Customer Reviews

Writing for Computer Science

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If you think you want this book, you do want it. It's a great guide to writing any report/paper/book in the field of computer science. It has great suggestions for describing mathematics and algorithms, how to gather data from experiments and how to present it. It contains good advice about the general act of writing, and discusses some of the conventions followed in Comp. Sci. It is extremely well written - lucid and concise. It covers a great deal of material in only 175 pages. It is short enough that I often reread the relavent chapter before I sit down to write a section of a paper. For novices, it's a great introduction. For experts, you'll probably learn something and it is a good catalog of things to keep in mind while writing. (NOTE: I checked this book out of my school's library before I bought it; you might be able to do the same.)

This book is a perfect guide for producing reports/theses papers related to Computer Science. I was in the midst of writing a thesis and was struggling with the conventions and styles to use, but after a quick perusal of this book I had all my doubts cleared. Examples are numerous and clear and easily aid you in the writing process. Also, I like this book because it explains the motivation for certain styles and conventions rather than just stating them.

This book was recommended to me by a professor, and I noticed it sitting in several of my professor's offices, as well as offices of several graduate students I worked with.

My roots are in computer science where I started my professional life. Therefore I was attracted by the title. I borrowed the book from the library and read it from cover to cover, frustrated not to be able to use my yellow highlighter on the pages of quite a few chapters.
The pertinence of the examples chosen proves that Justin Zobel has reviewed his fair share of papers. If you referee papers, chapter twelve on "Refereeing" is for you. If you are in computer science or if you use computers in your research, then chapter 5 ("Mathematics"), 7 ("Algorithms"), and 11 (Experimentation") are written specifically for you.

Scientists outside of computer science are not left out. Chapters two to four are about style and grammar. His examples will often bring a smile to your face as you recognize your own mistakes. Justin Zobel's book has the merit of systematically illustrating the principles of writing he recommends to the readers. I cannot say I always agree with his examples. For example page 32, he writes "Beginning a paper by stating that a topic is popular or that a problem is important is flat and uninspiring" (I could not agree more); he then illustrates such a flat start with the great example "Use of digital libraries is increasingly common". But then the "may well be preferable" example that follows has the same problem: "Digital libraries provide fast access to large numbers of documents". It uses two imprecise adjectives and does not enhance the knowledge of even the most junior researcher in computer science.
Chapter 6 on graphs, figures, and tables gives many examples. Justin believes in making figures "less dependent on the paper's text" (page 112) by making their caption more informative. I do too.
Chapter 9 gives general instructions for writing the various parts of a scientific paper, from its title to its conclusion.

We used this book for my course on research skills at Cambridge and I must say it was a useful reading. The examples are pertinent and clear and the insight on how to write really useful. I would particularly recommend it for non-native speaker like myself.

The book is a useful handbook when writing computer science research papers. The tips and guidelines are helpful in improving ones paper and there are also guidelines for presentations.

This book presents a list of useful tips for writing conference papers and research reports. It presents advices on what to do and what not to do when writing. I would strongly recommend it to beginners as well as to experienced writers.

It's the computer scientist's "Elements of Style". Concise and clearly written. A must have!