COMS11200 The Tour: First Main Assignment (Weeks 5/6)

Administrative Details

This assignment is intended to assess you on the quality of your technical writing. You are expected to do the assignment in the lab sessions in weeks 5 & 6, and/or in your own time. The hand-in date is Friday 14th November. The assignment counts for 10% (the small exercises count for 10% between them).

To help reduce the competition for lab spaces, please do your reading and prepare your material away from the lab where possible, and just use the lab sessions to type the material in. Also please use both weeks; if you leave it to the second week, you will not be able to get enough lab time.

You should create a Web page (or pages) containing your material, and link them to your home page. Get yourself ticked off as usual by printing the pages ready to go in your portfolio (they will be discussed in the end-of-year interview, even though they will already have been marked). The pages will be marked by reading them online, so make sure they are properly linked and easily accessible. They will be marked within about three weeks of the deadline (if possible).

Instructions and Topics

The idea is to prepare a Web page (or pages) on a technical topic in Computer Science. This should be no more than 2500 words long. The topic must be one from the following list. For each topic, a chapter from Brookshear (Computer Science: An Overview, fourth edition) or a theme from the New Turing Omnibus (see page xvi) is recommended as initial reading.

Processors: see Chapter 2 (Data Manipulation) or the Logic and System Design theme.
Operating Systems: see Chapter 3.
Algorithms: see Chapter 4 or the Analysis of Algorithms theme.
Programming Languages: see Chapter 5.
Data Structures: see Chapters 1 and 7 or the Data Structures theme.
Software Engineering: see Chapter 6.
The Theory of Computation: see Chapter 11 or the Theory of Computation theme.
Cryptography: see the Coding and Cryptography theme.
Image Processing: see the Graphics theme.
Automated Reasoning: see Chapter 10 or the Artificial Intelligence theme.

As well as textbook chapters, you should use other books, Web sites, and your general knowledge of the subject. You should put the material into your own words, and organise it in your own way. You can include links to other public Web pages or pictures, but make it clear that they are not yours.

You can assume that the people reading your document have a general understanding of computers, and have some scientific background so that they can follow technical discussions, but that they are not Computer Science experts. They may also have a wide range of personalities or interests, so try to give your presentation a broad appeal.

Hints on Good Technical Writing

This is one of the abilities which employers look for, amd this is one good opportunity to help develop this skill. It also helps in exams. Here are a few pointers:

Understanding. Having to write a document for someone else is a very sharp test of your own understanding of the subject. This means doing some research, ie reading around, getting books from the library, searching for information on the Web, asking people, and absorbing everything and getting it straight in your own mind.

Technical Quality. In describing a technical subject, it is important to avoid producing just waffle with no hard technical content. On the other hand, a mass of technical detail with no coherent story is just as bad. Make sure that the technical details are correct, relevant to your theme, are set in context, and that they illustrate and not dominate your discussion.

Originality. What you write should be entirely your own. Do not copy material directly from a book or from someone else. If you take an example from a book, make sure you understand it and then describe it in your own words. If you think a particular sentence or paragraph is worth quoting, make it clear that it is a quotation (eg put it in italics and say who wrote it and where). At the end of your document, put a list of the books or other sources which you used to get your main material from.

Clarity. No matter how well you understand something, explaining to someone else who doesn't understand is difficult. Keep re-reading the material you have written, and ask yourself whether your readers will understand. Are you avoiding jargon, or ideas which you haven't explained yet? Are your sentences unambiguous? Are you relating your ideas to things which your readers do understand? Are you giving concrete examples to make things clearer?

Brevity. One way to make sure you are clear is write a lot of words. The risk is that your audience will get bored and not read them. In general, the shorter the summary you have to prepare, the harder it is to write well. For this assignment, it is important to stay within the word limit (or at least attach supplementary material in such a way that it can be ignored if desired).

Breadth It is easy to fill out a document with details and miss out the most important issues. For example, a document about keyboards could be extremely well written and could describe all the different kinds of keyboard there are. However, it might not say what a keyboard is, ie that it is an input device, or compare it to other input devices or describe roughly how it works or give any historical details.

Organisation. Your document needs to have structure: use separate sections which develop the story you are trying to tell in a logical way. On the other hand, a collection of unrelated sections needs some central discussion to bind it together.

Style. Style is a very personal thing. However, you should aim to please a varied audience. This means you should avoid being too colloquial on the one hand, or too formal on the other. Use complete sentences (except for heading, lists etc) and use good, plain English. Use a variety of presentation styles to avoid boredom, eg bullet lists and tables as well as just paragraphs of text. However, avoid going over the top; the assignment is not about Web style. In particular, you should avoid patterned backgrounds which make it difficult to read the text.