How to write and present Technical Papers

R. K. Rathore

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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

Control net 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

This is competitor's work

This is the best any one could ever get

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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, AddisonWesley, 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?

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