October 1999

Presenting Your Research: Papers, Talks, and Chats

Marie desJardins ( [email protected]

) University of Maryland, Baltimore County First Annual MAPLE Research Colloquium 31 May 2002

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Research isn’t just research

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 Who cares what you do, if you never tell them?

 You’ll need to present your ideas in various forms and venues: 

Networking

with colleagues at UMBC and elsewhere 

Writing and submitting papers

to workshops, conferences, and journals 

Presenting papers

at workshops and conferences  Putting together a website that highlights your interests and research activities  …oh, and these things also provide useful experience for job interviews, not to mention valuable job skills…

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Networking

 Meet people! It helps to have an objective:   Find out what research they’re currently working on Tell them what you’re currently working on  Find an area of common interest  Learn what their visions/future directions are  Suggest a new direction for research or topic for a class  What’s in this interaction for you?

 What’s in it for them?

 If you know two friends, and they know two friends, and they know two friends… Pretty soon you know everybody!

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Networking II

 You need to be prepared to summarize your research  For a thesis topic, you should have a 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute presentation already thought through  The same goes for other projects you’ve been working on  Be able to distinguish between your original contributions, your advisor’s contributions, and ideas drawn from previous research  Practice with other students!

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Writing and submitting papers

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 For a master’s thesis, you should aim to have at least one “good” conference paper by the time you graduate  For a doctoral dissertation, you should aim for a couple of good conference papers and a journal paper  Writing these papers is great practice for the thesis itself… (and you can reuse the material!)  Where to submit?

 Look at publication lists of people doing research related to yours, and see where they publish  Publish at the conferences that have the most interesting papers

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Writing papers: Strategy

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 First, decide where you plan to submit the paper  You may not finish in time, but having a deadline is always helpful  Two to four months away is a good planning horizon  Next, decide what you will say  What are the key ideas? Have you developed them yet?

 What are the key results? Have you designed and run the experiments yet? Have you analyzed the data?

 What is the key related work? Have you read the relevant background material? Can you give a good summary of it?

 Now get started on the work you need to do to fill in the missing holes! (You can write in parallel…)

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Writing papers: Design

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      

Abstract

–summarizes the

research contributions

, not the paper (i.e., it shouldn’t be an outline of the paper)

Introduction/motivation

–

what you’ve done

and

reader should care

, plus an outline of the paper

why the

Technical sections

– one or more sections summarizing the research ideas you’ve developed

Experiments/results/analysis

– one or more sections presenting experimental results and/or supporting proofs

Future work

– summary of where you’re headed next and open questions still to be answered

Conclusions

important – reminder of what you’ve said and why it’s

Related work

– sometimes comes after introduction, sometimes before conclusions (depends to some extent on whether you’re building on previous research, or dismissing it as irrelevant)

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Writing papers: Tactics

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  Top-down design (outline) is very helpful Bulleted lists can help you get past writer’s block  Unless you’re a really talented/experienced writer, you should use these tools

before

you start writing prose  Neatness counts! Check spelling, grammar, consistency of fonts and notation

before

showing it to anyone for review  If they’re concentrating on your typos, they might miss what’s interesting about the content  Leave time for reviews!

  Fellow students, collaborators, advisors, … A paper is only done when it’s submitted... and usually not even then.

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Authorship

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 Who should be an author?

 Anyone who contributed significantly to the conceptual development or writing of the paper  Not

necessarily

people who provided feedback, implemented code, or ran experiments  What order should the authors be listed in?

 If some authors contributed more of the conceptual development and/or did most/all of the writing, they should be listed first   If the contribution was equal or the authors worked as a team, the authors should be listed in alphabetical order Sometimes the note “The authors are listed in alphabetical order” is explicitly included

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Giving talks

 Know how long you have  How long is the talk? Are questions included?

 A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide  If you have too many slides, you’ll skip some or—worse— rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!!   Almost by definition, you

never

have time to say

everything

about your topic, so don’t worry about skipping some things!

Unless you’re very experienced giving talks, you should practice your timing:  A couple of times on your own to get the general flow  At least one dry run to work out the kinks  A run-through on your own the night before the talk

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Giving talks II

 Know who your audience is  Don’t waste time on basics if you’re talking to an audience in your field  Even for these people, you need to be sure you’re explaining each new concept clearly  On the other hand, you’ll lose people in a general audience if you don’t give the necessary background  In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize

what you’ve done

and

why they should care!

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Giving talks III

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 Know what you want to say  Just giving a project summary is not interesting to most people  You should give enough detail to get your interesting ideas across (and to show that you’ve actually solved, but not enough to lose your audience    They want to hear

what you did that was cool

and

why they should care

Preferably, they’ll hear the above two points at the beginning of the talk, over the course of the talk, and at the end of the talk If they’re intrigued, they’ll ask questions or read your paper  Whatever you do, don’t just read your slides!

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Preparing slides

 Don’t just read your slides!

 Use the minimum amount of text necessary  Use examples  Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format     Use color to emphasize important points, but avoid the excessive use of color “Hiding” bullets like this is annoying (but sometimes effective), but… Abuse of animation Don’t fidget, and… Don’t just read your slides!

is a cardinal sin!

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How to give a bad talk

Advice from Dave Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Thou shalt not be neat Thou shalt not waste space Thou shalt not covet brevity Thou shalt cover thy naked slides Thou shalt not write large Thou shalt not use color Thou shalt not illustrate Thou shalt not make eye contact 9.

Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk 10.

Thou shalt not practice

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Some useful resources

 Writing:  Lynn DuPre,

Bugs in Writing

 Strunk & White,

Elements of Style

 Giving talks:     Mark Hill, “Oral presentation advice” Patrick Winston, “Some lecturing heuristics” Simon L. Peyton Jones et al., “How to give a good research talk” Dave Patterson, “How to have a bad career in research/academia”

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