Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory
TML / Studies
T-110.501 and T-110.551

T-110.501 Seminar on Network Security (NetSec)
T-110.551 Seminar on Internetworking (iWork)

Handouts for year 2005

Page contents last updated or checked: Mon Feb 14 13:57:52 EET 2005

Context of this document and who should read it

This document was written for the students, tutors and the staff of these TML seminars:

Others who are learning or teaching scientific writing may also find this selection of learning / teaching materials useful. Note that these seminars train students to write a literature review or literature analysis - NetSec or iWork articles seldom are based on experimental or field studies. For our Major students, one of these seminars is a prerequisite for starting their Master's Thesis work.

Contents

Purpose and contents of the handouts
How to get the handouts
Alternatives to the handouts
Handouts reference list

Purpose and contents of the handouts

The primary purpose of the whole set of handouts is to offer the students and tutors a comprehensive enough selection of material on scientific (and technical) writing. This selection should be able to aid a student through either of these seminars, through the writing of her or his Master's Thesis and, if the student pursues postgraduate studies, perhaps even through the first one or two postgraduate article writing projects. After such an "apprentice scientific writer" period it then becomes necessary for the student to collect new, personally relevant material on scientific writing and deepen the thus far acquired literature-research-and-writing skills.

The secondary purpose of the handouts is to introduce the students to some of the classic guidebooks on scientific (and technical) writing, both to general guides and to guides for fields that are related to the study of networks and security. After seeing 5-20 pages excerpts from each of these guides, if they later decide they want to buy such a guide, the students should already have a good idea of what kind of guide they may like (or dislike).

The contents of the different parts of the handout are roughly the following:

  1. The Big Picture: What is scientific writing, where did it come from and why does it matter for a network or security engineer-to-be
  2. The Details: The standard building blocks of a scientific article and how to write them well (title, abstract, introduction, discussion, conclusions etc.)
  3. The Work Process: How to work through the steps of the literature-research-and-writing project: how to find, evaluate and analyze information, how to construct an outline, how to cite sources correctly, how to revise one's own text, how to give feedback to fellow students etc.
  4. The Language Handbook: The "nuts and bolts" of writing good English: word choice, punctuation, spelling, words to watch etc. (material chosen for non-native speakers of English but should be useful to mostly anyone)
  5. The Format Handbook: The "nuts and bolts" of LaTeX and BibTeX

How to get the handouts

You can either order the handouts from Edita: http://www1.edita.fi/prima/opetusmonisteet/howtoorder.html and thus get all five parts delivered to your hanging folder (riippari) or buy those parts that you deem you need directly from the Edita store (Otakaari 11, open Mon-Fri 8-11 and 12-15).

Alternatives to the handouts

  1. You can borrow or buy the handouts of NetSec 2004 from a friend, they contain much of the same material as the iWork and NetSec 2005 handouts (but not quite all of it)
  2. You can borrow or buy one of the scientific (or technical) writing guides that was used as source material for the handouts
  3. You can borrow or buy any other scientific (or technical) writing guide that you happen to like
  4. You can find and read material on the WWW: different guides on writing abound. One starting point for WWW material is the NetSec Useful Literature list: http://www.tml.hut.fi/Studies/T-110.501/Guides/useful_literature.html

Handouts reference list

The sources from which the handout contents have been copied are the following:

  1. "ACAPS Library, Documents and Bibliographies", an on-line source that could no more be reached on February 8, 2005. The URL used to be: http://www-acaps.cs.mcgill.ca/info_acaps/.
  2. Roberta Jean Bryant: "Anybody Can Write - A playful approach", Barnes & Noble, New York, 2002, 173 p. ISBN: 0-7607-3176-4.
  3. CBE Style Manual Committee: "Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers", 6th ed., Univ. of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1994, 825 p. ISBN: 0-521-47154-0.
  4. Martha Davis: "Scientific papers and presentations", Academic Press, San Diego, 1997, 296 p. ISBN: 0-12-206370-8.
  5. Robert A. Day: "How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper", 5th ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, 275 p. ISBN: 0-521-65879-9.
  6. Richard Felder: "Resources in Science and Engineering Education", on-line: http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/, Referenced: 8-FEB-2005.
  7. Paul Fogelberg (ed.): "Tutkimusviestinnän opas", Valtion painatuskeskus, Helsinki, 1985, 152 p. ISBN: 951-859-792-8.
  8. "Harvard Business Review", January 2005, Harvard Business School Publishing Corp., Boston, ISSN: 0017-8012.
  9. Nicholas J. Higham: "Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences", 2nd ed. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Philadelphia, 1998, 302 p. ISBN: 0-89871-420-6.
  10. Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larabee and Paul M. Roberts: "Mathematical Writing", The Mathematical Association of America (MAA), Stanford, 1989, ? p. ISBN: 0-88385-063-X.
  11. Michael J. Hanson and Dylan McNamee: "Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology", on-line: http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~dylan/efficientReading.html Referenced: 8-FEB-2005.
  12. Nick Moore and Martin Hesp: "The basics of writing reports etcetera", Bingley, London, 1985, ? p. ISBN: 0851621813.
  13. Maeve O'Connor and F. Peter Woodford: "Writing Scientific Papers in English", 4th ed. Elsevier/Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam, 1976, 108 p. ISBN: 0444-15165-6 / 90 219 4035 3.
  14. Original source unknown, compilation by Kate Moore: "Sentence Structure: Transitions", lecture handout from course "Scientific writing", Helsinki University of Technology (personnel training), May 2003.
  15. Judith S. VanAlstyne: "Professional and Technical Writing Strategies", 6th ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (NJ), 2005, 738 p. ISBN: 0-13-191520-7.
  16. Jon Warbrick: "Essential LaTeX", on-line: http://www.math.wsu.edu/kcooper/M300/essential/essential.html Referenced: 8-FEB-2005.
  17. "The New Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language", Random House, New York, 1997, ? p. ISBN: 0-517-18367-6.
  18. Justin Zobel: "Writing for computer science: the art of effective communication", Springer-Verlag, Singapore, 1997. ISBN: 9813083220.

To NetSec Home Page To iWork Home Page

The contact information of the people currently responsible for this WWW-page can be found here

The original author of this page was Ronja Addams-Moring
This page was written for the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory (TML) of Helsinki University of Technology (HUT)

The URL of this page is:
http://www.tml.hut.fi/Studies/T-110.501/General/Handouts/index.html