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Eugene Wu edited this page Jun 2, 2025 · 9 revisions

Writing papers

See the notes of questions to answer before picking a project. These are the minimum questions to address in your paper.

It also helps to see how other papers evolve. I've built a tool called latexsnapshots that will generate snapshots of a paper as it evolves.

Pair editing

  • This article argues that live editing with the student is a good idea. Request this from the advisor!

Why Syntax Matters

How you organize the content of your arguments on the page is akin to organizing the layout of a graphic design, or the design of a visualization. There are systematic principles derived from perception and cognition:

Things to Constantly Think About

For every section, subsection, and paragraph that you write, you should constantly ask:

  • “does the reader understand why this is important to know this?” and
  • “does the reader know enough to appreciate this?”

This is akin to Robert Caro's famous note on his desk: "Is there desperation on this page?"

Responding to reviewer comments

Collaborative Writing

I find the following writing process useful when working writing with others. This also assumes that the paper is not written last minute :)

  • For the first several drafts, use google docs/quip/paper or any other collaborative writing tool. During this process, the goal is to agree on the sequence of arguments and desired figures to have in the paper. I don't care as much about technical notation.
  • Once the structure is agreed upon, ship the text into latex and edit there.
  • Some collaborators like using ShareLatex or Overleaf. I don't have a personal preference, so I go with whatever my collaborators want.

Reviewing Papers

    tldr; think like an engineer and look for things to take

Fill in the following form, with an emphasis on the positive aspects of the paper:

# Positives 

## What is the key idea in this paper?  Why is it a good idea?

## Are there other reasons why this could be a good idea not mentioned in the text?  Suggest them.

## Are there other applications where you could use these ideas?  Describe them

## Which of the experiments helped you understand the paper?

## What else did you like about this paper?

# Improvements

## What writing improvements could have made it easier to understand the paper?

## What techniques would make the ideas _even better_?  In what ways

## What experiments/plots would help you better understand how well the ideas work?  
## Are they _possible_? (remember: getting private data is hard)

What other people say about reviewing:

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