3 ms·

I give all my doctoral students a copy of the following great paper (and I've used a variant of the check list at the end for years - avoids errors when working

by jll29 3y ago

I give all my doctoral students a copy of the following great paper (and I've used a variant of the check list at the end for years - avoids errors when working on multiple papers with multiple international teams in parallel): How to Write a Paper http://www-mech.eng.cam.ac.uk/mmd/ashby-paper-V6.pdf http://www-mech.eng.cam.ac.uk/mmd/ashby-paper-V6.pdf

cratermoon 3y ago
Umberto Eco wrote a little (229p) volume titled How to Write a Thesis in 1977. In the introduction to the revised 1985 edition, Eco describes the book as one that "focuses on the spirit, mentality, and research methods required to write a good thesis, rather than on its content". It's a bit longer than Ashby's paper, and some of the internet age may look disdainfully on his advice for index cards, paper notes, and photocopies, but the intent behind them and the general method translates easily to the digital age, and thankfully we have tools like Zotero to drastically reduce some of the busywork.
beryilma 3y ago
The moment I saw Figures 3 and 4, I knew this paper would not be useful for me at all. The author of the paper is likely a visual thinker type of person, whereas I am certainly not. The boxes, colors, shading, etc. on those figures would/does easily overwhelm me. I find simply writing an outline, section titles and introductory paragraphs, and iterating over and over much more suitable to get started with writing a paper.
Beijinger 3y ago
This may get downvoted, but regarding to writing a thesis: If I open a thesis and see it was done in Latex I always think this guy can't be an idiot.
- maleldil 3y ago
  That's an interesting prior. Can you expand on it? If it's because of managing latex's complexity indicating some kind of ability, I can guarantee you that most people just copy paste and tweak stuff till it works.
  - Beijinger 3y ago
    How am I supposed to know? I am sure there are excellent works from the STEM field written in word. But someone using latex has to at least some understanding of IT which is a good thing. Latex gives just a good first impression. Based on former fellow students, I knew many would just stick to what they are fed and never get the idea to acquire knowledge on their own. And Latex could be just one of the things that shows curiosity and independent knowledge acquisition.
  - ayewo 3y ago
    I think the refrain: “Never judge a book by it’s cover” applies here. Our brains tend to associate good looking with well-researched when this isn’t always the case, hence the refrain quoted above. So, if someone goes through the trouble of using a cumbersome typesetting tool like Latex to format a paper, perhaps they have made an important contribution that is worth setting aside 15-30 mins of your time to digest the thesis in its entirety.
  - bachmeier 3y ago
    In 2023, there's a good chance it was written in markdown and converted to latex anyway, so there's not even copy/paste going on.
- s0rce 3y ago
  Hah, I formatted by girlfriend's thesis in Latex, I was so annoyed at the whole process that I did mine in MS Word.
- angra_mainyu 3y ago
  Isn't that the default? I don't think I've ever done a paper that wasn't in LaTeX... It makes rendering mathematical notation very easy, also automatically tracks indices, references, labels, etc. I can even embed csv data to display as a table with a few lines of code! It's also pretty straightforward to break down the paper into various folders and documents and import them all in a master .tex file, keeping your figures and data in their own folders too. Can't imagine doing all of that in a bunched up in a word doc... I mean, you can even do all the building in a container, so I often check in my work, push, and the CI builds the paper and makes a release depending on tag/branch.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    Not in many technical fields. When I was publishing in physics about a third to a half of my colleagues were using Word - all the top journals accepted it. This was over 15 years ago. CS and math are outliers. With IEEE Word was even more common.
    - orthozato 3y ago
      Currently a med student, and interestingly, some of the most renowned researchers in the world, not surprisingly, use Word. I know it strays from most of the users' fields of interest/research, but this is pretty funny, at least in my head..
      - BeetleB 3y ago
        For most people, LaTeX is pretty funny. Most disciplines did not use LaTeX. I'm sure there are plenty of big journals that never supported it. LaTeX became en vogue mostly in disciplines that involve a lot of math. Even in economics, a lot of journals were always majority Word.
  - OrderlyTiamat 3y ago
    It's not the default everywhere- in fact the journal Science actually prefers docx, to the point of asking latex submitters to convert to docx before submitting! https://www.science.org/content/page/science-information-authors https://www.science.org/content/page/science-information-aut...

by jll29 3y ago

cratermoon 3y ago

Umberto Eco wrote a little (229p) volume titled How to Write a Thesis in 1977. In the introduction to the revised 1985 edition, Eco describes the book as one that "focuses on the spirit, mentality, and research methods required to write a good thesis, rather than on its content". It's a bit longer than Ashby's paper, and some of the internet age may look disdainfully on his advice for index cards, paper notes, and photocopies, but the intent behind them and the general method translates easily to the digital age, and thankfully we have tools like Zotero to drastically reduce some of the busywork.

beryilma 3y ago

The moment I saw Figures 3 and 4, I knew this paper would not be useful for me at all. The author of the paper is likely a visual thinker type of person, whereas I am certainly not. The boxes, colors, shading, etc. on those figures would/does easily overwhelm me. I find simply writing an outline, section titles and introductory paragraphs, and iterating over and over much more suitable to get started with writing a paper.

Beijinger 3y ago

This may get downvoted, but regarding to writing a thesis: If I open a thesis and see it was done in Latex I always think this guy can't be an idiot.

maleldil 3y ago
That's an interesting prior. Can you expand on it? If it's because of managing latex's complexity indicating some kind of ability, I can guarantee you that most people just copy paste and tweak stuff till it works.
- Beijinger 3y ago
  How am I supposed to know? I am sure there are excellent works from the STEM field written in word. But someone using latex has to at least some understanding of IT which is a good thing. Latex gives just a good first impression. Based on former fellow students, I knew many would just stick to what they are fed and never get the idea to acquire knowledge on their own. And Latex could be just one of the things that shows curiosity and independent knowledge acquisition.
- ayewo 3y ago
  I think the refrain: “Never judge a book by it’s cover” applies here. Our brains tend to associate good looking with well-researched when this isn’t always the case, hence the refrain quoted above. So, if someone goes through the trouble of using a cumbersome typesetting tool like Latex to format a paper, perhaps they have made an important contribution that is worth setting aside 15-30 mins of your time to digest the thesis in its entirety.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  In 2023, there's a good chance it was written in markdown and converted to latex anyway, so there's not even copy/paste going on.
s0rce 3y ago
Hah, I formatted by girlfriend's thesis in Latex, I was so annoyed at the whole process that I did mine in MS Word.
angra_mainyu 3y ago
Isn't that the default? I don't think I've ever done a paper that wasn't in LaTeX... It makes rendering mathematical notation very easy, also automatically tracks indices, references, labels, etc. I can even embed csv data to display as a table with a few lines of code! It's also pretty straightforward to break down the paper into various folders and documents and import them all in a master .tex file, keeping your figures and data in their own folders too. Can't imagine doing all of that in a bunched up in a word doc... I mean, you can even do all the building in a container, so I often check in my work, push, and the CI builds the paper and makes a release depending on tag/branch.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BeetleB 3y ago
  Not in many technical fields. When I was publishing in physics about a third to a half of my colleagues were using Word - all the top journals accepted it. This was over 15 years ago. CS and math are outliers. With IEEE Word was even more common.
  - orthozato 3y ago
    Currently a med student, and interestingly, some of the most renowned researchers in the world, not surprisingly, use Word. I know it strays from most of the users' fields of interest/research, but this is pretty funny, at least in my head..
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      For most people, LaTeX is pretty funny. Most disciplines did not use LaTeX. I'm sure there are plenty of big journals that never supported it. LaTeX became en vogue mostly in disciplines that involve a lot of math. Even in economics, a lot of journals were always majority Word.
- OrderlyTiamat 3y ago
  It's not the default everywhere- in fact the journal Science actually prefers docx, to the point of asking latex submitters to convert to docx before submitting! https://www.science.org/content/page/science-information-authors https://www.science.org/content/page/science-information-aut...