it worth solving?
• What did others do?
• Why did they not succeed?
• Why do I believe I did better?
• Contribution of the paper
• Is there anything new in the paper?
• How good are your results?
• Is your survey different from other available
  surveys?
• Introduction to the paper itself

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Literature Survey

• Brief description of the existing body of work
• Citations to published work
• In 2, Rosetti and Longfellow described the
  meaning of life. Wordsworth presented a different
  view point in 3
• Bring out the specific advantage of your work
  w.r.t. published work.
• However, the Rosetti-Longfellow formula 2 fails
  for technologies below 0.2 micron. In this paper,
  we extend their formula to the deep submicron
  domain.

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Sections and Subsections

• Organize each section into subsections and
  (possibly) sub-subsections
• 1. Introduction
• 1.1 Problem Description
• 1.1.1 Inductance Extraction
• 1.1.2 Transmission Line Models
• 1.2 Organization of the paper
• In Section 2, we summarize the previous work in
  this area. In Section 3, we present a new
  algorithm for

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Main body of work

• Organize your work into sections and
  sub-sections.
• 3. New Algorithm for Graph Partitioning
• 3.1 Genetic Algorithm
• 3.2 Data Structures
• 3.2 Crossover Operator
• 3.3 Convergence Criterion

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Analyze your work

• This is my work

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Types of Analysis

• Quantitative Analysis
• Present numerical results size of the chip,
  clock rating, power dissipation,
• Present tables Run-time of your algorithm for
  several benchmark examples
• Present graphs Chip Area Vs Clock Frequency
• Present improvement figures Our optimization
  algorithm resulted in a 20 reduction in chip
  area for the sp292 benchmark circuit

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Comparative Analysis

• Comparing two different approaches to the same
  problem
• Tabulate results for two different heuristics
• Comparing the performance for two different
  parameters
• Tabulate results for two different technologies/
  voltage values/

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Graphic Items

• They say one picture is equal to

65,536 pixels

• Include at least one or two graphic items
• Figures
• Pictures, Photographs, Algorithms, Plots
• Tables

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Figures and Tables

• Number all the figures and tables
• Graphs are also shown as figures
• Provide captions for all figures and tables
• Figure 3. Floorplan of the SONAR Chip
• Refer to each figure and table.
• In Figure 3, we show the floorplan of the SONAR
  Chip as obtained using the MASON software 4.

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The Conclusions Section

• State what was achieved in the paper
• Were you able to come to some definite
  conclusions?
• We presented two algorithms, A1 and A2, for the
  floorplanning problem. Our experimental results
  indicate that A1 outperforms A2 in terms of
  solution quality, but requires about 100 more
  time than A2 in most cases.
• Be frank about the limitations of your work
• Point out directions for further work

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References

• 1 A.V. Aho, D. Hopcroft, and J.D. Ullman.
  Design and Analysis of Algorithms,
  Addison-Wesley, 1974.
• 2 C. Rosetti and H.W. Longfellow. Life and its
  Meaning, Proceedings of the 14th International
  Conference of the Dead Poets, 1999, 334-339.
• 3 W. Wordsworth. Daffodils, In Collected
  Poems of William Wordsworth, Ed. R. Roselin,
  Artech House, 1976.

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Writing Style

• Use simple sentences, unless you are comfortable
  writing complex and compound sentences
• Avoid repetition
• Make use of the grammar and spelling checker, but
  exercise caution
• Will a figure or table be able to say the same
  thing more effectively?

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Presenting your work

• Who is my audience?
• What is the purpose of my presentation?
• What should I talk about?
• How much time do I have?
• How many slides should I make?
• How should I handle questions?
• Rehearsals

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Are you ready to start writing?