20 May: 

Discussion: What are you working on?  How is your document doing?
            What do you need to learn?

Discussion: Homework #2 asked you to pick an abstract from the Nature
            top 100 papers.  Read out your candidate and comment on it.
            My choice was paper #24.

Lecture:    Last time we talked about abstracts a lot.  You've had a chance
            to look over some abstracts in Homework #2.  I will present
            the abstract for a paper I am working on.

Discussion: Homework #3 asked you to create an abstract for a paper.
            Be prepared to read your abstract out loud.  I will present
            my guess for the abstract.  Then we'll look at the actual
            abstract and see how we did.

Turn in:    Homework #3.

Discussion: I will go through the process of describing the ideas that I want 
            to put into a paper, and then lay out an outline that will help me 
            to organize my work.

Lecture:    "Physics Writing Guide" by James McLean
            Although this guide is for physics articles, it has many useful
            comments for us as well.

Lecture:    Sample paper #4 is by Strang (visiting us this fall)
            and Persson.  Let's look over this paper together.  Notice 
            the difference between the abstract and introduction.  Remember
            that the abstract must be short, and functions as an advertisement
            or eye-catcher, while the introduction assumes that the reader
            is interested and wants to get an overview of the paper.

Homework #4: (not to be turned in)
            Read sample paper #5, by Akhtar, Wang, Borggaard and Iliescu.  
            You don't need to understand the equations, but try to follow the
            argument well enough to be able to summarize it in a discussion 
            at the next class.

Homework #5: (to be turned in next class):
            Prepare an abstract for your document.  It should be created
            using Latex, and printed as a PDF file.  If you have trouble
            using Latex, please let me know!

Your paper: You should have a title section (title, author, affiliation) done.
            You should have the abstract done.
            You should be thinking about an introduction.
            You should have at least an outline of the entire paper.