Hmmmm..... tangan gatai nak tulis tapi tatau nak tulih apa.....
oh ya.... hari ini kena pergi sekolah budak-budak sebab ada 'Green Day'.

Apa itu 'Green Day'? hahhahaha..... alahai, ala-ala hari hijau gitu; appreciating nature and environment! The day they celebrate and teach children about the importance of nature and environment.

So, apa aktiviti hari ini di sekolah? hmmm.... honestly, i dunno. I would expect my kids and their teachers to plant trees apart from playing games all day! hahaha... Well, seriously, I don't know. I'll let you know soon. Wait n see....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

HAPPY 13th BIRTHDAY TO MY DEAREST DAUGHTER,

FIFI AZNAN

   MAY ALLAH BLESS YOU ALWAYS! WE LOVE YOU!

Betulkah Belajar Sastera Susah?

Oleh Hafizah Iszahanid
hafiza@bharian.com.my
2011/04/19

Sistem pendidikan, sikap pelajar tentukan hala tuju bidang terbabit

KERAP kali ilmu kesusasteraan dirujuk sebagai bidang yang tiada nilai ekonomi. Tanggapan itu seakan-akan sudah disemai sejak di bangku sekolah lagi. Apatah lagi dengan sistem pendidikan di Malaysia yang berorientasikan peperiksaan, apa juga subjek tanpa nilai ekonomi kerap kali diketepikan.

Justeru, bukan sedikit pelajar yang belajar sastera dengan bersandarkan kepada buku soalan ramalan peperiksaan atau buku sinopsis tanpa peruntukan masa untuk membaca dan mengkaji teks asal, apalagi jika kedudukannya hanya sebagai bahan sampingan dalam Komponan Sastera dalam Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Bahasa Melayu (KOMSAS).

Pensyarah Kanan, Jabatan Pengajian Bahasa dan Pendidikan Sastera, Fakulti Pendidikan Universiti Malaya, Dr Chew Fong Peng, mengakui kebanyakan pelajar hari ini berasa tertekan bukan saja untuk mempelajari subjek sastera, tetapi semua subjek kerana sistem pendidikan berorientasikan peperiksaan membunuh minat membaca kelompok terbabit.

“Ini isu besar dan kita tidak boleh meletak kesalahan pada guru dan pentadbir saja. Dalam kajian saya, ada sekolah rendah yang terpilih untuk diperkenalkan subjek sastera, tetapi tidak termasuk dalam subjek peperiksaan hanya untuk penghayatan. Bagaimanapun bila kita pergi ke sekolah berkenaan untuk buat kajian, kita dapati cikgu tak ajar dengan alasan ia tidak masuk periksa,” katanya pada Seminar Sastera Pelbagai Kaum di Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (ASWARA), baru-baru ini.

Realiti negara yang mempamerkan subjek sastera tiada nilai ekonomi menyebabkan ramai pelajar tidak mahu mempelajarinya dan keadaan itu merugikan generasi muda Malaysia kerana melalui sastera, pelajar akan lebih mengenal dan memahami budaya masyarakat lain.

“Realiti kita hari ini, kita duduk satu negara, tetapi kita tidak kenal rakan senegara kita. Kita tidak tahu budaya dan adat resam mereka. Hanya melalui karya sastera kita akan faham budaya dan pemikiran bangsa lain, sekali gus memupuk perpaduan.
“Menyemai minat dalam kesusasteraan itu penting, memupuk tabiat membaca juga penting kerana dari situ pelajar akan terdorong untuk membaca teks sastera sepenuhnya, bukan hanya memilih untuk membaca sinopsis teks semata-mata untuk lulus peperiksaan,” tegasnya.

Keadaan yang berlaku sekarang sangat kontras dengan perincian Wawasan 2020 yang dibentangkan oleh mantan Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad yang menggariskan Malaysia tidak wajar menjadi negara yang maju dari segi ekonominya saja, tetapi politik, sosial, kerohanian, kejiwaan dan keseluruhannya.

Pensyarah Fakulti Penulisan ASWARA, Susilawati Kamaruzamman pula melihat sistem pendidikan berorientasikan peperiksaan bukan saja membunuh minat membaca, tetapi menyebabkan generasi muda gagal mendapat peluang membesar sebagai manusia lebih kritis dalam pemikiran.

“Keindahan dan aspek positif subjek sastera itu tidak dinikmati generasi muda apabila mereka belajar hanya untuk lulus periksa dan guru pun mengajar dengan matlamat serupa. Lalu, pelajar baca sinopsis bukan teks sastera. Sistem pendidikan kita sememangnya berorientasikan peperiksaan. Pelajar tidak boleh disalahkan. Sistem begini mendorong pelajar suka meramal soalan untuk subjek apa pun,” tegasnya.

Susilawati yakin bahawa untuk memahami dan meminati sastera, seseorang itu memerlukan kekuatan jiwa, asas jati diri teguh, selain bangsa yang bermaruah dan bertamadun saja tahu meletakkan sastera mereka pada tahap terbaik dalam apa keadaan sekalipun.

Beliau mengingatkan peserta seminar bahawa pada zaman penjajahan, bangsa asing sebelum menakluk Tanah Melayu mengambil masa untuk mengkaji bahasa, sastera dan budaya penduduk pribumi sebelum memulakan ekspedisi kerana pada teks sasteralah letaknya pemikiran bangsa.

“Di barat, dunia sastera lebih besar dan penjualan novel disokong kuat oleh industri perfileman. Novel Harry Potter karya JK Rowling misalnya, jualan novelnya melonjak apabila difilemkan sehingga membolehkan penulisnya mencapai status jutawan,” ujarnya.

Namun di Malaysia, sastera bukan saja tidak diminati, tetapi turut tidak difahami dan contoh terbaik ketidakfahaman masyarakat apabila sastera yang punya lesen puitika, akhirnya kalah di tangan orang politik apabila ia dipolitikkan secara semberono.

Sebenarnya, kesedaran dan kefahaman orang Malaysia pada sastera bermula sudah lama dan kebenaran ini dapat dilihat apabila penulis Sejarah Melayu, Tun Sri Lanang, menyatakan dengan tegas secara langsung tentang faedah yang akan didapati dengan membaca teks sastera;

“Hamba dengar hikayat ada hikayat Melayu di-bawa oleh orang
Dari Goa; barang kita perbaiki kira-nya dengan isti’adat-nya,
Kemudian daripada kita, dan boleh di-ingatkan-nya oleh
Segala mereka itu, shahadan ada-lah beroleh fae’dah
Ia daripada-nya.”
(Sejarah Melayu, 1948:2)

Bagaimanapun, sekarang ini kefahaman dan kesedaran itu perlahan-lahan seakan-akan layu dan hampir mati. Seperti kata Menteri Penerangan, Komunikasi dan Budaya, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, ketika merasmikan seminar berkenaan, bahasa yang hilang ekonominya akan perlahan-lahan lenyap dari muka bumi. Bahasa yang lenyap akan melenyapkan juga aspek sastera dan budayanya. Lalu, adakah bangsa penutur bahasa itu akan kekal lagi di situ?

Haruskah

Haruskah aku terus merayu padamu
Haruskah aku taburi janji beribu
untuk menembusi tembok hati sanubarimu
ataupun aku hanya menanti...

who's to blame?

Ada aku peduli isteri dan anak-anakku sudah makan atau belum...

Ada aku peduli jika isteriku tak sempat makan kerana sibuk melayan anak-anak....

Ada aku peduli jika isteriku masih di dapur menyediakan keperluan pagi esok ketika aku sedang berdengkur...

Ada aku peduli siapa yang membelikan sabun mandi, ubat gigi dan meletakkannya di dalam bilik aku bersiram....

Ada aku peduli dah berapa lama isteri aku begitu setia menggosok kain bajuku...

Ada aku peduli bagaimana layanan yg isteriku dambakan dari aku seorang suami...

Ada aku peduli apa perasaan isteriku bila aku pulang ke rumah dengan wajah kusam dan masam....

Ada aku peduli adakah wang yang masih bersisa utk isteri dan anakku ketika aku hendak kepergian....

Ada aku peduli apa perasaan isteriku bila aku tidak pernah menelefonnya ketika aku bertugas di luar.....

Ada aku peduli berapa harga gincu jika isteriku ingin memerahkan bibir yang pudar ditelan masa....

Ada aku peduli bilakah kali terakhir aku menghadiahkan minyak wangi kepada isteriku...

Ada aku peduli bila kali terakhir aku membelikan pakaian utk wanita yg rela menjadi isteriku...menjadi ibu anak-anakku...

Ada aku peduli kenapa isteriku terlelap bersama linangan airmata....

Ada aku peduli jika isteriku terjaga di tengah malam kerana dengkurku......dan aku terus nyenyak tidur dibuai mimpi indah seorang lelaki....



Tiba-tiba aku MENJADI PEDULI dan MENGAMBIL PEDULI



Ketika telefon isteriku berdering di malam hari...

Ketika isteriku mula belajar ber'sms'..dan berchatting...

Ketika isteriku kembali berhias seperti ketika aku mula jatuh hati padanya...

Ketika isteriku sanggup tidak makan malam kerana mahu menjaga badan

Ketika isteriku tidak meminta lagi aku menjadi imamnya....

Ketika isteriku memilih tidur bersama anak-anakku.....

Ketika dia tidak lagi mencium tanganku ketika aku hendak pergi...



Kini, aku baru ingin bertanya kenapa isteriku dah tak peduli padaku?



P/s : Tidak ada manusia yang sempurna baik suami ataupun isteri. Jangan mengharap dilayan seperti raja jika kita tidak pernah menganggap isteri itu permaisuri hati kita. Jangan diharap bunga yang indah jika kita tidak pernah membajanya. Dan selalulah ingat, bila hati seorang wanita telah retak, dia boleh menjadi lebih keras daripada seorang lelaki.



~ by Ukhty Norhidayu Abdullah.

'Jika'

Just recently I came across this interesting article; neither hilarious nor serious but very suggestive. Well, the points given down here are still debatable and have yet to be proven but at least they give us some hints or sign on what to look for. What say you?


Kalau

Kalau suami mula berahsia.

Itu tandanya dia tak setia

Kalau suami meninggi suara

Itu tandanya dia dah ada mak we

Kalau suami mengaku bujang tua

Itu tandanya dia nak ngurat anak dara

Kalau suami selera tak ada

Itu tandanya dia nak pasang dua

Kalau suami lambat balik aje

Itu tandanya dia dah syok kat setiausaha

Kalau suami tidur di ruang tamu

Itu tandanya dia dah jemu

Kalau suami malam jumaat buat tak tahu

Itu tandanya tak lama lagi hidupmu bermadu

Kalau suami garang macam singa

Itu tandanya hati dia dah tak cinta

Kalau suami asyik komplen aje

Itu tandanya dia dah tak suka

Kalau suami mula sepak terajang ke muka

Itu tandanya dia nak memberimu gelaran JANDA

HOW TO GIVE A GOOD RESEARCH TALK

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 | Filed under Artikel | Posted by ukeirempa

This paper appears in SIGPLAN Notices 28(11) (Nov 1993).
Simon L Peyton Jones, John Hughes, and John Launchbury
Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ Scotland
Email: simonpj@microsoft.com,jl@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk, rjmh@cs.chalmers.se
Abstract
Giving a good research talk is not easy. We try to identify some things which we have found helpful, in the hope that they may be useful to you.
1 What this paper is about
By a “research talk” we mean a presentation of 30-60 minutes, given to a group of people who are motivated and intelligent, but who may not know much about your particular area.
The paper is heavily on our personal experience of giving talks in the area of Computing Science. What we have to say is quite different from what business people are often taught, but perhaps that’s due mainly to a difference in the style of presentation needed for technical material.
Papers like this one often tend to consist mainly of “motherhood” statements, with which nobody could possibly disagree (such as “prepare well”), and thereby end up with little real punch. We have tried to avoid this, partly by deliberately overstating some things (the title, for example) in order to make our points more vividly.
We make no claim to have all the answers; rather, we have simply tried to write down suggestions which have worked for us in the hope that they may be useful to you. Everyone is different, so take what is useful for you, and ignore the rest.
2 What to say
You should usually see your talk primarily as a “taster” for your work, rather than as an in-depth treatment. So two very useful questions to ask are these:
Who is my primary audience?
If someone remembers only one thing from my talk, what would I like it to be?.
If you have the answer to these questions pinned down, you can use them as criteria when deciding what to say and what to omit. And don’t forget to tell the audience the answer to the second question!
2.1 Using examples
Most of us do research by trying to solve a bunch of related problems, finding some suitable framework in which to solve them, and then generalising and abstracting our solution. For example, if the problem is to find out whether a function evaluates its argument, then a suitable framework might be denotational semantics, and a generalisation might be abstract interpretation.
The Awful Trap is to present only the framework and the abstraction, leaving out the motivating examples which you used to guide your work. Many talks are far too abstract. They present slide upon slide of impressive-looking squiggles, but leave the audience none the wiser.
It is utterly vital to present examples which demonstrate the points you are trying to make. When you give a definition of a property, or a mathematical structure, or some new notation, give examples to show what the definition captures. When you give a theorem, give examples to show what it means in practice.
Of course in a written paper you must be careful to fill in the details, and state precisely what is going on (though a good paper has plenty of motivating examples too). With any luck, your talk will persuade your listeners to read your paper, but a talk is the wrong medium in which to demonstrate your mathematical virtuosity.
The need to motivate and illustrate your talk with examples is probably the most important single point in this paper, because so many talks fail to do so. Ask yourself again and again: “Have I illustrated this idea/theorem/definition/technique/algorithm with an example?”.
2.2 Pruning: saying enough without saying too much
The tension is this: you need to say enough to convey the essential content of your idea, but you must not overwhelm your audience with too much material.
The best way out of this dilemma is to adopt a non-uniform approach to your talk; that is, treat some aspects in more detail than others. It may be painful not to talk about the other parts, but it is better than only giving a superficial treatment to everything, or over-running your time.
Given that there are bound to be people in your audience who don’t know the area at all, some overall introduction/motivation is usually essential. But do avoid the temptation of spending five or ten minutes on rambling introductory remarks. Sometimes, for example, people start with a slide listing prior work on the subject of the talk, or with an abstract description of what the talk is about.
Don’t waste time on this — instead jump straight in with an example which demonstrates the problem you are addressing. Remember: if you bore your audience in the first few minutes you may never get them back.
2.3 Telling it how it is
Avoid the temptation to conceal problems you know about in your work. Not only is it dishonest: it is also ineffective. A bright audience will find you out.
Furthermore, if you are open about the difficulties, you may find that someone makes a suggestion which turns out to be just what you need. Get your audience to help you do your research!
3 Visual aids
Use an overhead projector. A research talk is just too short to be able to give a sensible development on the blackboard, and 35mm slides take far too much preparation. (There are exceptions, of course. For example, in graphics talks, 35mm slides are often necessary, and sometimes even video. In this case, minimise technology intrusion by minimising changes between overheads, slides and video.)
3.1 Technology
Write your overhead slides by hand, rather than use LaTeX or other machine-based typesetting technology, unless your handwriting is utterly abysmal, because:
It frees you from having to prepare the entire talk before leaving for your trip.Handwritten slides in the middle of a typeset sequence look all wrong.
It makes it easy to use colour.
It makes it vastly easier to draw diagrams, add little arrows and bubbles, and so on. Of course this can be done by computer, but it is much, much slower.
It is all too easy to be seduced by the apparent neatness of typesetting. Remember that time you spend fiddling with the typesetting is time you are not spending on the content.
Typesetting adds to the temptation to write a slide that contains too much information, because it will still “fit”. If you do typeset your slides, use a large font (at least 17pt). Thismakes your slides physically more legible, and usefully limits how much will fit.
Naturally, there are times when it is better to use the odd slide or two of typeset material — computer output for example.
Use permanent-ink overhead projector pens. This is very important. The water-soluble kind rapidly get tatty and smudged (if your hands don’t sweat when you are speaking your physiology is different to ours), and their colours are much less vivid. You can get plastic erasers for such pens, so you can still correct mistakes.
Throw away the flimsy tissue-paper backing which come with OHP slides. Instead use ordinary paper from your recycling box. They get in much less of a mess, and you can write notes on the backing sheet to remind you of points you want to make which don’t appear on the slide itself.
Consider writing your slides “sideways” (landscape-style). This allows you to write larger, increasing legibility, and usefully limits how many things you can write.
Overlays (combined with use of colour) can be very helpful when presenting complicated examples, because they reduce the amount of new material to read on each successive slide. However, much of the advantage is lost if you pick up the slides to align them properly: the audience can’t keep their eye on the old stuff to see what’s new.
3.2 What to put on a slide
When writing slides remember that people can read and take in only very little information. Six or seven “things” on one slide is quite enough.
Slides shouldn’t repeat what you plan to say, but they should emphasise it; don’t waste visual bandwidth on things you are also going to say. People who copy their paper onto slides and then read from them are immensely irritating. You should plan to talk ABOUT what’s on your slides, not read it. (This may mean you need separate notes to remind you of what you want to say.)
It is conventional to start with a contents slide, giving the outline of your talk. Don’t. It takes a precious minute to talk through it, and your audience won’t understand it till later. Certainly never include such trivia as “introduction”, “conclusion”. These are understood as a necessary part of every talk.
On the other hand, about a third of the way through, it can be quite helpful to draw breath with a slide which says “This is what I have discussed so far, and now I’m going on to cover these areas”, or some such. This can help to re-orient your audience, and make it clear that this is the moment to ask questions if they are lost already. Another way to add signposts is to begin each section of your talk with a slide containing only the title of the section.
3.3 Preparing slides
Don’t start writing slides too early. It is Parkinsonian process: it simply expands to fill the time available. So don’t make too much time available. As indicated earlier, we often mull over what we are going to say for a week or two beforehand, but only actually write the slides the night before. This has the merit that the material is absolutely fresh in your mind when you give the talk, though you do need to have a clear idea in advance of what you are going to say.
Regard with extreme prejudice the temptation to pull out old slides from previous talks, and glue them together into a new talk. It almost always shows. Somehow the old slides are never quite appropriate. (It’s fine to simply repeat a complete previous talk, of course.)
4 Giving the talk
4.1 Nerves
If you don’t feel nervous before giving a talk, especially to a large or unfamiliar audience, you are a most unusual person. Between us we have given hundreds of talks, but the feeling that your legs just won’t support you when you stand up in front of all those people never goes away. Do try steady, deep breathing beforehand, and relaxation exercises, but don’t expect to feel calm.
Remember: the person who just gave that confident, assured presentationbefore you almost certainly felt just the same.
If you can make eye contact with your audience, then do so. A talk is greatly improved if the audience recognise they are being talked to rather than being talked at.
4.2 Presenting your slides
Some people hide most of their slide under a piece of paper, revealing it line by line, as they go through it. Occasionally this is just the right thing to do, but people quite often do it all the time, which we find a very irritating habit. Perhaps it helps to focus you listener’s attention on the part you are talking about, but it is als rather condescending (“you can’t be trusted to listen to me if I show you the next line too”). If you find yourself wanting to use this technique, ask yourself whether the material would not be better split over two slides.
There are exceptions: when you have a punchline to reveal, for example, or when you need to emphasise that something proceeds stage by stage; but it is a technique to use very sparingly. The inexperienced speaker especially doesn’t need the extra hassle of messing about with a bit of paper.
An overriding goal must be to make the slides themselves as invisible as possible. It is the content that is important. This leads to a couple of other don’ts: don’t use slides with a rip-off backing sheet; don’t use a ring binder to hold your slides during the talk, especially if you open and close it between each pair of slides; don’t switch off the overhead projector between slides. Each of these emphasises the existence of the slides as entities in their own right.
The only reason you use an overhead projector is so that people can see your slides. So don’t block their view. For this reason it is often better to point at the screen than at the slide. In a big lecture room a pointer can help with this, but try not to bang the screen with it — it makes everyone else’s eyes go funny.
4.3 Timing
Don’t over-run. It is selfish and rude. Either you will be cut off by the chairperson before you have reached your punchline, or you will compress others’ talks, or you will make everyone late. In any case, you audience’s attention span is limited, so you probably won’t manage to convey much in your over-time period.
As you get more experienced, you will learn how long a single slide lasts in your talks. The average for most people is probably 2 to 3 minutes. Plan a couple of places where you can leave out a bunch of slides, and check your watch when you get to them.
It’s a good idea to have a couple of slides at the end of your talk which you can use in the unlikely event that you finish early, but which you usuallyexpect not to use.
5 Conclusion
So there you have it. As we said in the introduction, our suggestions are simply ideas that we have found work for us; we hope they may work for you also.
Without a doubt it is worth putting thought and effort into presentationskills. Your work, no matter how brilliant, becomes valuable to others only in so far as you communicate it to them.

HOW TO READ A PAPER

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 | Filed under Artikel | Posted by ukeirempa

S. Keshav David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo Waterloo, ON, Canada keshav@uwaterloo.ca

ABSTRACT
Researchers spend a great deal of time reading research pa- pers. However, this skill is rarely taught, leading to much wasted effort. This article outlines a practical and efficient three-pass method for reading research papers. I also de- scribe how to use this method to do a literature survey.
1. INTRODUCTION
Researchers must read papers for several reasons: to re- view them for a conference or a class, to keep current in their field, or for a literature survey of a new field. A typi- cal researcher will likely spend hundreds of hours every year reading papers.
Learning to efficiently read a paper is a critical but rarely taught skill. Beginning graduate students, therefore, must learn on their own using trial and error. Students waste much effort in the process and are frequently driven to frus- tration.
For many years I have used a simple approach to efficiently read papers. This paper describes the ‘three-pass’ approach and its use in doing a literature survey.
2. THE THREE-PASS APPROACH
The key idea is that you should read the paper in up to three passes, instead of starting at the beginning and plow- ing your way to the end. Each pass accomplishes specific goals and builds upon the previous pass: The first pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets you grasp the paper’s content, but not its details. The third pass helps you understand the paper in depth.
2.1 The first pass
The first pass is a quick scan to get a bird’s-eye view of the paper. You can also decide whether you need to do any more passes. This pass should take about five to ten minutes and consists of the following steps:
1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
3. Read the conclusions
4. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read
At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs:
1. Category: What type of paper is this? A measure- ment paper? An analysis of an existing system? A description of a research prototype?
2. Context: Which other papers is it related to? Which theoretical bases were used to analyze the problem?
3. Correctness: Do the assumptions appear to be valid? 4. Contributions: What are the paper’s main contributions? 5. Clarity: Is the paper well written?
Using this information, you may choose not to read fur- ther. This could be because the paper doesn’t interest you, or you don’t know enough about the area to understand the paper, or that the authors make invalid assumptions. The first pass is adequate for papers that aren’t in your research area, but may someday prove relevant.
Incidentally, when you write a paper, you can expect most reviewers (and readers) to make only one pass over it. Take care to choose coherent section and sub-section titles and to write concise and comprehensive abstracts. If a reviewer cannot understand the gist after one pass, the paper will likely be rejected; if a reader cannot understand the high- lights of the paper after five minutes, the paper will likely never be read.
2.2 The second pass
In the second pass, read the paper with greater care, but ignore details such as proofs. It helps to jot down the key points, or to make comments in the margins, as you read.
1.
2.
Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illus- trations in the paper. Pay special attention to graphs. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically sig- nificant? Common mistakes like these will separate rushed, shoddy work from the truly excellent.
Remember to mark relevant unread references for fur- ther reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper).
The second pass should take up to an hour. After this pass, you should be able to grasp the content of the paper. You should be able to summarize the main thrust of the pa- per, with supporting evidence, to someone else. This level of detail is appropriate for a paper in which you are interested, but does not lie in your research speciality.
Sometimes you won’t understand a paper even at the end of the second pass. This may be because the subject matter is new to you, with unfamiliar terminology and acronyms. Or the authors may use a proof or experimental technique that you don’t understand, so that the bulk of the pa- per is incomprehensible. The paper may be poorly written with unsubstantiated assertions and numerous forward ref- erences. Or it could just be that it’s late at night and you’re tired. You can now choose to: (a) set the paper aside, hoping you don’t need to understand the material to be successful in your career, (b) return to the paper later, perhaps after reading background material or (c) persevere and go on to the third pass.
2.3 The third pass
To fully understand a paper, particularly if you are re- viewer, requires a third pass. The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work. By comparing this re-creation with the actual paper, you can easily identify not only a paper’s innovations, but also its hidden failings and assumptions.
This pass requires great attention to detail. You should identify and challenge every assumption in every statement. Moreover, you should think about how you yourself would present a particular idea. This comparison of the actual with the virtual lends a sharp insight into the proof and presentation techniques in the paper and you can very likely add this to your repertoire of tools. During this pass, you should also jot down ideas for future work.
This pass can take about four or five hours for beginners, and about an hour for an experienced reader. At the end of this pass, you should be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory, as well as be able to identify its strong and weak points. In particular, you should be able to pinpoint implicit assumptions, missing citations to relevant work, and potential issues with experimental or analytical techniques.
3. DOING A LITERATURE SURVEY
Paper reading skills are put to the test in doing a literature survey. This will require you to read tens of papers, perhaps in an unfamiliar field. What papers should you read? Here is how you can use the three-pass approach to help.
First, use an academic search engine such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer and some well-chosen keywords to find three to five recent papers in the area. Do one pass on each pa- per to get a sense of the work, then read their related work sections. You will find a thumbnail summary of the recent work, and perhaps, if you are lucky, a pointer to a recent survey paper. If you can find such a survey, you are done. Read the survey, congratulating yourself on your good luck.
Otherwise, in the second step, find shared citations and repeated author names in the bibliography. These are the key papers and researchers in that area. Download the key papers and set them aside. Then go to the websites of the key researchers and see where they’ve published recently.
That will help you identify the top conferences in that field because the best researchers usually publish in the top con- ferences.
The third step is to go to the website for these top con- ferences and look through their recent proceedings. A quick scan will usually identify recent high-quality related work. These papers, along with the ones you set aside earlier, con- stitute the first version of your survey. Make two passes through these papers. If they all cite a key paper that you did not find earlier, obtain and read it, iterating as neces- sary.
4. EXPERIENCE
I’ve used this approach for the last 15 years to read con- ference proceedings, write reviews, do background research, and to quickly review papers before a discussion. This dis- ciplined approach prevents me from drowning in the details before getting a bird’s-eye-view. It allows me to estimate the amount of time required to review a set of papers. More- over, I can adjust the depth of paper evaluation depending on my needs and how much time I have.
5. RELATED WORK
If you are reading a paper to do a review, you should also read Timothy Roscoe’s paper on “Writing reviews for sys- tems conferences” [1]. If you’re planning to write a technical paper, you should refer both to Henning Schulzrinne’s com- prehensive web site [2] and George Whitesides’s excellent overview of the process [3].
6. A REQUEST
I would like to make this a living document, updating it as I receive comments. Please take a moment to email me any comments or suggestions for improvement. You can also add comments at CCRo, the online edition of CCR [4].
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first version of this document was drafted by my stu- dents: Hossein Falaki, Earl Oliver, and Sumair Ur Rahman. My thanks to them. I also benefited from Christophe Diot’s perceptive comments and Nicole Keshav’s eagle-eyed copy- editing.
This work was supported by grants from the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chair Program, Nortel Networks, Microsoft, Intel Corporation, and Sprint Corporation.
8. REFERENCES
ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 84
Volume 37, Number 3, July 2007
[1]T. Roscoe, “Writing Reviews for Systems Conferences,” http://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/pubs/review- writing.pdf.
[2]H. Schulzrinne, “Writing Technical Articles,” http://www.cs.columbia.edu/ hgs/etc/writing- style.html.
[3]G.M. Whitesides, “Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper,” http://www.che.iitm.ac.in/misc/dd/writepaper.pdf.
[4]ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Online, http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/drupal/.

THE RESEARCHER'S BIBLE

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 | Filed under Artikel | Posted by ukeirempa

Alan Bundy, Ben du Boulay, Jim Howe and Gordon Plotkin 1985
Including contributions by Graeme Ritchie and Peter Ross.

Abstract
Getting a Ph.D. or M.Phil is hard work. This document gives advice about various aspects of the task. Section 1 describes the problem – what is a thesis? Sections 2 and 3 describe some of the pitfalls and hurdles which students have encountered. Sections 4 and 5 advise about choosing and then executing a research project. Sections 6, 7 and 8 deal with two of the three R’s: reading and writing. Section 9 describes the examination process for a research degree, and how to cope with it. Finally, section 10 gives some references to follow up.
1. What is a Thesis?
To get a Ph.D. or M.Phil. you must write a thesis and sit an oral examination, or vivas. The oral is generally used to ask for clarification of the thesis, so the main burden of assessment falls on the thesis. The University of Edinburgh regulations for postgraduate degrees give the precise requirements.
What is required from a Ph.D. thesis is described in regulation 3.2.4 (b). How original and significant must Ph.D. research be? The phrase `containing material worthy of presentation’, from these regulations, suggests a simple rule of thumb. It should be possible to distill from the thesis, a paper worthy of publication in a journal. This is not an infallible guide – refereeing standards are not always what they should be. The final decision must rest with the examiners.
What is required from an M.Phil. thesis is described in regulation 3.5.4 (b), but is rather vague. Most M.Phil. theses have been a record of research rather than a critical survey, but the latter would be possible. Again it should be possible to distill the essential message of the thesis into a short paper, but in this case publication in a journal would not be essential, but some form of publication is still desirable.
If you do not know what standards are expected in a journal paper or conference paper – read some! Read some theses too. Do not be intimidated by American theses. American Ph.D. students spend 5 or 6 years studying, compared to the British norm of 3 or 4 years.
2. Standard Pitfalls for Postgraduate Students
There are a series of standard traps lurking to catch postgraduate students, or anyone else, doing research for the first time. It is as well to be aware of these, then there is an outside chance of avoiding them. Some pitfalls are described below (I fell in most – AB).
2.1 Solving the World
Most students pick research goals which are far too ambitious. It is particularly easy in Informatics to underestimate the amount of work necessary to automate a task. Tasks that appear effortless to humans, reveal hidden depths when investigated in computational detail. Obviously the main burden of helping you choose a suitable topic will fall on your supervisor. In addition you should read the literature and talk to fellow workers to find out what the state of the art is. One good source of ideas is the further work sections of papers. Read the literature critically. Another good source is re-doing bad work, properly.
2.2 Manna from Heaven
Having chosen a topic, what do you do next? It is no good sitting in your room with a blank piece of paper and a pencil, expecting good ideas to come from above. What you can do is:
Read the literature. Have projects similar to yours been tackled before, and were previous attempts successful or unsuccessful? What existing techniques can you borrow or adapt to your project? Do you need to adapt your project proposal to make it novel or feasible?
Talk to people. Do not go away and hide. Do not be ashamed of your ideas. Other people’s are sillier.
Tackle a simplified version of your problem. Ask your supervisor for exercises, mini-projects, etc.
Write down your ideas in a working paper. Imagine yourself explaining your ideas to someone. You will be amazed at how half-baked ideas take shape and errors are exposed or solved.
Give a talk to a small group. This has a similar effect to writing down your ideas.
2.3 Computer Junky
Computers are very seductive. You can spend years at a terminal debugging your programs and tuning up the input/output routines. You get a satisfying sense of achievement when a bug is exposed or a nice output generated. This is illusory! Your program must be explainable at a higher level than code, for it to make a real contribution to knowledge. Try to plan your program theoretically before going to the terminal. If you must work some of it out at the terminal then rush away soon and work out the theory. If you find this hard, try to describe how it works: to a friend; in a paper or at a seminar. If people do not understand it is your fault – try harder.
2.5 Micawberism
Gathering experimental data can be fun and gives all the appearance of productive work. Make sure that you know what class of result you are attempting to establish with your experiments.
Talk to people, explain what you think your experiment might show.
Imagine the experiment finished and you have `the data’, what exactly would you do with it.
Not only try out the experiment on one or two people first, but try out the analysis. Don’t keep running experiments in the hope that something will turn up.
2.6 Ivory Tower
Single minded dedication to your topic is a good thing, but do not shut out the rest of the world completely. Keep in touch with the state of the art in related fields. Talk to other people about their research. Attend selected seminars and lectures. Set aside a part of the week for reading reviews and abstracts and skimming papers.
2.7 Misunderstood Genius
It is all to easy to believe that the reason why no one understands your ideas is because you are a genius and the others are all looneys and charlatans. There are alternative causes for misunderstanding that you should consider:
Love of Jargon: Informatics is full of jargon: try to rephrase your ideas using ordinary English; try to rephrase your ideas in someone else’s jargon. Do they come out any differently?
If I can do it, it’s trivial: Once you have seen the solution to a problem it appears trivial. Then it is tempting to say `that’s too easy, I’ll try something else’. This is a non-terminating loop! Your solution won’t be trivial to other people (probably it will be wrong or over-complex) and should anyway be used as a basis for further work. Motto: do the easiest thing first, then stand on the shoulders of these achievements and do the next easiest thing, etc. – a better infinite loop.
Love of complexity: It is not a virtue to make a complicated program – it is just a nuisance to other people. Do it the simplest way you can. Occam was perfectly right.
2.8 Lost in Abstraction
To be worthwhile your research work should contribute to solve a hard problem in Informatics: e.g. making computers easier to use, smarter, more dependable, or better able to model natural systems. But to achieve anything you must tackle these abstract problems in a concrete situation, that is you must build a program that is easy to use, smart, dependable or a good model. Trying to tackle the problem in the abstract will only lead to paralysis and frustration.
2.9 Ambitious Paralysis
It is good to have high standards for your finished product but do not apply the same standards to your initial attempts, or you may never get started . Do something simple, then apply your standards to refine it into something worthwhile.
2.10 Methodology does not make a Thesis
Since Informatics is a relatively young field, and is interdisciplinary in nature, it does not have a single methodology. One of the difficult tasks that you face as an Informatics research student is the development, consciously or unconsciously, of a suitable approach to the problem(s) being tackled. In the course of evolving an appropriate methodology, you will encounter many other methodologies and philosophical positions, many of which will seem outrageous or hopelessly misguided. You will nevertheless find that these bizarre viewpoints have strong proponents, perhaps at the next desk in your office. Hence, much of the formative period for your own methodology is spent having heated arguments with fellow researchers. Out of this struggle, your reading, your attendance at seminars, your debugging, and other hard work, will emerge your world view on Informatics and related philosophical issues. In later years, you will probably come to take this outlook for granted, perhaps modifying it occasionally in some way; however, it is quite likely to loom very large in your life during the period of your project, and when you come to write your thesis you may feel compelled to expand upon your philosophy of life at length. Restrain yourself – the examiners won’t be all that interested. Give a brief summary of your methodological assumptions, giving references across to existing arguments or frameworks where appropriate, and confining yourself to the points which are essential to the understanding of the substance of your thesis. If your view is so wildly radical that you really need to spend fifty pages expounding it, it may be slightly suspect.
2.11 The Discovery Route is not a Justification
In the course of your project, you will come to certain beliefs about technical issues, some of which will be novel, and many of which will be rediscoveries (or new understandings) of established concepts. In presenting your thesis, it is important to distinguish between the justification (for instance, generality, efficiency, perspicuity, practicality) for some position or technique, and the route by which you happened to come to favour this idea (such as that it seemed similar to your ad hoc program, it was better than the theories you were taught as an undergraduate). The readers and examiners aren’t particularly interested in reconstructing how you became convinced of an idea – they are interested in the general arguments in favour of the idea. When you have just become convinced of some point, your own discovery route will seem like the dominant reason for it, so you may need a cooling-off period before you can detach yourself sufficiently to write a reasoned support for the idea, particularly if it is your own idea as opposed to enthusiasm for someone else’s.
3. Psychological Hurdles
Doing research shares the same psychological difficulties as other creative endeavours such as writing novels and plays or painting pictures. Some of these difficulties and their antidotes are set out below.
3.1 Mental Attitude
Part of a researcher’s skill includes an appropriate mental attitude to his/her work. This can be learnt, if you know what you are aiming for and are determined enough. One of the main ingredients of this mental attitude is a belief in what you are doing. Do not be afraid of a little egotism! You must believe that the problem you are tackling is important and that your contribution to the solution is significant. Otherwise, how are you to generate the energy to see yourself through the long hours of hard work required? The first step in obtaining this self-assurance is to pick a research topic you can believe in (see section 4). Of course, you must not become so arrogant that you can no longer listen to criticism. You must be prepared to modify your ideas if they are wrong.
3.2 Research Impotence
For many people, research prowess is a kind of virility symbol. Lack of success at research is accompanied by the same feelings of inadequacy as sexual impotence and, like it, can be a self fulfilling prophecy. Doubts about your own ability can put you in a frame of mind where the dedication (Edison said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and he should know.) and enthusiasm necessary to produce results evaporates. The way out of this vicious circle is to realise that research ability does not depend on some magic essence. It is a skill which can be learnt, like any other. You too can do original research by following the instructions in this guide.
3.3 Dealing with Criticism
We all find criticism hard to take, but some of us hide it better than others. If you are to make progress in your research you will have to learn to seek out criticism and take it into account. You will have to learn to differentiate between valid and invalid criticism. If you feel too close to the subject to decide, ask a friend for a second opinion. If the criticism is invalid, maybe the critic has misunderstood. Can you improve your explanation?
You are going to have to learn to take some knocks: rejections from journals; rough rides in question time. Take it with a smile. Learn what you can. Don’t be tempted to give up – you are in good company. If you study the lives of famous scientists you will see that many of them had to endure very heavy criticism. In fact some of the best work is the product of personal feuds – each scientist busting to outdo the other. This is where your faith in yourself will be tested to the full.
3.4 Early Morning – Cold Start
Almost everybody finds it difficult to start work at the beginning of their working day, but once they have started, it is relatively easy to keep going. The remedy is twofold:
Make yourself a regular working schedule – and stick to it. It doesn’t have to be 9-5, but there should be a definite time of day when you expect to start work. Otherwise, you will find yourself postponing the evil moment with endless, routine, domestic chores.
Make sure you leave some non-threatening, attractive task to do first thing. For instance, do not leave off writing the day before at the beginning of a new hard section. Leave something easy to start writing: a paragraph which is routine for you, a diagram to draw or a simple procedure to write.
3.5 Theorem Envy
You have chosen a new field where the research methodology has not yet been worked out. You may get a hankering for the methodology you were brought up on. For mathematicians this might be the longing to prove clean, clear theorems – theorem envy. For engineers this might be screwdriver envy, etc. Be wary! Only try to prove a theorem if it is clearly relevant to your overall purpose. For instance, proving the termination of a procedure you have found to be useful may well be relevant. Finding a procedure whose termination you can prove, but which is not otherwise interesting, is not relevant.
3.6 Fear of Exposure
You have a great idea and it only remains to test it by proving a theorem, writing a program, explaining it to a friend etc. But something is holding you back. You find it difficult to start work. Could it be that you are secretly afraid that your idea is not so great after all? Hard experience has taught you that ideas that appear to be solutions to all your problems in the middle of the night, evaporate in the cold dawn. Courage! Research is always like this. Ten steps forward and nine steps back. The sooner you subject your idea to the acid test, the sooner you will discover its limitations and be ready for the next problem.
4. Choosing a Research Project
Your research project must fulfil the following criteria:
You must be enthusiastic about it.
Solving the problems it entails must be worthy of a Ph.D.
It must be within sight of the state of the art, i.e. it must be `do-able’ in three years.
There must be someone in the School willing to supervise it.
The importance of 1. cannot be overestimated. You are going to need all the enthusiasm you can muster to give you the perseverance and motivation to see you through what will be a hard, lonely and unstructured period. It will help if you choose to tackle a problem you consider of central importance (though you cannot expect to bite off more than a small chunk of it). It will also help if you choose an area which utilizes your already proven abilities, e.g. theoretical computing for mathematicians; computational linguistics for linguists. Beware of choosing an area new to you because of its superficial appeal. The gloss will soon wear off when you are faced with the hard grind necessary to get a basic grounding in it.
Having chosen the general area or problem you want to work on, you must try to define a specific project. This is where your supervisor comes in. Find a member of academic or research staff whose interests lie in this area and who is prepared to advise you. S/he may have some projects to suggest and will also be able to pass an opinion on the worthiness (2) and doability (3) of anything you suggest. On the whole, beginning students tend to underestimate the worthiness and overestimate the doability of projects – quite modest sounding projects prove harder than they look. So do listen to your supervisors advice and don’t fall into `solving the world’, standard pitfall no. 2.1.
Get your supervisor to suggest some reading material. You will find suitable projects in the future work sections of papers and theses. It is good research methodology to continue working on a problem from where someone else left off. You may find some work you consider badly done – consider redoing it properly. You may be able to simplify someone else’s program, relate it to other work or build a more powerful program.
Have a range of ideas on the boil. Try to construct a hierarchy of research goals. This imposes a structure on the work and also acts as a safety net when you find (inevitably) that you have attempted more than is possible in the time available.
Projects to avoid, because they lead to bad research, are programs which do a task without addressing any important issues and programs which are not based on previous work (also see the section on standard pitfalls).
5. Research Methodology
Informatics is a young science which draws on the methodologies of many fields and is gradually evolving its own methodology. See the Informatics Research Methodologies course for more discussion of these issues. This methodology supports a variety of approaches to your research project. For example, you might start by trying to build a theory of how some task might be automated, or by improving somebody else’s theory, or you might try to rationally reconstruct someone else’s work. The `rational reconstruction’ approach is often fruitful, since it is still regrettably often the case that Informatics research will focus on implementation and performance while leaving the assumptions and principles behind the work implicit and vague. But, however you start, get yourself a theory!
6. Writing Papers
Research papers are the major product of the School. They are the yardstick by which our individual and group progress and success are measured. They are therefore very important and you should expect to devote a large part of your research career to writing them. Writing papers is the main way of communicating with the rest of the Informatics world and it is also a good vehicle for clarifying and debugging your ideas.
As well as the dizzy heights of books, theses and journal papers, there are various lesser forms of writing. You should understand what these are so that you can make full use of them.
You should make writing a regular part of your life. Keep records of everything you do: notes of ideas you have; documentation of programs; lecture notes; notes on papers you read. These serve several purposes: an aid to your memory (you will be amazed at how quickly you forget); a vehicle for clarification (how often you will find that problems appear and are solved as you try to explain things to yourself and others) and as a starting point for a working paper. Make sure you write them legibly enough to read later and that you file them somewhere you can recover them. Recording and storing these notes electronically works well.
6.1 Informatics Technical Reports
The School has a technical reports series to which you are strongly encouraged to contribute. In particular, papers submitted to journals, conferences, etc should be included in this series. If you are asked to sign a copyright form by a publisher check it first with your local Service Manager to ensure that the School will retain the right to make your paper available electronically via our web pages.
6.2 Publishing Papers
When you and your supervisor think that you have something worth publishing externally you should submit a paper to a conference or journal. In preparing a paper for publication make sure that credit is given to everyone who has helped with its preparation, e.g. your supervisors and anyone else who has contributed ideas, others who have commented on the draft, and so on. Where a contribution is significant (for example, your supervisor’s contribution) consider joint authorship. Remember to acknowledge sources of support such as source of your research studentship and related support for facilities used for the research and so on. If uncertain consult your supervisor about these points. Washington University in St Louis has a policy on authorship that reflects the scientific consensus on who should be the authors of a paper and what their rights and duties are.
A submitted paper will be vetted by several referees chosen by the journal editor. Do not be too downhearted if your paper is rejected – you will be in good company. Read the referees’ comments carefully. Are they right or have they misjudged you? Is your rejection absolute, or have you been encouraged to resubmit after corrections or further work? Was your choice of journal appropriate? Consider submitting your paper elsewhere, but first take into account those criticisms you consider valid.
6.3 Conference Proceedings
A lesser form of publication is the proceedings of a conference. Conferences will often consider descriptions of work in progress. They will usually be refereed just like journal papers. Both papers and verbal presentations usually have strict length limits (from 5-15 pages and 10-30 minutes), so be prepared to be concise. Presenting a paper at a conference will be very valuable for you: you will get feedback from a wider audience than usual; you are more likely to meet people than a non-participant and you will find it easier to get funding to attend.
Advice about expressing your ideas to a large audience in plain English see [Orwell68].
7. Guide to Writing
During the course of your research project you will need to write many documents: a thesis proposal and thesis outline, research notes, records of papers you have read, conference and journal papers, and finally the thesis itself. A badly written thesis is not usually a cause for total failure, but can cause soul-destroying delays while it is rewritten and reexamined. Poor writing will also make it difficult for others to understand your work. It is, therefore, quite important that you learn to write well. This section contains some tips and rules to improve your writing. Nobody knows enough about good writing to do more than that. There is a good guide to style and presentation of scientific papers in [Booth75]. Helpful information about writing theses is given by [Parsons73]. Useful references for writing technical reports can be found in [Cooper64]. Advice about writing Computer Science papers is given in [Zobel 04]. The College Transferable Skills Programme runs a course on paper production for Informatics postgraduate students, which you should consider attending.
There are no hard and fast rules of good writing, but if you are going to break one of the rules below you should have a good reason and do it deliberately, e.g. you want to overwhelm the funding agency with jargon rather than have them understand how little you actually achieved.
Your paper should have a message, i.e. an argument that you are advancing, for which your research provides evidence. Make sure you know what this message is. Summarise it in a few words on paper or to a friend. Make sure the message is reflected in the title, abstract, introduction, conclusion and in the structure of the paper.
Putting your case so that it can be understood is not enough – you must present it so that it cannot be misunderstood. Think of your audience as intelligent, but (a) ignorant and (b) given to wilful misunderstanding. Make sure that the key ideas are stated transparently, prominently and often. Do not tuck several important ideas into one sentence with a subtle use of adjectives. Do not assume that any key ideas are too obvious to say. Say what you are going to say, say it, and then say what you just said.
Do not try to say too much in one paper. Stick to the main message and only include what is essential to that. Reserve the rest for another paper. A reader should get the main idea of the paper from the first page. Long rambling introductions should be pruned ruthlessly.
The basic framework for a scientific paper is: what claim/hypothesis am I making and what is the evidence for this claim.
To keep the technical standard of paper uniform, have a particular reader in mind as you write.
You do not have to start writing at the beginning. In particular, the introductory remarks are best written when you know what will follow. Start by describing the central idea, e.g. your main technique, procedure or proof. Now decide what your hypothetical reader has to know in order to understand this central idea and put this information into the introductory sections/chapters.
Use worked examples to illustrate the description of a procedure. Do not use them as a substitute for that description.
Clearly state what is new or better about what you have done. Make explicit comparisons with closely related work.
If you find yourself using a long noun phrase to refer to the same entity or idea several times then you should probably define a new term. Do not define a new term unless you really need it.
Learn to use a keyboard (all 9 fingers), a screen editor, a text formatter, a spelling corrector and a grammar correcter. Type your paper into a computer, either directly or from notes or from a handwritten manuscript. This will save time when it comes to alterations, corrections, etc. Run the finished product through spelling and grammar correcters.
Ask several people to read the draft versions. Expect to spend time incorporating their suggestions into the text. If they did not understand it is your fault, not theirs. It is discourteous to ask anyone to reread a paper if you have not yet considered their previous comments. Draft theses should be read by supervisors, but should not be read by examiners. The remarks below are relevant to all writing, but are particularly addressed to thesis writing.
Your thesis should not be a `core-dump’ of all you know about everything remotely related to the topic. Instead, there should be a single message, and you should carefully consider how each part of your thesis contributes to putting over this message. Remember that you are not writing specifically for your examiners. You should be addressing yourself to researchers following in your footsteps, who will be grateful for a good but relevant scene-setting and a clear argument. They will also be considering the state of knowledge at the time you were writing, which may be different from the state at the time they are reading it, and you should give sufficient detail to fix this without boring them rigid. It is also wise to remember that researchers around the world will also, implicitly at least, be judging the quality of the University and of the School when they read your work. Your examiners will be bearing this in mind even if you don’t – so you should too.
You can write your thesis top down, bottom up, or bi-directionally. Top down you start with some notes, and gradually unpack them into thesis chapters. Bottom up, you describe different aspects of what you have done, and then put these parts together to form the thesis. Neither of these approaches is very successful on its own. Top down tends not to work because your opinion as to what you have done changes as you unpack your ideas. Bottom up produces a dog’s dinner of unrelated snippets. A bi-directional combination is more successful.
As you do your research you should write your ideas and results up as a series of notes and working papers. Some of these papers may be worthy of publication in a conference or journal. Collect these notes and papers into a single file (paper or electronic) entitled `thesis’. This is enough bottom-up work to start with. Now work top down.
Build your thesis `message’. This should have the following properties.
- It should consist of a few sentences, i.e. be of abstract length. – The sentences should form the steps of an argument. This argument is the message of your thesis.
- Each sentence should outline the contents of some part, roughly a chapter, of your thesis.
- The message should serve as a guide to the: title, abstract, summary, conclusion and the whole body of your thesis.
The thesis message should help you in the following ways:
- It should ensure that the parts of your thesis hang together in a coherent manner. It should suggest how to reorganise the various notes and papers in your `thesis’ file so that they form an argument.
- It should answer the questions `What have I done?’ and `Why does this work deserve a degree?’. You should now know what to emphasize in the abstract, introduction, conclusion, title, etc.
- It should answer questions like `What should be discussed in ‘related work’ ?’. In fact, you should know precisely what role each chapter is meant to play in the whole, i.e. what it is supposed to prove.
The thesis message is short and easy to edit. You can play around with it until you get something you are happy with.
Now you can go back to bottom up activity – reworking the existing material, and writing new material, to fulfil the demands of the `message’.
To give a flavour of the `message’ described above, we give an example from the Ph.D. thesis of a famous AI researcher, Fr. Aloysius Hacker.
Example of a Thesis Message.
“The Computational Modelling of Religious Concepts”
by Fr. Aloysius Hacker
We apply ideas from Informatics to the understanding of religious concepts.
Previous attempts to explain religious concepts, e.g. the holy trinity and miracles, have often encountered philosophical problems.
These problems arose because the appropriate terminology was not available. Computational terminology often provides an appropriate analogy.
Although some problems still remain, e.g. free will,
We are seeing the beginning of a new, computational theology.
Each of these 5 points corresponds to one or two chapters of the thesis. Chapter 1 introduces the general notion of computer modelling and how it might be applied to religion by drawing analogies between computational concepts and religious ones to suggest consequences and non-consequences of religious positions, and hence debug some of the theological debate of the last two millenia.
Chapter 2 is `related work’. It surveys the more important theological positions on a variety of `problem’ concepts, e.g. the holy trinity, miracles, free will, and points out the contradictions inherent in these positions.
Chapter 3 and 4 are the heart of the thesis. Chapter 3 draws an analogy between the trinity and trebly recursive functions, and uses this to resolve philosophical difficulties about God being both one and three entities, simultaneously.
Chapter 4 develops an extended analogy in which the universe is seen as a program for which God is the programmer, and in which miracles are seen as run time patches inserted during interruptions.
Chapter 5 is `further work’. Outstanding problems are mentioned. There is a discussion of the problem of free will and possible computational accounts of it.
Chapter 6 is the conclusion. The results are summarised and the relative success of computational approaches to religious problems are summarised. The current work is seen as the humble beginnings of an important new approach to theology.
8. Guide to Reading
Staying in touch with related research is one of the main subgoals of obtaining a Ph.D. Some of the difficulties were raised at a Department of Artificial Intelligence `research difficulties’ meeting in the context of reading habits. Here is the relevant quote from the minutes of that meeting:
`Reading is difficult: The difficulty seems to depend on the stage of academic development. Initially it is hard to know what to read (many documents are unpublished), later reading becomes seductive and is used as an excuse to avoid research. Finally one lacks the time and patience to keep up with reading (and fears to find evidence that one’s own work is second rate or that one is slipping behind).’
Clearly there are ways of staying in touch other than reading, but similar difficulties apply. One still has to maintain a proper balance between learning about other people’s work and getting on with your own.
It may be helpful to think of the work of others as arranged in concentric circles around your own, where the relevance of the work decreases as you get further from the centre. For instance, if you were studying anaphoric reference, then the inner circles would consist of other work on anaphora; the middle circle would consist of work in natural language understanding and computational linguistics and the outer circle would contain other work in Informatics and linguistics. You can add extra circles to taste. Obviously, you can afford to spend less time keeping in touch with the work in the outer circle than that in the inner circle, so different study techniques are appropriate for the different circles.
8.1 Outer Circle
You can achieve an appropriate level of familiarity with the work in this circle by skimming papers or reading the abstracts. It is a good idea to set aside an hour each week for visiting the library (physically or electonically) to skim the latest arrivals. An alternative to skimming is attending conferences to listen to both the short presentations and the longer tutorial addresses. It is also very valuable to corner people in the coffee room or corridor and engage them in a short conversation about their latest ideas.
8.2 Middle Circle
Here you need to spend some more time. The methods described for outer circle are still applicable, but are not sufficient – you will also need to read some papers right through and engage in some longer conversations. You will want to read some more specialized textbooks and attend seminars etc. It is worthwhile keeping a record of papers you have read and some comments about them, otherwise the benefits derived from reading them will evaporate as your memory fades. It helps to write your literature survey in parallel with the rest of your research. Write a paragraph on each paper as you read it; this will save you re-reading it again when you come to write up your thesis.
8.3 Inner Circle
For a really deep understanding, reading a paper once is not sufficient. You should read it several times and get involved in it. Work through the examples. Set yourself some exercises. Get in touch with the author(s) about it. Talk or write to them with a list of queries and/or criticisms. One invaluable way to get a deep understanding of some work is to try to teach it to others. Offer a seminar, either formal or informal. You will need your own personal copy of papers you are making heavy use of. If you don’t have one, photocopy someone else’s.
When reading a paper you will find that you understand it better if you have a question in mind which you hope the paper will answer. The precise question will depend on the circumstances, but might be: What claim is being made? What is the evidence for this claim? Is it convincing? How can I use this work in my own research project? etc.
Finally don’t be afraid to admit your ignorance by asking questions. Everybody feels sensitive about their areas of ignorance and in a field as multi-disciplinary as Informatics we all necessarily have wide areas of ignorance. People enjoy answering questions – it makes them feel important. You can usually get a far better feel for a piece of work by engaging in a discussion with someone who understands it than just by reading the paper alone.
9. The Examination of Theses
When you have written and rewritten your thesis to your supervisors satisfaction then you are ready to submit. Inform the College Office of your intention to submit. Make sure that your thesis is in accord with the University’s postgraduate regulations. Get two copies bound in the approved manner and take them to the College Office.
Your supervisor will suggest suitable internal and external examiners. They may consult you informally about the choice. The College will send your copies to the examiners. When the examiners are ready – and that could take several months – the internal examiner will arrange an oral examination or viva.
The viva is a question-answer session between you and your examiners, lasting several hours. Your supervisor may attend, as an observer, at the examiners’ discretion. It will normally be in an office in the School; the external examiner (and possibly you) will travel up for the day. Dress is normal office wear and the occasion is fairly relaxed. Dress up a bit if it makes you feel more comfortable.
Before and after the viva the examiners have to submit reports to the College. The post-viva report is a joint one and contains a recommendation taken from Regulation 3.10.4. Rougly speaking, the options are:
1. Accept the thesis as it stands.
2. Accept with minor alterations or with deficiencies that can be remedied without further study.
3. Accept the thesis, but not the oral, and examine the candidate further.
4. Reconsider after a further period of supervised study and resubmission.
5. Reconsider a Ph.D. as an M.Phil..
6. Reject.
You will usually be told the recommendation informally, with the understanding that it can be overturned by the College or Senate (and this is not unheard of).
Recommendations 1, 3 and 6 are very rare.
Recommendation 2 is to allow correction of errors that do not require further research. These can vary from minor typographical errors and spelling mistakes to major rewrites (there are actually two separate recommendations covering the two extremes). Typically, just the internal examiner will check that the thesis has been completely corrected and will then inform the College who will process your thesis and inform you of the outcome. This may take several months.
Recommendation 4 is to allow further research, usually requiring a major rewrite. You will have to rewrite, rebind and resubmit your thesis and go through the whole procedure again with the same examiners. This is your last chance. Recommendations 4 and 5 are not available the second time around.
Recommendation 5 is for theses which are not considered suitable for a Ph.D., but which are considered suitable for an M.Phil.. We are not supposed to say it is a consolation prize. You may or may not have to undertake further study and rewriting. You will have to get it rebound (in M.Phil. covers!), resubmit and have another viva.
The purpose of the viva is for the examiners to satisfy themselves that the thesis is acceptable as a Ph.D./M.Phil.. In particular, they will have raised various doubts in their pre-viva reports, which they must satisfy themselves about during the viva, and which they must discharge on the post-viva report. If they do not discharge these doubts in their post-viva reports then it is not unknown for the College to override their recommendations.
The examiners will ask you questions to try to satisfy their doubts. Because of time pressure, they often start with the most serious and/or most general questions. For instance, they might start by asking you to summarise in your own words what you consider to be the key contributions in the thesis. It is worth having a succinct answer ready to this one. You and and your supervisors can try to anticipate other questions, but frequently the things you are most worried about have now been adequately covered in thesis, and the actual questions will surprise you. Thus it is better to have spent the previous night getting a good sleep, so that you are fresh and alert for the viva, than to have spent it rehearsing answers to question that you will not be asked.
Do not ramble. Pay attention to the examiners questions and statements, and respond pertinently and succinctly. If the examiners can see that you are coherent, intelligent and aware of the issues in your field then they will be keen to award you your degree, and may be more prepared to overlook minor faults in the thesis.
Sitting a viva is a little like debugging a program. The thesis is the program, you are the programmer, the Ph.D./M.Phil. standards are the language syntax, and the examiners are the interpreter. During the viva you will get various error messages. These messages do not need to be taken at face value – they may be based on a misunderstanding – but they cannot be ignored. Assume that each error message will lead to some alteration in your thesis. Of course, you hope that this will only be a minor alteration, but do not let this hope blind you to the possibility that the problem is more fundamental. Do not get aggressive or defensive with your examiners. You cannot bludgeon or sweet-talk them into passing you, any more than you can force or persuade the computer to accept your buggy program. What you have to do is: clarify your own thinking, clear up any misunderstandings between you and your examiners, make sure you understand how to correct your thesis, and then correct it. The viva is a cooperative process. Your examiners want to pass you. Give them all the help they need.
10. References
[Bligh72] Bligh D., What’s the use of lectures?, Penguin, 1972
[Booth75] Booth V., “Writing a scientific paper”, in Biochemical Society Transactions, vol 3, 1975
[Cooper64] Cooper B., Writing Technical Reports, Pelican, 1964.
[Orwell68] Orwell G., The Collected Essays, Penguin, 1968.
[Parsons73] Parsons C.J., Theses and Project Work, George Allen and Unwin, 1973.
The University of Edinburgh’s Code of good practice in research.
[Zobel 04] Zobel J., Writing for Computer Science, Springer, 2004.

Read this....

I would like to share with you out there a very touching story from a friend of mine which I think reveals a lot about human values. May all of us will benefit from this incident.



Allah's message in Bangi Kopitiam, Ampang
by Harshita Aini Haroon on Tuesday, 05 April 2011 at 09:38

It was nearly 2.00 pm today when I sat myself in Bangi Kopitiam in Ampang. All I wanted was a big mug of iced juice, while waiting for the two kids to finish their lessons upstairs. I was given the menu, and as I was browsing through, I realised someone was making his way towards me. He had a limp. "Kak, Assalamualaikum'. I looked up, answered his salam, and saw this young man, about 20-ish. He is an OKU - the official term is Orang Kurang Upaya, but I'd rather use the term that is more apt, and propagated by many in academia - Orang Kelainan Upaya. Nothing 'less' about them; only 'different'. He was sweating, and he had a red rucksack on his back (a heavy one, looked like) and a huge green shopper in his hand. He showed me his Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat identity card - from Kuala Kedah, Alor Setar. He skirted around my table, trying to find space to put his rucksack, so that he could reach properly into the green shopper. I asked him "Ada apa dik?" And he took out his 'crafts', "saya jual ni kak, " - lacy tissue box covers - purple, green, pink, blue - you name the colour, he had it. Anyone who knows me well will know that I don't do lace of any kind, as much as I don't ruffles and flowers. But i cannot say no. And he started talking, and it broke my heart. His speech was slurred, but he attempted a conversation with me. "Kak orang mana?" "Orang Kedah" And his eyes lit. And he started saying something, and he was grimacing - he wanted to say something, but the words could not come out- and when they finally did, he said "Tak sangka, Tuhan bagi saya jumpa dengan orang Kedah kat sini." I smiled, already very much conscious of the fact that my tears were just there, about to fall - and so I asked him how much his tissue box covers were. 'Sepuluh ringgit kak". I gave him some money, and I said, "Dik, ambik ni, tapi yang ni, adik pi jual. Saya tak payah ambik lah," - pushing him back the covers that he was about to give me in exchange for the money. He smiled, and said, "Tapi kak, saya bukan minta derma - saya nak jual kak - saya tak boleh buat macam ni kak." And one tear fell - and I quickly wiped it off, pretending that I was sneezing. In the end, after much 'haggling', he took the money, and the covers. And I was left with a very strong message and reminder from Allah - here was this young man, who makes his living based on his handiwork, and then the sympathy of others, who is not sure of what he will get at the end of each and every day, limping, can hardly talk to express himself - carrying himself with more integrity, honesty and humility than many who we all know in our everyday lives. He puts his trust and faith in Allah. He refused a 'short-cut'. A lesson in humanity and it took me all the strength I had not to cry in Bangi Kopitiam.