Computer Science 690A, Fall '16
Course Diary:
Research Methods in Computer Science I
Copyright 2016 by H.T. Wareham
All rights reserved
Week 1,
Week 2,
Week 3,
Week 4,
Week 5,
Week 6,
Week 7,
(In-class Exam #1 Notes),
Week 8,
Week 9,
Week 10,
Week 11,
Week 12,
(In-class Exam #1 Notes),
Week 13,
(end of diary)
Thursday, September 8 (Lecture #1)
- Introduction to CS 690A/B: Content and Logistics (Slides)
Tuesday, September 13 (Lecture #2)
- Giving Talks for Fun and Enlightenment (Slides)
Thursday, September 15 (Lecture #3)
- Giving Talks for Fun and Enlightenment (Cont'd) (Slides)
- Example Talks:
- Talk #0 (non-specialist audience / 50 minutes)
- Talk #2 (non-specialist audience / 20 minutes)
- Talk #3 (specialist audience / 25 minutes)
- Talk #4 (specialist audience / 16 minutes)
Tuesday, September 20 (Lecture #4)
- Typesetting Documents: Fun with LaTeX
- Introduction: What is LaTeX?
- TeX is a document typesetting system that was created by Donald Knuth in
the late 1970s to "simplify" the creation of his multi-volume series
The Art of Computer Programming.
- LaTeX ("Lamport TeX") is a simplified document typesetting system layered on
top of TeX that was created by Leslie Lamport in the early 1980s.
- TeX and LaTeX do typesetting using text markup commands (unlike "What You
See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) document typesetting systems like MS Word).
- LaTeX is the standard system used in scientific publishing for conference and
journal papers as well as books.
- Basic LaTeX Document File Format (Sections 2, C.2, and C.5, LL)
- The document-start command is a single line of the form
\documentstyle[OPT]{TYP} or
\documentclass[OPT]{TYP}, where OPT is
a comma-separated list of typesetting options and TYP
is a one-word document type. For the moment, we will focus
on document-options list 11pt and document-type article.
- The preamble contains various commands adjusting and/or augmenting the default
typesetting settings defined by the document-type.
- The document body contains all text, tables, figures, bibliography, etc that
appear as the typeset document. All typesetting commands start with a
left-slash (\); otherwise, all characters in the document body
are treated as plain text to by typeset.
- Sectioning Commands and Footnotes (Sections 2.2.1, 2.2.3,
C.3.3, and C.4, LL)
- There are four basic levels of section commands denoted by
\section{TITLE},
\subsection{TITLE},
\subsubsection{TITLE}, and
\subsubsubsection{TITLE}. These are automatically numbered. If
section numbers are not wanted, place a star before the left curly brace
in the command, e.g., \section*{TITLE}.
- After command \appendix, all section-commands create appendices
and their appendix-subsections.
- A footnote with text FBODY that is marked by an automatically-numbered
superscript is created using command \footnote{FBODY}.
- Converting LaTeX Document Files to PDFs (Take I)
- There are two ways to convert a LaTeX document file to a PDF file:
- Convert the LaTeX file blah.tex to a DVI file via the command latex blah
and convert the DVI file to a PDF via dvipdf blah.
- Convert the LaTeX file blah.tex to a PDF directly via the command pdflatex blah.
- Example: A sample Latex document v1.0
[example1.tex,
example1.pdf,
example1.script]
Tuesday, September 27 (Lecture #5)
- Typesetting Documents: Fun with LaTeX (Cont'd)
- Text and Fonts (Sections 3.1, 6.7, and C.15, LL)
- Each (possibly multi-line) block of text separated by one or more
blank lines is treated as a paragraph. Don't worry about making
paragraph-text margins even -- LaTeX does that for you
automatically (though not always correctly; we'll talk more about
how to fix such screwups later).
- To override indenting at the beginning of a paragraph, use command \noindent.
- To change the font or text-size of a block of text, enclose that block in curly braces and
put the appropriate commands just inside the left curly brace.
- There are seven font-sizes you can access easily -- \footnotesize, \small,
\normalsize, \large, \Large, \LARGE, and \huge.
- There are five font-types you can access easily -- \rm (Roman), \em
(italics), \bf (bold face), \sc (small caps), and \tt
(teletype).
- To simultaneously change font-type and size, put the appropriate font-type
command after the size command, e.g., {\large \bf ...}.
- To insert blank horizontal or vertical space, use the commands \hspace*{AMT} and
\vspace*{AMT}, respectively, where AMT is some number followed by
a distance unit, e.g., 0.78in, 5mm. To go to the top of the next page,
use \newpage.
- Example: A sample Latex document v2.0
[example2.tex,
example2.pdf,
example2.script]
- Text Environments (Sections 2.2.4, 3.4, 6.5, 6.6, C.6, and C.8.3, LL)
- A text environment ENC is a region of the
document enclosed by commands \begin{ENV} and
\end{ENV} in which special properties hold.
- There are four basic types of text environments in LaTeX:
- display environments: These include quotation
(center text in environment in left- and right-indented
block), center (center each line of text in the
environment, where lines end in backslash newline
(\\)), and verbatim ( display text as
given in teletype font).
- list-type environments: These environments
enclose lists of text-block items, each of which
start with command \item.
- Get bullet-preceded items with itemize,
automatically numbered items with enumerate,
and items preceded by arbitrary specified text or
symbol X with description
(in this case, starting items with a
\item[X] command).
- While an item's text continues until either
another \item is encountered or the
list-environment is terminated, you may want to
enclose that text in curly-braces to be sure
you know what is part of a particular item.
- When itemize and enumerate
environments are nested, the initial item-symbol
or number changes automatically (in the case of
enumerate, to alphabetical and then
lower-case Roman numbering); depending on the
document-type, this may also involve font-size
changes. Depending on what you want, you may
need to hand-code using nested description
environments.
- To ensure nested environments are parsed
correctly, use curly-braces to delimit
items; to ensure readability, consider
indenting to indicate nesting (just like
one does in computer programs).
- theorem-type environments: These environments are
automatically numbered, have an initial boldface title
followed by the number, and the specified text in italics.
- Depending on your document-type, these may or may
not be predefined. For example, in
article-type, you have to define these
yourself.
- To define your own theorem-like environments
ENC with initial title Env,
put command \newtheorem{ENV}{Env} in
the preamble, e.g.,
\newtheorem{lemma}{Lemma}.
- Each theorem-like environment by default has its
own numbering-counter that starts at 1. It is
possible for two or more theorem-like environments
to share the same counter.
- Some document-types include a predefined proof
environment; however, you may have to define your own
(please see example3.tex below for
one way of doing this).
- Example: A sample Latex document v3.0
[example3.tex,
example3.pdf,
example3.script]
Tuesday, October 4 (Lecture #6)
- Typesetting Documents: Fun with LaTeX (Cont'd)
- Typesetting Mathematics (Sections 3.3 and C.7, LL)
- In-line math is surrounded by the dollar-sign delimiter
($ / $).
- Separate one-line math is surrounded by the bracket delimiters
(\[ / \]) if you don't want an automatically-generated
equation number and the equation environment
delimiters (\begin{equation} / \end{equation}) if
you do.
- Multi-line equations with each line numbered as a separate
equation are created using the eqnarray text environment;
the version without equation numbers is created using the
eqnarray* text environment.
- Basic constructs:
- Superscript: x^y
- Subscript: x_y
- Arithmetic: +, -, *, \times, /
- Relational: =, \neq, <, >, \leq, \geq
- Logarithm to base B: \log_B EXPR
- Square root: \sqrt{EXPR}
- Fraction: \frac{TOP}{BOTTOM}
- Choice: \left( \begin{array}{c} TOP \\ BOTTOM
\end{array} \right)
- Summation: \sum_{INDLOWER}^{INDUPPER} EXPR
- Product: \prod_{INDLOWER}^{INDUPPER} EXPR
- Calligraphic version of symbol X: \cal{X}
- A \cal{} command can seriously disrupt
the interpretation of subsequent material in a
math expression; hence, it is often a good idea
to break a math expression to put a \cal{}
on its own, e.g.,
rewrite $\cal{R} = \{ x ~ | ~ x > 15\}$ as
$\cal{R}$ $= \{ x ~ | ~ x > 15\}$.
- There are a staggering number of additional math symbols
and constructs available; a useful summary of the symbols is given
here.
- When in doubt, indicate precedence and grouping by curly braces;
to print curly braces, precede them by a backslash.
- All math will be typeset in italics; to get embedded text
to display correctly, force it into Roman font and enclose
with tildes to get proper spacing, e.g.,
$x = \{ i ~ | ~ i > 0 ~ {\rm and} ~ b(i) = True\}$.
- Example: A sample Latex document v4.0
[example4.tex,
example4.pdf,
example4.script]
- Typesetting Tables (Sections 3.5 and C.9.1, LL)
- The overall table-specification is included in the
table text environment; within this
environment, one specifies a table and caption and
where they should be placed.
- The \begin{table} command takes an optional argument
specifying that the table should be placed in the text (if at
all possible) here (h), at the top of the page
(t), at the bottom of the page (b), or
alone on a separate page (p), e.g.,
\begin{table}[p].
- This is actually a stated preference rather than an
obeyed directive -- LaTeX has various table positioning
assumptions that sometimes result in the table being
placed somewhere else. We discuss below under
"Debugging LaTeX" how to deal with this.
- The table caption is specified as the argument of the
\caption command, e.g.,
\caption{Some decidedly odd figures.}.
- The caption can be placed above or below the
tabular text environment to obtain
captions above or below the table proper.
- When using documents that automatically create
a list of tables using the listoftables
command, multi-line captions will be reprinted in
their entirely. To avoid this, specify the first line
of the caption (the caption title proper) again in
an optional argument to caption, e.g.,
\caption[line 1]{line 1. line 2 ... line n.}.
Thursday, October 6
- Student Presentations I
- Speakers for today:
- Behesdhti, Mohtasham Majid
- Dhir, Kunal
Tuesday, October 11
- No lecture; midterm break
Thursday, October 13 (Lecture #7)
- Typesetting Documents: Fun with LaTeX (Cont'd)
- Typesetting Tables (Sections 3.5 and C.9.1, LL) (Cont'd)
- The table itself is specified in the tabular
text environment.
- The column-structure of the table is specified
by an argument that consists of a sequence of
specifications of how text is placed in each column.
The three basic specifications for column text
placement are
centered (c), left-justified (l).
and right-justified (r), e.g.,
\begin{tabular}{c l l r c}.
- Each row is specified by a list of the text in
each column such that the column-texts are
separated by ampersands (&) and the
row is terminated by \\.
- Text spanning multiple columns can be
created
using command \multicolumn{NUM}{SPEC}{TEXT},
where NUM is the number of columns to
be spanned and SPEC specified how
TEXT is to be placed within that spanned
space.
- Any vertical bars following the last spanned
column must be specified in SPEC
(see below).
- Horizontal bars between rows
are created using \hline; to get a double bar,
use \hline\hline.
- In a row with columns 1, 2, ..., n, to obtain a
partial horizontal bar starting at the beginning of
column x and finishing at the end of
column y, use command \cline{x-y}.
- Vertical bars between columns are created using
|-characters in the tabular
column-structure argument; to get a double bar,
use ||, e.g.,
\begin{tabular}{ | c || l | l | r || c |}.
- Column-widths are set automatically to accommodate
the widest given column-element. To get even
spacing, consider adding a "blank" row in which each
column has an appropriate \hspace*
command.
- By default, the table proper is left-justified on the
page; to center the table proper, place command
\centering immediately before the
beginning of the tabular text environment.
- If one wants more vertical space between the table proper
and the caption or around the table as a whole and other
document text, this can be done using \vspace*
commands placed appropriately within the table text
environment.
- Referring to Tables (and Figures and Other Things) (Sections 4.2 and
C.11.2, LL)
- The numbers associated by LaTeX with automatically numbered
entities such as sections, appendices, equations, tables,
and figures can be captured using the command
label{LAB} where LAB is an arbitrary
character-string label, e.g., \label{TabResults},
\label{SectIntro}.
- Place section and appendix label-commands right after the
section commands that start those sections and appendices.
- For equations, tables and figures, place the label-command
anywhere within the text environments defining those
entities.
- To print the number associated with a defined label, use command
\ref{LAB}, e.g., Table \ref{TabResults}, Section
\ref{SectIntro}.
- Converting LaTeX Document Files to PDFs (Take II)
- Now that we are including references via labels (all of which
cannot be resolved by a single pass over a document), LaTeX must be run
twice to correctly resolve all such references correctly. If
this is not done, ?? will be typeset where all
such references are requested.
- As pdflatex is just a call to LaTex coupled to a
call to dvipdf (as far as we are concerned),
even though it appears on the first run that a PDF was
created correctly, pdfdlatex must be run twice.
- Certain LaTeX development environments may need to be run
twice on a LaTeX file for the same reason.
- Example: A sample Latex document v5.0 (Tables)
[example5.tex,
example5.pdf,
example5.script]
- Typesetting Figures (Sections 3.5 and C.9.1, LL)
- The overall figure-specification is included in the
figure text environment; within this
environment, one specifies a figure and caption and
where they should be placed.
- All notes about overall placement on the page, captions, and
additional vertical space given above for typesetting tables
also applies to figures.
- There are a variety of ways of specifying a figure diagram
and for including it in a LaTeX document; we will only talk
here about the simplest and most commonly-used way.
- Assume that the figure has been created as a file
fig.EXT (where EXT is a standard
image-file extension, e.g., pdf, jpg, eps)
using a diagram-creation program such as xfig (which we
shall briefly discuss in a later lecture).
- Insert this file into the LaTeX document using
command \includegraphics[SPEC]{fig.EXT}
where SPEC specifies the
height or width of the diagram in the typeset document,
e.g., width=10cm, height=3.5in.
- Command \includegraphics supports a variety
of diagram-file types, includes PDF and JPG.
- Use of this command will require access to the graphicx
LaTeX package; this is done by including command
\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} in the document preamble.
- Note that documents including figure diagrams
in this manner can only be compiled using
command pdflatex.
- As there is no \centering command in the
figure text environment, one centers diagrams
by enclosing the \includegraphics commands
in a center text environment.
- Figures can also include tables in a figure by embedding
tabular text environments appropriately.
- Example: A sample Latex document v6.0 (Figures)
[example6.tex,
rs.pdf,
elmo.jpg,
example6.pdf,
example6.script]
- Writing Letters in LaTeX (Section 5.3, LL)
- There is a standard letter format that is very nicely encoded
using the letter document-type.
- Letter documents have an additional letter text
environment inside the usual document text environment
with its own (possibly empty) preamble. The commands in this
preamble are not required and may be omitted as necessary.
- Letter-part commands and their effects:
- \address{ADDRSen}: (Possibly multi-line) address
ADDRSen of sender at upper right top of letter.
- \begin{letter}{ADDRRec}: (Possibly multi-line)
address ADDRRec of receiver at middle left of
letter.
- While \begin{letter} is necessary to start the
letter text environment, the argument
specifying ADDRRec is optional.
- \opening{OPEN}: Opening text OPEN appearing
to left just before letter body, e.g., "Dear Sirs;".
- This command also triggers the appearance of today's
date, i.e., the date on which the letter
document was LaTeXed. at the middle right of the
letter.
- \closing{CLOSE}: Closing text OPEN
appearing indented just after letter body, e.g.,
"Sincerely yours,".
- \signature{SIG}: Sender signature SIG at
bottom of letter, e.g., "Todd Wareham".
- The first line in the example letter below tweaks LaTeX to ensure
a sensible top margin in the face of local printer
idiosyncrasies.
- Example: A sample LaTeX letter document
[exampleLetter.tex,
exampleLetter.pdf,
exampleLetter.script]
- Writing Memos in LaTeX
- There's nothing new here, aside from the handy command
\hrule which produces a line the the width of the page;
however, it is always nice to have an example handy of this
bureaucratically critical artifact for modification as necessary.
- Note explicit date via use of command \today (unlike
letters, which get dates via the \opening
command).
- Example: A sample LaTeX memo document
[exampleMemo.tex,
exampleMemo.pdf,
exampleMemo.script]
- Writing Conference and Journal Papers in LaTeX
- Each conference and journal will typically have its own specific
LaTeX class, which defines the look of that conference and
journal's
papers. This will be defined by a given class file. If
you are lucky, this will be accompanied by a user's guide,
an example paper prepared under that class, and the
PDF associated with that example.
- Three major conference and journal paper-types in computer
science are Springer, IEEE, and ACM. We will look at these in
more detail next semester.
- Example: A sample Springer conference paper
[paperSpringer.tex,
paperSpringer.pdf]
- Example: A sample IEEE conference paper
[paperIEEE.tex,
paperIEEE.pdf]
- Example: A sample ACM conference paper
[paperACM.tex,
paperACM.pdf]
Tuesday, October 18 (Lecture #8)
- Typesetting Documents: Fun with LaTeX (Cont'd)
- Debugging / Prettifying LaTeX Documents
- Like computer programs, LaTeX documents are prone to bugs
that may prevent typesetting; moreover, given some of
LaTeX's hardcoded default assumptions, typeset documents
may not be what you want or may even incorporate outright
errors. Hence, you should always allocate 10-15% of your
LaTeX document development time for debugging and prettification.
- Our goal here is not only to create documents that look as
beautiful and professional as possible but to minimize
where possible the time and effort required to do this.
- Tip #1: Don't write your document and then LaTeX
it -- rather, LaTeX your document frequently as it is being
written.
- Frequent LaTeXing makes it easier to localize your errors
(and moreover ensures that these errors don't occur multiple
times).
- Just as in debugging program code, if a problem seems
inexplicable, you may want to simplify your LaTeX code
during debugging by commenting out sections of your
document; this can be done using the comment symbol
(%) at the beginning of each line you want
commented out.
- Tip #2: Do not have text overflowing into margins.
- LaTex has known text-length problems (especially with
inline math mode and font switches) that can result in
margin overflows.
- Wait until text stabilizes to fix these, and fix
by splitting up math or font-switched text into
pieces that do not cause margin overflows.
- Badly or mis-hyphenated words can also cause margin
overflows; this can be fixed by hyphenating the
offending words manually.
- Use command \linebreak (not \\)
to manually force newlines if necessary.
- If overflows involve tables or figures, redefine table
and figure sizes; in the case of tables, this can be
done by switching to a lower-size font inside the table.
- Tip #3: Position tables and figures as near as
possible to where they are first cited in
the text.
- LaTeX tries to put tables and figures as close as
possible to where they are first cited in the text;
however, if several tables or figures appear close together,
LaTeX can make tables and figures wander unpredictably,
sometimes even jamming them all at the end of a section
or document.
- Wait until text stabilizes to fix these, and fix by
shifting table- and figure-code to before
paragraphs in which they are first cited.
- If there are many figures and tables, fix the positions
of the earliest occurring first and progress forward
through the document, as
fixes in an earlier part of the document may screw up
later parts.
- Tip #4: Do not knowingly create orphans.
- In typesetting, an orphan is a paragraph ending in
a line with a single word, a page starting with a single
line ending the previous page's last paragraph, or
a page containing a single line.
- Wait until text has stabilized to fix these, and fix
by rewriting text to eliminate the orphans.
- Typesetting Literature Citations: Fun with bibitems and BibTeX
(Sections 4.3, B, and C.11.3, LL)
- There are two basic mechanisms in LaTeX for incorporating literature
citations in LaTeX: bibitem and BibTeX.
- bibitem allows manual typesetting of references in the bibliography.
- Individual references are plaintext items beginning with
\bibitem{TAG} commands inside a thebibliography
text environment, where TAG is an alphanumeric
string used when citing a bibitem-reference (see below).
- The bibliography style is set by the \bibliographystyle{STY}
command where STY is the requested style.
- The default style is plain (numbered references in
order given). There are other styles; for details, see
the LaTeX documentation.
- All listed bibitem-items are printed in the bibliography, even if
they are not cited in the text.
- Example: A sample Latex document v7.0 (bibitem)
[example7.tex,
example7.pdf,
example7.script]
- BibTeX allows automatic typesetting of references in the bibliography
relative to a specified reference-information .bib file and
a specified bibliography-style .bst file..
- In the LaTeX file, the bibliography is created by a
\bibliographystyle{STY} command followed by
a \bibliography{BIB} command, where STY
indicates the bibliography-style encoded in file
STY.bst and BIB indicates the reference
information encoded in file BIB.bib.
- Standard bibliography styles like plain
are stored with LaTeX files; other bibliography-style
files like IEEEtran.bst must be located
in the directory where LaTeXing is taking place.
- A .bib file consists of a set of generically-encoded
references.
- Each reference has the form \ITEMTYPE{TAG, FIELD1,
FIELD2, ..., FIELDn}, where each field has
the form FIELDTYPE={FIELDVAL} or
FIELDTYPE="FIELDVAL".
- There are a number of standard item-types, e.g.,
article, book, inproceedings, incollection;
additional item-types are typically defined in the
.bst file.
- There are a number of standard field-types, e.g.,
author, title, year, booktitle, journal, volume,
number, pages, editor, publisher address;
additional field-types are typically defined in the
.bst file.
- Each item-type has its own set of required
(or at least requested) field-types.
- Depending on the item-type and .bst file,
words in titles may be (un)capitalized or
multi-word author surnames may be turned into
initials incorrectly. To prevent this, enclose
words or letters that should always be capitalized
and multi-word author surnames in curly braces.
- Only BibTeX-items cited in the text body are printed in the
bibliography. To add other (all) items in the .bib
file, use command \nocite{TAG1, TAG2, ..., TAGm}
(\nocite{*}).
- Example: A sample Latex document v8.0 (BibTeX / plain style)
[example8a.tex,
example8a.bib,
example8a.pdf,
example8a.script]
- Example: A sample Latex document v8.0 (BibTeX / IEEE style)
[example8b.tex,
example8b.bib,
IEEEtran.bst,
example8b.pdf,
example8b.script]
- To cite a reference with associated tag TAG in the
text body, use command \cite{TAG}, e.g.,
\cite{War99}, \cite{AD+12, Cor09, War99}. To
associate extra text with a citation, put this text in the optional
square-bracketed argument to \cite, e.g.,
\cite[Lemma 2.1.35]{War99}.
- Many bibliography styles print reference-numbers for
citations in the text body, e.g., [2,3,45].
More exotic types are available but require special
.bst files, e.g., Wareham et al (2011)
(APA.bst).
- Converting LaTeX Document Files to PDFs (Take III)
- With bibitem, LaTeX must be run twice to correctly resolve
citations in the text body to references in the bibliography.
If this is not done, ?? will be typeset where all such
citations are requested.
- With bibtex, LaTeX must be run once to accumulate the wanted
citations in the text body to references in the bibliography.
BibTeX is then run once to resolve these citations, and LaTeX is
run twice more to fully integrate both the citations in the text
body and the references in the bibliography into the final
document.
- Certain LaTeX development environments may need to be run
three times (with an interpolated BibTeX call) on a LaTeX
file for the same reason.
Tuesday, October 18
- In-Class Exam #1 Notes
I've finished making up your first in-class exam. The exam will be
closed-book and no ``fact sheets'' will be allowed. It will be 60
minutes long and has a total of 60 marks. There will be two questions
worth 30 marks apiece -- the first asks you to show what given pieces
of LaTeX code produce and the second asks you to give LaTeX code for
producing given typeset texts. Each question has three parts. Topics
covered in the questions include:
- Math typesetting (both in text and offset separately).
- (Nested) List environments
You will find the texts and LaTeX codes in the Diary examples and
Assignment #1 of use.
I hope the above helps, and I wish you all the best of luck with this exam.
Thursday, October 20
- Student Presentations II
- Speakers for today:
- Albira, Rida
- Huang, Xin
- Saheb Alfosool, Ali Mohammad
Tuesday, October 25 (Lecture #9)
- Effective Literature Search: Dealing with Google Scholar et al
Thursday, October 27
- Student Presentations III
- Speakers for today:
- Osunrinde, Dayo
- Ozah, Wilson
- Dowzell, Jake
Thursday, November 3
Tuesday, November 8 (Lecture #10)
- Effective Literature Search: Dealing with Google Scholar et al (Cont'd)
- Once one has an initial relevant paper X, the next step is to
exploit paper-relationships to find other relevant papers in the
core.
- There are several ways to do this:
- Doing refined keyword search (RKS)
- Very useful if core consists of multiple
author- and/or citation-disjoint paper-sets.
- Most useful if all papers in the core share
the same terminology.
- Can be done nicely using the keyword box in Google
Scholar.
- Can customize years searched using the links
on the left-hand size of the search page.
- Beware leaving specific date-ranges in place
unintentionally, as this may compromise
later searches.
- Though specific keyword searches are more appropriate
at this point, you may also find general keyword
searches useful.
- Example: RKS for intractability results in
component-based software design (""computational complexity" component selection").
[Google Scholar]
- Example: RKS for intractability results in
robot motion planning (""computational complexity" robot motion planning")
[Google Scholar]
- May be less useful if there are multiple disjoint sets
of appropriate terminology.
- Looking for papers that cite X (Forward Citation
Search (FCS))
- Very useful if core consists of multiple
author- and/or keyword-disjoint paper-sets.
- Can be done nicely using the Cited by X
link associated with a paper by Google Scholar.
- Do such searching methodically and mindfully;
it is all too tempting do recursive forward
searches and inadvertently lose track of
useful found references.
- Example: FCS relative to Petty, Weisel, and Mielke (2003).
[Google Scholar]
- Example: FCS relative to Cesati and Wareham
(1995)
[Google Scholar]
- Most useful if X is older (but not too old
(see below)).
- May be less useful if X is recent, in that there
may be less time for people to be aware of X.
- May be less useful if X is older and has been
superceeded in importance by more recent papers.
- Looking for papers that X cites (Backward Citation
Search (BCS))
- Very useful if core consists of multiple
author- and/or keyword-disjoint paper-sets.
- Is typically done manually relative to a paper's
bibliography; however, such bibliographies are
occasionally available online with the initial
reference, e.g., certain papers published
by ACM and Elsevier, references through Citeseer.
- Example: BCS relative to Petty, Weisel, and Mielke (2003).
[Google Scholar]
- Example: BCS relative to Cesati and Wareham
(1995). [PDF]
[Google Scholar]
- Most useful when X is recent and a survey.
- May be less useful if X is older and has had
the references in its bibliography
superceeded in importance by more recent papers.
- Looking for other papers by the same author(s) (Author Name
Search (ANS))
- Very useful if core consists of multiple
keyword- and/or citation-disjoint paper-sets.
- Can be done nicely using the keyword box in Google
Scholar.
- May be problematic if the author name is common,
e.g., "Smith", "Chang".
- Failing that, consider using area-specific
author-oriented online services, e.g.,
DBLP (Computer Science), or
author-maintained homepages.
- As each method above often leaves out some
papers by an author, may need to use all three.
- Example: My papers as listed by Google
Scholar, DBLP, and my homepage.
[Google Scholar,
DBLP,
My Home Page]
- Most useful if author works exclusively on the
topic of interest.
- May be less useful if author is prolific and
works on multiple topics.
- Beware of shifts in author-name due to marriage,
e.g., "Keeling" => "Hartley-Keeling",
"Hemachandra" => "Hemaspaandra", or indecision,
e.g., "Harold Todd Wareham" => "H. Todd
Wareham" => "Todd Wareham".
Tuesday, November 15 (Lecture #11)
- Effective Literature Search: Dealing with Google Scholar et al (Cont'd)
- Newly-found papers must have their relevance assessed;
once their relevance is established, these papers are then
used to search for other relevant papers.
- Search relative to a particular initial paper should probably
stop when the newly-found papers are those that
you have already found.
- A secondary but nonetheless important task in literature search
is finding the full reference details for a paper.
- This task arises because (1) conference page limits and certain
journal bibliography styles force authors to shorten
references and (2) people are lazy (including some authors
regarding their own papers (!)).
- Though bibliographic standards have declined over the last
several decades, it is still useful in your own work to have
full bibliographic references because such references enhance
the look of your work as well as your professional reputation.
- The methods given above for finding papers by keyword and
author name often work well here.
- If the paper has been located using Google Scholar, the cite
tab associated with the paper gives its bibitem
and BibTeX information.
- As some of these entries have been compiled by uninformed manual
or automatic techniques, beware incomplete and/or misleading entries
(see the Cygan et al example below).
- Failing that, one can fall back on going back (via Google or manual library
search) to the paper itself in the Tables-of-Contents of the conference, journal,
or book in which the paper appeared.
- Example: Finding the full reference for Mueller et al (2009)
"Similarity as Tractable Transformation."
[Google Scholar]
- Example: Finding the full reference for Cygan et al (2015)
"Parameterized Algorithms".
[Google Scholar]
- More tools are becoming available on-line all the time to aid in literature search,
e.g.,
Many such tools are based on technical and business models taken from other (possibly less
academicly relevant) applications, e.g., generic search engines (Google Scholar),
social media (Academia.edu), and hence individually incorporate only certain aspects of
literature search. There are also a variety of business models, e.g., freely available,
subscription.
- There may be opportunities to create a literature-comprehensive freely-available tool that
incorporates all forms of used literature search described above, e.g.,
a fusion of the keyword and forward citation search capabilities of Google Scholar with
the backward citation search capabilities of Citeseer and the author name search capabilities
of DBLP (with reference bookmarking / collection capabilities and the self-addition /
maintenance capabilities of Wikipedia thrown in). Given
the burgeoning size of the world's research literature and the utility of this research in
academia, government, and industry (and possibly to the general public as well), such a tool
could be the basis of a viable business, given the right business model.
Tuesday, November 22
- In-Class Exam #2 Notes
I've finished making up your second in-class exam. The exam will be
closed-book and no ``fact sheets'' will be allowed. It will be 60
minutes long and has a total of 60 marks. There will be three questions:
- Bibliography typesetting with bibitem and BixTeX (2 parts) (32 marks)
- Table typesetting: Given LaTeX code, draw table (1 part) (12 marks)
- Table typesetting: Given table, give LaTeX code (1 part) (16 marks)
You will find the texts and LaTeX codes in the Diary examples and
Assignment #2 of use.
I hope the above helps, and I wish you all the best of luck with this exam.
Thursday, December 1
References
- Lamport, L. (1994) LaTeX: A Document Preparation System: User's Guide and
Reference Manual (Second Edition). Addison-Wesley. (Abbreviated above
as LL)
Created: June 28, 2016
Last Modified: November 22, 2016