Creative Posts Illustrating Research Methodologies
Sometimes, a graphical illustration helps...
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Friday, November 15, 2013
Learning too fast
The disease of "studying only for the exam" spread long ago along universities. This has risen the number of work-only-for-the-salary-graduates, they satisfied with lower salaries and leading the enterprises to low productivity and poor innovation.
"School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system? . . . From the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers"
They know about the danger even without warnings. But a preliminary warning is the best way. Do not say NO, you should tell them about the danger and consequences involved, even they do not understand the words you say. Be graphic as possible, but not dramatic.
Kids, as our ancestors, learn by the example. That is the relationship between fast learning and writing/reading process. Graphical/Example imitation is a large learning process by following reasons: first, the amount of information involved with images and its related content; second, the time required to reply this image and its graphic expressions. The most important goal for a child for continuing his learning process is to find the way to ask people "what is this?"
There are many communities examples for bio-inspiration. For example, the bees, the ants, the flies and the liontooths. The difference relies in the learning methodology. The flies seem to be not organized. There are ways to provide propagation by liontheeth: By natural blowing, by natural feeling, or by kicking.
For example, in the competence-type learning, the idea is to be very stressful in contents, but flexible in wisdom. The prerequisite of an assignment is never the course knowledge of the previous one. Instead, the requirement to take a course is the skill that student need to acquire this knowledge. For example, first semester courses should require reading comprehension and writing report structuring, instead strictly mathematics, physics and history. In another case, students of communication systems require skills in statistic data analysis, functional analysis, system analysis, electromagnetic phenomena comprehension and random (probabilistic) analysis; currently, the requirements are ruled as Knowledge in Signal Processing, Statistics and Electromagnetic Field.
Accordingly, there are three steps to cross the path between the wanting to do something (hobby) and the successful point where one is paid for doing something wanted: Vocation, Purpose and Work. In developed countries like Germany, this pathway is guaranteed, since the aspirant to a University has the opportunity of choosing the topic or discipline he wants by vocation. In the opposite, in underdeveloped countries like Colombia, the aspirant must choose by University prestige, and then he is forced to choose the topic that is available (by academical degree or by economical level). In most cases, the aspirant chooses a career that does not fit with its vocation.
Vocation refers to the topic what a person feels comfortable with, and knows that he has the skills to be good on this; It relates to the hobby. Purpose is the activity of the person to achieve a goal through his vocation; an academical/technical/practice/theoretical training is required to enhance the purpose. Finally, the work is the contribution that the person makes after the achieved purpose, becoming a synonym of a job when the work is compensated by money.
A temperature difference produces a heat flow. An electrical potential produces a current. Analogously, a change in electromagnetic field produces a electromagnetic flux. In music, a change of beats and frequencies produces melodies. How can be the learning process likewise transmitted? A first approximation comes out form the multimedia, by packet traffic: Pieces of information are sent via redundancy and reliability, and gathered together by side information of memory "flashes". Is there another way to define the learning process as a medium that flows information from the source to the learner.
There is an interval, where the learning process is a priority over teaching process. When people get older, the priority turns in the teaching process, blocking the learning process in some aspects.
The supervision is often a complement for the learning process. But beware, it is not by the transmission of information, but by the whole chemical, physical and other processes involved with. For instance, a plant can grow up fast by putting music aside or talking with it. However, the process involved is actually the emission of CO2 provided by the person to the plant and the resonance frequency provided by music.
Practice and training is the best way for learning. Memorizing is currently considered as not adequate. This statement applies to high school education: A simple academic-bachelor degree does not identify the abilities and skills of the titled person. Instead, a good perspective for employment and business can be deployed for the person who was prepared for a technical/trained skill, especially if that skill is chosen by willing.
Just note the classic learning scale, according to William Glasser: progressively, you learn:
The idea of developing the imagination and other abilities is to reduce or eliminate anyone of the senses. The completeness leads to numbness, since the mission of mind is complete the missing tracks. Reading cancels hearing, touch and sight (since you are reading a text). This causes the other senses fly with imagination to recreate the scene you are reading. With good music, the muted senses are sight and smell (touch is in vibration, so is not disabled), allowing to develop imagnianción flying through the canceled sense. Sleeping is also a process, because all the external senses are nullified. Hence, television numbs and cancels creativity, because all the senses are involved with it. The internet is not completely the blame.
"School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system? . . . From the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers"
-- Albert Einstein
Need is the source of creativity
Children know about communication even without using words. For instance, they know how signalize objects without knowing its meaning. Moreover, they know the basic primer words to establish survival: Mom provides affect, Dad provides food an play. Bottle provides milk, and so on.They know about the danger even without warnings. But a preliminary warning is the best way. Do not say NO, you should tell them about the danger and consequences involved, even they do not understand the words you say. Be graphic as possible, but not dramatic.
Kids, as our ancestors, learn by the example. That is the relationship between fast learning and writing/reading process. Graphical/Example imitation is a large learning process by following reasons: first, the amount of information involved with images and its related content; second, the time required to reply this image and its graphic expressions. The most important goal for a child for continuing his learning process is to find the way to ask people "what is this?"
There are many communities examples for bio-inspiration. For example, the bees, the ants, the flies and the liontooths. The difference relies in the learning methodology. The flies seem to be not organized. There are ways to provide propagation by liontheeth: By natural blowing, by natural feeling, or by kicking.
For example, in the competence-type learning, the idea is to be very stressful in contents, but flexible in wisdom. The prerequisite of an assignment is never the course knowledge of the previous one. Instead, the requirement to take a course is the skill that student need to acquire this knowledge. For example, first semester courses should require reading comprehension and writing report structuring, instead strictly mathematics, physics and history. In another case, students of communication systems require skills in statistic data analysis, functional analysis, system analysis, electromagnetic phenomena comprehension and random (probabilistic) analysis; currently, the requirements are ruled as Knowledge in Signal Processing, Statistics and Electromagnetic Field.
“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
T.S. EliotAccordingly, there are three steps to cross the path between the wanting to do something (hobby) and the successful point where one is paid for doing something wanted: Vocation, Purpose and Work. In developed countries like Germany, this pathway is guaranteed, since the aspirant to a University has the opportunity of choosing the topic or discipline he wants by vocation. In the opposite, in underdeveloped countries like Colombia, the aspirant must choose by University prestige, and then he is forced to choose the topic that is available (by academical degree or by economical level). In most cases, the aspirant chooses a career that does not fit with its vocation.
Vocation refers to the topic what a person feels comfortable with, and knows that he has the skills to be good on this; It relates to the hobby. Purpose is the activity of the person to achieve a goal through his vocation; an academical/technical/practice/theoretical training is required to enhance the purpose. Finally, the work is the contribution that the person makes after the achieved purpose, becoming a synonym of a job when the work is compensated by money.
The missing link
One of the most important aspects in learning is the mind training by finding missing information. The mind does not estimate information, it creates information based on previous conceptions. I give an example. Try to see a video with muted sound, and imagine the song. Probably you do not match with the song, but the conception of music would be surprising.A temperature difference produces a heat flow. An electrical potential produces a current. Analogously, a change in electromagnetic field produces a electromagnetic flux. In music, a change of beats and frequencies produces melodies. How can be the learning process likewise transmitted? A first approximation comes out form the multimedia, by packet traffic: Pieces of information are sent via redundancy and reliability, and gathered together by side information of memory "flashes". Is there another way to define the learning process as a medium that flows information from the source to the learner.
There is an interval, where the learning process is a priority over teaching process. When people get older, the priority turns in the teaching process, blocking the learning process in some aspects.
The supervision is often a complement for the learning process. But beware, it is not by the transmission of information, but by the whole chemical, physical and other processes involved with. For instance, a plant can grow up fast by putting music aside or talking with it. However, the process involved is actually the emission of CO2 provided by the person to the plant and the resonance frequency provided by music.
Practice and training is the best way for learning. Memorizing is currently considered as not adequate. This statement applies to high school education: A simple academic-bachelor degree does not identify the abilities and skills of the titled person. Instead, a good perspective for employment and business can be deployed for the person who was prepared for a technical/trained skill, especially if that skill is chosen by willing.
Just note the classic learning scale, according to William Glasser: progressively, you learn:
- What you read.
- What you hear (in class, for instance). Listening.
- What you see (by an example). Observation.
- What you see and hear at the same time (audiovisual-surround). Living the experience.
- What you discuss with your peers. Talk, ask, reproduce, define, relate, enumerate, enlist, reproduce, remember, debate, react, define.
- What you do. Write, interpret, translate, describe, express, review, identify, communicate, apply, use, demonstrate, practice, plan, estimate, discover, create, organize, summarize, analyze, differ, evaluate, catalogue, participate.
- What you teach to others. Explain, abstract, classify, structurate, define, generalize,elaborate, probe, illustrate.
The idea of developing the imagination and other abilities is to reduce or eliminate anyone of the senses. The completeness leads to numbness, since the mission of mind is complete the missing tracks. Reading cancels hearing, touch and sight (since you are reading a text). This causes the other senses fly with imagination to recreate the scene you are reading. With good music, the muted senses are sight and smell (touch is in vibration, so is not disabled), allowing to develop imagnianción flying through the canceled sense. Sleeping is also a process, because all the external senses are nullified. Hence, television numbs and cancels creativity, because all the senses are involved with it. The internet is not completely the blame.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
4b. Reviewing/Writing guidelines: Methodology.
An adequate process for reviewing papers comes from the classical teaching/ learning methodology, which is based on the tracking routine:
- Expose the idea. As the teacher gives a class, the author illustrates the proposal's hypothesis. It creates the Introduction section. This idea pretend to solve a well--defined problem. So, the problem should be adequately illustrated as well.
- Give an example. The example is the keynote in a class session, since the student knows how the problem is solved until now. It provides the ultimate way to solve the problem proposed in literature and state-of-the art. So, the author learns about the current methodologies, techniques, and experiments to be overcome by the proposed one.
- Expose the experimental setup. It means the questions of the exam. Here, the author should probe that he has the enough knowledge to carry the experiment and knows that results will be remarkable. Comparing with a classroom's exam, where the student should prove that he knows about a matter or topic in particular, and has the skills to solve a related problem.
- Make the experiment and expose the results. At the classroom, the student answers the stated questions. Accordingly, the results are the answers which indicate the solution of the problem. So, scoring of those results indicates if the experimental setup was accomplished, the author achieved the sufficient knowledge to solve the problem, and the impact (poor/slightly/good/remarkable).
- Evaluation by pairs. It is the part where the teacher scores your exam. As the teacher scores the items of exam/presentation/poster, from two to four people provide the advances/failures that the proposal provides. Due to the relevance of a scientific publication, and to provide fairness, the number of evaluators is more than one. In contrast, the impact of the school exam covers the particular learning aspect of the student. So, a single evaluator can complete this task. However, the fairness is improved when an invigilator - a person different from teacher - monitories the school exam. In the case of a scientific publication, an editing committee meet the functions of invigilator, making sure that the reviewing process goes clean and fair.
- Discussion, rebuttal and fixture. Aside of some impairment from the pairs, which is a theme that the committee should concern, the scorings of the proposal give an indication of the impact, appropriateness and novelty of the proposal in the publication/conference/dissertation where the proposal takes place. Here is where the discussion section of document is critical. This is the section where the most of the commentaries, annotations, and corrections would be. In the case of the school exam, the teacher can easily provide a score by checking the good/wrong answers, and can weight those results by relevance (easy/tough exercise/question). Besides, the evaluation by pairs takes a slightly more deep process. There are various possibilities of scoring ranking and its correspondent actions :
- If the corrections spread along the document, specially in orthographic, semantics, language usage, and document structural errors, the real impact of the proposal hides. So, it is important to first correct this errors, to avoid stressful reviewing/revision processes.
- Else if the corrections relate to incomplete/not-properly-commented references in the introduction/overview/background section, the author knows that a literature revision should be done again.
- Else if corrections are around the experimental-setup and results, author should correct the methodology, and rearrange the floats (tables, figures) to provide a re-interpretation of results. A too-long table (many row/columns, many subdivisions or over-paged) indicates that the proposal was unfocused, because it evidences that the proposal pretends to adjust many parameters at the same time. A large number of poor--commented figures, which lead to documents with only-figure pages, or figures stacked at the end of the paper, indicates that the experimental setup was not properly deployed. An image is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words should give a worthy explanation on the results that image provides. It is like the critical interpretation of artwork (painting, sculpture, cuisine, music performance, reliquary).
- Finally, when most of corrections come together into the discussion section, scorings relate to the impact and appropriateness of the work: How quantitatively (numerically) the proposal overcomes the other ones given in literature? What novelty does the author give to? How high does the proposal improve the system/model to solve the problem? Why did not the other methods in literature achieve this results? The last one is catchy, does it?
- Otherwise, when all of above corrections appears on document, author should re-think on the proposal from zero. However, it was a good 2-year exercise, don't you think?
- Conclusions. Finally, the achievement of the proposal, the impact and further works gather into the conclusion section. As authors may know, a full relationship between introduction and conclusion should be achieved: every goal (either main or specific) in the introduction section must be accomplished on the conclusion section. Normally, these two bonded sections are the shortest ones of the document. In the undergraduate classroom experience, it corresponds to the showing-out of the exam scores. Well done, you students.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
6. First exercises for the begining of a scientific paper.
Process to achieve a (sometimes good) publication:
1. Please write your statement with a pen, it enhances the thinking process. Do not use pencil. Throw the sheet to the garbage (anti-ecology-kind). Wait two minutes, and write the statement again.
2. With your statement in hand, go to the board and read this statement to the audience. Listen to the corrections and discussions, and rewrite the statement.
3. With your corrected statement, please write the keywords obtained form it using the pen. If you get a mistake, throw the sheet and write the statement and its keywords again.
3a. Find the adequate keywords. It helps you to find the adequate literature. Now the online databases make easy the use of hierarchical query method. This method runs as follows: first, the reviewing of keywords, just as looking for a genre in music or movies; second the reviews appear from finding of keywords. In indexed databases, work-titles are listed in order of relevance, as appeared in movie outlines, also categorized in some musical databases. From there, the abstract reading work begins directly. This makes the effort made by researchers to project in a ornate summary, preventing a waste of search query
4. A well backstage production leads to a good publication. Save some additional information about your findings in your personal folder. In a text, write your criteria on the works of the other colleages. It provides the foundings for a state--of--art.
5. Follow these steps:
1. Please write your statement with a pen, it enhances the thinking process. Do not use pencil. Throw the sheet to the garbage (anti-ecology-kind). Wait two minutes, and write the statement again.
2. With your statement in hand, go to the board and read this statement to the audience. Listen to the corrections and discussions, and rewrite the statement.
3. With your corrected statement, please write the keywords obtained form it using the pen. If you get a mistake, throw the sheet and write the statement and its keywords again.
3a. Find the adequate keywords. It helps you to find the adequate literature. Now the online databases make easy the use of hierarchical query method. This method runs as follows: first, the reviewing of keywords, just as looking for a genre in music or movies; second the reviews appear from finding of keywords. In indexed databases, work-titles are listed in order of relevance, as appeared in movie outlines, also categorized in some musical databases. From there, the abstract reading work begins directly. This makes the effort made by researchers to project in a ornate summary, preventing a waste of search query
4. A well backstage production leads to a good publication. Save some additional information about your findings in your personal folder. In a text, write your criteria on the works of the other colleages. It provides the foundings for a state--of--art.
5. Follow these steps:
- I won't do it (Really)?
- I can't do it: when you give a strong justification explaining that the work is out of scope.
- I want to do it, when you consider that you have the background for doing it. Hypothesis/Proposal formulation.
- How do I do it? Methodology.
- I'll try to do it: Experimental Setup.
- I can do it: Discussion.
- I will do it: Results.
- I did it: Conclussions.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
5. Paper Structure
Before structuring the final work, a proposal should be considered, in order to effectively plan the experiment to be done.
First of all, the document must follow the coherence, deepness, clarity and novelty in each section. The goals must either answer two or three research questions or prove a single hypothesis. These goals are classified as the mandatory and the check-like. The latter goals are part of the former.
By temporality: mediate goals -> immediate goal.
By aiming: specific goals-> main goal.
By focusing: experimental goals -> theoretical goal.
Thus, discussion section must satisfy the accomplishment of the check-like goals, and the conclusion must explain the achievement of the mandatory goal.
The structure of a paper should be as follows:
A short Title helps, see this Article.
- Authors: We suggest the adequate number of authors of two in proceeding papers and three for a Journal. For the former, the two authors are the person who plans and makes the document and the other who elaborates the algorithm and carries out the experiment. In this case, there is no clear distinction for the main author, just for correspondence purposes. For the latter, the First Author is the architect/director of the work: It is the person who elaborates the document, designs the experimental setup, gives the main idea and goal of the work and elaborates the mathematical background and hypothesis. It is the responsible person for a successful work. It would suggest that these activities are all. However, the Second Author is the person in charge of the accomplishment of activities designed by the first one. He writes the document, deploys/tests the algorithms, display the results, elaborate the graphics and gives the discussion/conclusion guidelines. Finally, the Third Author is the producer. Although it seems like he does nothing, normally the third author is the person who coordinates the whole activities for the accomplishment of publication: it is the person who finds the contacts for the discussion of paper, pays for (or manage) the elements, personnel and equipment needed for the elaboration of work, teaches the theory/background required for elaboration of experiment, and tracks the paper. There are different hierarchies for the authors. Normally, the Ph.D. student/M.Sc. student/Professor is the ranking for most journal papers, and the M.Sc. Student/B.Sc student ranking is used for most proceeding papers. It can be understood as the movie making process: there is a director, who coordinates the deployment and correct development of history, the actors who develops the history, and the producer, who gets the contacts, manages and advertises the movie. This relationship explains the dedication that authors must give to the paper elaboration process.
- The path of the work. A one-way path is suggested to give a clear explanation to the reader about your work. The best path would be problem>intention>goal>method>results>conclusion. The three first elements of this path must be clearly provided in the Introduction Section. Therefore, the most simple a clear paragraphs must be written on this Section. Definitions, equations, and theorems are inserted after in the Background/Methodology Section. Likewise, this section must give a learning-based system: the most basic and simplest definitions go to the beginning of this section, going deeper and elaborated to the end. So, the reader can understand the terms conforming he is reading the document at top-bottom direction.
- Abstract: the paragraph which tells the promise and the way this one is accomplished. It must be short, concrete and provide numerical or measurable results. Despite of its shortage, this section normally comprises three basic facts: (i) the proposal, driven as the presentation of the "magic act"; (ii) the confrontation, when the proposal overcomes the unsolved-by-now problem into a novel contribution ; (iii) the discussion, where the given results evidence the novelty of the contribution. Note that the Abstract is neither a copy of the Introduction nor the Conclusion. The Abstract barely implies how the introduction presents the problem and how the conclusion closes the contribution.
- Introduction: it describes the problem, and tells the reader how one can learn and understand the methodology for adressing this problem. A bad explained introduction will discourage the reader to keep reading. It is the reason for the very importance of this section.
- Background. This section answers the following question: Did the author make a very deep study on the problem, such that he can clearly define the start point of his work based on the work of others? This is the difference between a very focused (and novel) work and a fuzzy and not novel work. Normally the background should be summarized (or just put) within the introduction section. In most of cases, the Background is somehow extensive, leading to a creation of such section.
- Methodology, which tells to the reader about your solution. A precise qualification for this section is "convincing". This term means that you have given a sufficient mathematical, teoretical, and/or experimental justification to give confidence to the reader. The main question to be answered here is: why your contribution/solution/idea is different form others or enhances/improves the method of others? The subsequent question shall be: How do you demonstrate that your claimed idea/solution solves the problem, and why do not the others?
- Experimental Setup. The description of the experiment. Despite of the easyness of the description, this is the core of the work. Provide data bases, materials, algorithms, machinery and test rigs, required to validate your methodology among the others. Just providing an experimental setup for only your method is a bad path. Backgroung should provide you the way to test the other ones. The setup is important, because it gives you the remarks or the experiment. It defines if results provide from a bad argument idea, from a wrong made algorithm, from a pointless experiment, or from a very importan discover (see that I give you four wrong effects and a one correct: It gives an idea how difficult this is). It can be considered like a song deployment. The experimental setup is equivalent to a draft song composition: After the song is written, you can essay lot of hours a day, for a long time, concluding at the end the following: This song sucks, the song is pointless, the song cannot achieve a very good succesful, or the song sounds good.
- Results. The organization of results, and the coherence with the experimental setup is the key for a clear interpretation of results. Every figure and table must be deeply explained and discussed. When discussion acomplished more than two paragraphs, the correspondent section can be created.
The number of figures and tables in the results is another thing for considering the work depth. It is clear that every figure and table must be thoroughly described (what is the intention of the figure? What does it show? Which results can be inferred? Which claimed arguments are evidenced?). However, too much Figures and tables can lead to a very dense/bad described work. For a proceeding, just one Figure and/or one Table is enough to determine a contingent evidence. For a Journal, the exceeding in the number of Figures/Tables comes out when there are not enough explanations for each one. In this case, the document itself shows a senseless stacking of Figures and Tables on one page (or in several pages, when figure and table takes more than one page).
- Conclusion. It is divided in two parts: the description of the solution of the problem, and the future works that derive from this solution.
First of all, the document must follow the coherence, deepness, clarity and novelty in each section. The goals must either answer two or three research questions or prove a single hypothesis. These goals are classified as the mandatory and the check-like. The latter goals are part of the former.
By temporality: mediate goals -> immediate goal.
By aiming: specific goals-> main goal.
By focusing: experimental goals -> theoretical goal.
Thus, discussion section must satisfy the accomplishment of the check-like goals, and the conclusion must explain the achievement of the mandatory goal.
The structure of a paper should be as follows:
A short Title helps, see this Article.
- Authors: We suggest the adequate number of authors of two in proceeding papers and three for a Journal. For the former, the two authors are the person who plans and makes the document and the other who elaborates the algorithm and carries out the experiment. In this case, there is no clear distinction for the main author, just for correspondence purposes. For the latter, the First Author is the architect/director of the work: It is the person who elaborates the document, designs the experimental setup, gives the main idea and goal of the work and elaborates the mathematical background and hypothesis. It is the responsible person for a successful work. It would suggest that these activities are all. However, the Second Author is the person in charge of the accomplishment of activities designed by the first one. He writes the document, deploys/tests the algorithms, display the results, elaborate the graphics and gives the discussion/conclusion guidelines. Finally, the Third Author is the producer. Although it seems like he does nothing, normally the third author is the person who coordinates the whole activities for the accomplishment of publication: it is the person who finds the contacts for the discussion of paper, pays for (or manage) the elements, personnel and equipment needed for the elaboration of work, teaches the theory/background required for elaboration of experiment, and tracks the paper. There are different hierarchies for the authors. Normally, the Ph.D. student/M.Sc. student/Professor is the ranking for most journal papers, and the M.Sc. Student/B.Sc student ranking is used for most proceeding papers. It can be understood as the movie making process: there is a director, who coordinates the deployment and correct development of history, the actors who develops the history, and the producer, who gets the contacts, manages and advertises the movie. This relationship explains the dedication that authors must give to the paper elaboration process.
- The path of the work. A one-way path is suggested to give a clear explanation to the reader about your work. The best path would be problem>intention>goal>method>results>conclusion. The three first elements of this path must be clearly provided in the Introduction Section. Therefore, the most simple a clear paragraphs must be written on this Section. Definitions, equations, and theorems are inserted after in the Background/Methodology Section. Likewise, this section must give a learning-based system: the most basic and simplest definitions go to the beginning of this section, going deeper and elaborated to the end. So, the reader can understand the terms conforming he is reading the document at top-bottom direction.
- Abstract: the paragraph which tells the promise and the way this one is accomplished. It must be short, concrete and provide numerical or measurable results. Despite of its shortage, this section normally comprises three basic facts: (i) the proposal, driven as the presentation of the "magic act"; (ii) the confrontation, when the proposal overcomes the unsolved-by-now problem into a novel contribution ; (iii) the discussion, where the given results evidence the novelty of the contribution. Note that the Abstract is neither a copy of the Introduction nor the Conclusion. The Abstract barely implies how the introduction presents the problem and how the conclusion closes the contribution.
- Introduction: it describes the problem, and tells the reader how one can learn and understand the methodology for adressing this problem. A bad explained introduction will discourage the reader to keep reading. It is the reason for the very importance of this section.
- Background. This section answers the following question: Did the author make a very deep study on the problem, such that he can clearly define the start point of his work based on the work of others? This is the difference between a very focused (and novel) work and a fuzzy and not novel work. Normally the background should be summarized (or just put) within the introduction section. In most of cases, the Background is somehow extensive, leading to a creation of such section.
- Methodology, which tells to the reader about your solution. A precise qualification for this section is "convincing". This term means that you have given a sufficient mathematical, teoretical, and/or experimental justification to give confidence to the reader. The main question to be answered here is: why your contribution/solution/idea is different form others or enhances/improves the method of others? The subsequent question shall be: How do you demonstrate that your claimed idea/solution solves the problem, and why do not the others?
- Experimental Setup. The description of the experiment. Despite of the easyness of the description, this is the core of the work. Provide data bases, materials, algorithms, machinery and test rigs, required to validate your methodology among the others. Just providing an experimental setup for only your method is a bad path. Backgroung should provide you the way to test the other ones. The setup is important, because it gives you the remarks or the experiment. It defines if results provide from a bad argument idea, from a wrong made algorithm, from a pointless experiment, or from a very importan discover (see that I give you four wrong effects and a one correct: It gives an idea how difficult this is). It can be considered like a song deployment. The experimental setup is equivalent to a draft song composition: After the song is written, you can essay lot of hours a day, for a long time, concluding at the end the following: This song sucks, the song is pointless, the song cannot achieve a very good succesful, or the song sounds good.
- Results. The organization of results, and the coherence with the experimental setup is the key for a clear interpretation of results. Every figure and table must be deeply explained and discussed. When discussion acomplished more than two paragraphs, the correspondent section can be created.
The number of figures and tables in the results is another thing for considering the work depth. It is clear that every figure and table must be thoroughly described (what is the intention of the figure? What does it show? Which results can be inferred? Which claimed arguments are evidenced?). However, too much Figures and tables can lead to a very dense/bad described work. For a proceeding, just one Figure and/or one Table is enough to determine a contingent evidence. For a Journal, the exceeding in the number of Figures/Tables comes out when there are not enough explanations for each one. In this case, the document itself shows a senseless stacking of Figures and Tables on one page (or in several pages, when figure and table takes more than one page).
- Conclusion. It is divided in two parts: the description of the solution of the problem, and the future works that derive from this solution.
4a. Reviewing/Writing guidelines: Document Requirements.
A paper easy to be reviewed (and approved thereafter) should have:
- An attractive abstract. It does not mean a overwhelmed argument. It is just a brief explanation of what you do, why are you doing this work, an interesting result (the attraction), and clear conclusions.
- A clear justification about the reason of making it.
- A continuously written history: a beginning (introduction), a plot (methodology), a climax (results), an end (conclusions). All variables and definitions should be declared form the beginning of document.
- A name for the method, technique, case of study or discover. We recommend an acronym, namely the main acronym. The main acronym must be spread along the work paper. This allows to create a confidence about the explained term, and the reader will learn this acronym irremediably. However, one must consider a maximal number of acronym apparitions on text, avoiding annoyance.
- Your background, idea and argument must be "standing on the shoulders on giants", specially for review--type papers. I suggest the following:
- Creating things from nothing or from a not--so--good--made study, charges you in time and delusions. However, be careful if you aim at criticizing some work: normally, you will end losing, if you do not have a better idea.
- Plagiarism is never an option. Just like in music composition, the credit is important for authors. If you make music over a sampling melody without author's authorization, you are immediately criticized by stealing and abusing from that composition. So, please provide a strictly citation from those information (Tables, Figures) coming from other people, with its related discussion. There are websites where plagiarism is investigated.
- Creativity and talent of the authors relies on the impact that their work provides over the state--of--art. An example is related with painting, when you try to draw some masterpiece using other technique: if your artwork is similar to the original, you falls into plagiarism; if your technique is immediately leaded to the original artist's technique, your contribution will be not significant. You must deeply analyze the other theories (mathematical background, methodology, experiments), before proposing a new one.
- Search for a target-rich environment of knowledge. For engineering, and most of areas in science, the following are the common used goals for research:
- Enhancing or improving a recent technique.
- Proposing a new technique by opposing to the hypothesis of the current ones.
- Bringing a technique which works for some applications to the considered problem.
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