David Bau: Allowed.
David Bau: Okay, great.
David Bau: And it's…
David Bau: See?
David Bau: Is that right?
David Bau: I don't know why.
David Bau: And all this random furniture here. Let's see here.
David Bau: Silence.
David Bau: It's gonna go.
David Bau: Is that happening?
David Bau: Yeah. H.
David Bau: dominant.
David Bau: Thank you.
David Bau: Let's do on my business.
David Bau: Excuse me.
David Bau: God.
David Bau: Bye.
David Bau: That's not fair.
David Bau: Okay, guys.
David Bau: Here's ready.
David Bau: Bill.
David Bau: We're giving you some time to get your papers ready for the project of the class, to try to get them in good shape. Thank you, Dr. Thing. So I think that during this last phase of the class.
David Bau: We'll try to schedule more exercises.
David Bau: write parts of your paper. Of course, you're still
David Bau: doing your experiments and trying to slot them into your paper, but I would like to do some exercises where we, you know, write up a draft of parts.
David Bau: And then we exchange them with other students to get ideas and feedback. And so what I'm going to actually ask you to do for next
David Bau: time, this Thursday.
David Bau: is, to also… so, like, today, you guys already, as individuals, wrote a whole bunch of introductions that you submitted to the form. That's great. I think that it's, like, I've read them over, they're… they're in good shape for, you know, first drafts, it's great, you know, people are… are thinking.
David Bau: What story they want to tell.
David Bau: So what I'd like to ask you to do, just for Thursday.
David Bau: And to do a similar thing, maybe as a team.
David Bau: To, to think about what your, your first couple sections of your paper are. Your introduction, and maybe the methods section, where you introduce some of the technical things that you want to explain, whether it's your methods, your data set, your model, your…
David Bau: You're setting, you know, what formulas you use, what symbols you use to talk about this and that, you know.
David Bau: if you've got different users, or different models, what letters do you use, different formulas to talk about them, or whatever. Whatever technical thing you want to describe in your methods section. So right…
David Bau: Write, you know, do another draft of your introduction, write your methods section, and then come and bring, like.
David Bau: 5 physical paper printouts. We'll try
David Bau: Physical paper. Next time, we'll see if it works. If it doesn't, we can go back to electronic.
David Bau: Bring a pen.
David Bau: And we'll literally, you know, do some paper shuffling, where you spend some time reading somebody else's
David Bau: a couple things, and, like, mark it up and say, you know, this was confusing to me, or whatever. And so I'm hoping that that would be useful. We'll do that on Thursday. After that, we'll probably go back on Tuesday to do project presentations, again, to brainstorm about ideas on the project, but I thought, let's do a little bit of writing this weekend.
David Bau: That make sense?
David Bau: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about writing. We'll do a little bit of this, exchanging…
David Bau: a writing exercise today, and that's what the spreadsheet's for, but we're not going to do it quite yet. But there's a spreadsheet link on the project website that you guys might have seen that will, that we'll do.
David Bau: And the idea from that spreadsheet is going to be that you,
David Bau: You just randomly put your name next to one of the rows. I erased, like, who submitted each one, so it's all anonymous. It won't be anonymous for long, but, you know, don't put your name next to your own. That's not the point of it, you know? So put your name next to somebody else's.
David Bau: Thing. And then later on, you'll… you'll make a minor edit to it, or some suggestions. And then after you've done that, then you'll go find who it is who suggested on yours.
David Bau: And then you'll talk to them, and they'll explain what they're thinking.
David Bau: That makes sense? Okay. So, alright. So, I have a lecture I sometimes do about how to do research. Actually, I do have the first couple parts of it near the beginning of the class, which is, like, how to pick a problem, how to conduct experiments, and so, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about
David Bau: Thoughts on writing a paper. If I have time, I'll talk about thoughts on giving a talk.
David Bau: If I don't have time, I can talk about that later, but that's… that's basically what you guys are going to be doing for the rest of the time here. We're trying to give you some time to write a paper and, like, a nice community to…
David Bau: Talk about it with, and then…
David Bau: And then every time you guys are presenting, I want you to get better at presenting until, at the end, you have a pretty nice talk. Make sense?
David Bau: Okay.
David Bau: So, so yeah, this is a link. It's easier to find it on the course website. But there's a spreadsheet that you can load into your data. So, how to write a technical paper. So, I'm… I'm stealing this.
David Bau: material from… a talk that Bill Freeman likes to give near the end of his technical classes.
David Bau: Sometimes before, before the students get into, into,
David Bau: research. I really like his perspective, so I share the same…
David Bau: ideas that he likes to… he likes to teach. So he's one of my… One of my advisors.
David Bau: And, And so this is a… so…
David Bau: So how important is it to write well?
David Bau: How important is it to, like, write a good paper?
David Bau: And you might think, Might think, oh, you know,
David Bau: At one point, it is to write really brilliantly, but I should really avoid writing a stinker on a paper, because, gosh, it's embarrassing.
David Bau: Right, right, right, a real bad one.
David Bau: Actually, what… Phil has observed.
David Bau: In his many decades of advising, longer than me.
David Bau: Is that this is… this is, like, the last function.
David Bau: Okay, this is… this is the impact of…
David Bau: How much a paper impacts your career?
David Bau: As determined by how good the paper is.
David Bau: Right? And so if you write, like, a really stinker of a paper, it's over here, and if you write a really brilliant paper.
David Bau: it's over here, right? And Bill's point is sort of funny.
David Bau: He's like, Actually…
David Bau: Actually, even, like, if you write… if you write an okay paper, of course, you know, it doesn't help, doesn't hurt.
David Bau: Right? That maybe helps a little bit, that you wrote a paper. Better than nothing.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: If you write a pretty good paper, pretty good, like, solid, great paper, gets through peer review, you know, they invite you to give a poster, it's nice, right?
David Bau: That's a… that's a big accomplishment as a student.
David Bau: But his observation is,
David Bau: It's not… even if it's much better than an OK paper, it doesn't… also doesn't move the needle much.
David Bau: He says, he says, the thing that moves the needle is, like, really good paper.
David Bau: Right.
David Bau: And so… so that's… so that's his advice, is that, you know, whenever you're writing a paper, you're going for that. You don't know, it's hard to hit this. It's a little bit like the lottery. You have to… a lot of things have to align, right? You have to be lucky a bit, and probably not a good idea. You have to… you have to…
David Bau: you know, Be doing well.
David Bau: In terms of your writing, you have to execute your experiments well, it has to be at the right moment, where the community is receptive to the idea. You know, a bunch of things sort of have to… have to align, and then this could happen. But his point is.
David Bau: That it, That this is where all the value is.
David Bau: And… and you're… and really, you can think of what you're trying to do as, like.
David Bau: Trying to increase your probability of writing a really good one.
David Bau: And that's what we're all going for, every time we write a paper. Like, how bad is it if you write a stinker of a paper? Well, it's not good. It might be negative. It might, like, somebody reads it, they might have a negative opinion of you, or something like that. But not too bad, also.
David Bau: Like, more likely, people just won't read it.
David Bau: Does that make sense?
David Bau: And so, so, so yeah, so, so I don't know why, you know, I think that…
David Bau: Well, he starts off with this graph, Bill, but I think that maybe most students are too risk-averse.
David Bau: in writing papers that are, like, you know, worried a lot about the mechanics and trying to avoid a bad one, when really they should be thinking about, like, oh, how do we make it brilliant? And so maybe it goes into the writing, too. So if your writing is too risk-averse, and it's just very wordy, and, you know, you're covering your ass a lot, you know, and you're trying to say too much.
David Bau: But you're not letting the brilliance come through, then you might actually be reducing the probability that you have brilliant paper, just because you're afraid of not writing a bad one.
David Bau: Any sense?
David Bau: Okay, so… okay, so the other thing that he introduces with is that she says, especially for, like, first-year students, right, you come in and you think.
David Bau: Oh, I'm an academic.
David Bau: And this process that I'm going to participate in is, like, joining…
David Bau: Joining the, joining the community of scholars, right?
David Bau: Where, for thousands of years, scholars have poured over their manuscripts, and, you know, you mentioned the monks in the…
David Bau: you know, in the Abbey, you know, taking years and years to do the calligraphy and transcribe things and looking at every word and scrutinizing everything. And you think, okay, now I'm joining this long tradition of scholarly studies.
David Bau: And when I write my paper, you kind of imagine all the monks, like, crowding around the paper and saying.
David Bau: This is… so this is, like, what, you know, sort of what you might imagine.
David Bau: As an outsider?
David Bau: That, you know, the paper process… But who says no?
David Bau: That's… that's not… at least not in the 21st century.
David Bau: This is not how it is at all.
David Bau: You have this massive surplus of information out there.
David Bau: And so the reality is that when you create a paper and you put it out in the world.
David Bau: it is entering this very busy, crowded marketplace of ideas. It's more like this kind of picture. It's like a bazaar. And you're here honking your wares.
David Bau: hey, check out my 5-cent paper, right? And then people are streaming by and, you know…
David Bau: you know, most people will ignore you, and if you're lucky, somebody will say, well, just 5 cents, maybe I'll pay for not this, right?
David Bau: And that's, that's the, you know, that's the picture.
David Bau: Okay.
David Bau: And so, okay.
David Bau: So, let's, let's talk about what makes a good paper. Oh, you know, Bill says, okay, Bill said, my advisor was Ted Ailsman, and this is what Ted Ailsman said.
David Bau: Okay, well, I don't know. What is the sense? So basically, he says, you know, there's… there's… there's a… he says, it's easy to write a good paper, said Ted.
David Bau: Just do 4 things.
David Bau: And if you do these four things, then you will get your paper in and through peer review. He says, since I've been following this formula.
David Bau: Every paper I've written has been accepted since the 1960s.
David Bau: So, I don't know if this, like, if this formula still works, but I'll share it with you.
David Bau: He said it's that.
David Bau: He says the key thing is to do 3 key things, right? He has to be really clear
David Bau: About what the problem is, and why the audience Cares about it.
David Bau: Right, so that, that'll kill a paper if…
David Bau: Somebody can't tell what it is that you're trying to solve.
David Bau: In the paper, so that's absolutely the first thing.
David Bau: But then, to be a scholar.
David Bau: You have to give a little context.
David Bau: you can't just say, hey, I'm gonna solve this problem. Like, that would be more of a marketing pitch.
David Bau: like, you've never seen this problem before, amazing, right? You know, we're gonna solve this. No, a scholar would give you a little context of, like, oh, there are other solutions here, and here's where we fit in the context.
David Bau: And then here's… here's what our solution is. And then, so this is the meat of the paper when you explain what you've done.
David Bau: Right? And, and I don't know why it's more interesting, or why it's worth… reading about.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: And then… and then at the end, you… you say, you know, you might have been hoping.
David Bau: To hear about something else.
David Bau: When you write your paper,
David Bau: And sorry, that's not what our paper is about. We'll talk about, you know, a little bit of related work and other things and say there are other interesting things out there as well. They're all interesting, but they're different from our thing. Our thing is worthwhile anyway, right? So… so there's… so… so there's sort of four things you gotta do.
David Bau: That kind of protect your paper against misunderstanding, and make sure that it's clear.
David Bau: And if you do that, says Ted Adelson, Wow.
David Bau: I'm sure he's also a brilliant professor, right? But he, you know, these are the key things from his point of view.
David Bau: So what is built? Okay, so… okay, so for… for a machine… so if we're…
David Bau: If you're gonna put your paper into NURPS or something.
David Bau: I'm just gonna share. So, every field has different conventions.
David Bau: For what goes into a paper.
David Bau: and… Like, if you're… if you're… if you publish in, Nature…
David Bau: And the sections, and the ordering of the sections, and the length of the sections, and the language that they use, and the style of the figures, and the style of the presentation of the data, and everything is different from if you, like, submit to ICML or NURIPS, and that's different if you submit to, like, a philosophy journal or something.
David Bau: And so, you know, you should… before you submit, you should take a look.
David Bau: at the culture of the community that you're writing into. What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna give you a little overview for what, like, a NURPS-style paper looks like. So there's this machine learning
David Bau: community that now is so huge, it goes over ICML, and ICLR, and nerves, and, you know, ACL, a whole bunch of
David Bau: you know, natural language conferences, a whole bunch of computer vision conferences, CGPR, robotics, you know, and there's this massive unification of these kind of communities where they're all doing very similar work, and a lot of the papers look similar.
David Bau: in this machine learning community. And so… so this is… so this is, like.
David Bau: This is, like, the outline of what all the papers look like.
David Bau: You know, introduction?
David Bau: And then usually people have a special section for literature review, you know, maybe called Related Work.
David Bau: Sometimes it'll be right at the beginning of the paper.
David Bau: And sometimes it'll be at the end.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: And then… and then because the field is getting mature now, there's usually some background to talk about.
David Bau: It's an opportunity to introduce a little bit of notation, to give a little context for what… how you're thinking about the problems in relation to everybody else. And then… and then there's the technical,
David Bau: explanation of what's going on.
David Bau: Like, what is… what is the method? And then… and then usually have a, you know, an experiment section where you… you… you convey all your empirical evidence that what you've got is interesting.
David Bau: And, you know, worth learning about. And then you write a very, very brief conclusion section to wrap it up, that usually you don't say too much in conclusions in, in late hours.
David Bau: And so… so this is, like, a style of a paper that's very common, because…
David Bau: Because really what the thing that it puts at the center of the paper is the meth… is, like, the method, like, this is a methods-oriented paperwork. We're like, we're gonna teach you how to do a thing.
David Bau: So, so we're gonna, you know, we're gonna introduce the thing, and we're gonna spend some time talking about it and support it.
David Bau: Sense?
David Bau: And so, so I just… you don't have to obviously read this paper, but this is an example paper. This one's from one of my students, Roge Kandakota, erasing concepts from diffusion models so you can just kind of get a sense.
David Bau: for what filled out in the paper is in Europe's paper, is, what's the current patient amount in NRIPS paper? Is it 9 pages now? 8 pages? 9 pages? They've changed it recently.
David Bau: But it's, like, it's an 8-page format. Oh, this is not yours, this is, this might be CBPR. CDPR is a double common format, so they all… they all have slightly different formats that they use. But you can see here, there's an abstract, introduction, he goes into related work.
David Bau: And after about, you know, a couple pages of introduction-related work, now he's into the meat of the paper. He's gonna introduce a bunch of their patient, background.
David Bau: And then… and then he gets into his method, and talks about… he'll teach you, like, what it is that he's doing.
David Bau: There, got some figures to describe what's going on. And then after he's described what he's doing, then there's all these experiments where he's like, okay, so how well does it actually work in practice? And he's sort of, you know, measuring everything all the way till he runs out of pages.
David Bau: And then… and then he has this conclusion. See this, like, really short conclusion at the end, which basically says, yeah, we did what we did, and Zend will reset, right?
David Bau: And, and then,
David Bau: And, you know, in typical PhD student fashion, And he ends…
David Bau: At the last millimeter of the last page of this.
David Bau: Right? Dumb. Which is…
David Bau: if you've ever done peer review, you know, you'll notice if somebody rushed a paper and they're, like, halfway down the last page or something, like, whoa, you had an extra half page, why didn't you use it?
David Bau: So it's just, it's just one of these things. Like, you know, a polished paper usually uses the last inch.
David Bau: Okay, and then, and then after that, There's all this…
David Bau: bibliography information, which usually doesn't count against the page limit, so it goes over. So depending on the conference, there's some things that
David Bau: kind of go over the last page, they don't count. And so, for this conference, it was, like, some disclaimers, some acknowledgements, stuff like this. Usually in peer review, you wouldn't have an acknowledgement section, you've got to keep it anonymous.
David Bau: Okay?
David Bau: Make sense?
David Bau: And so… So now that's one style paper.
David Bau: Here's another style of paper, so…
David Bau: The other side of paper here, this is a paper that's organized around analysis, instead of organized around introducing a method.
David Bau: And so, the paper has a little bit of a different flavor, so I've noticed that my students' papers sort of come in these two categories. So some of the papers are like, I'm going to teach you how to do a thing.
David Bau: And then some of the other papers are like, well, I'm gonna study a thing.
David Bau: And, and we'll see what there is to find out about it, or I've discovered some phenomenon, I'm going to talk about this phenomenon.
David Bau: And it's not… it's not like a method. And so,
David Bau: So even though it's about this, you can see that the section… the sections are very similar.
David Bau: to the other paper. So, because it's, like, a new thing that he's looking into, he doesn't have a special background method. He's got, like, other methods to do this, or like this. There's some new thing. And so he has a method section, but the method section is a little bit of an introduction of his terms, of, like, how to even talk about the thing that he's going to observe.
David Bau: Right? And so he, he, it's like, he really goes in and teaches, you know, what, what leads you to think about this thing, you know, how to formulate it, what you do to kind of measure it.
David Bau: And then his experiment section, goes and looks at this phenomenon, in, like, 4 or 5 different ways.
David Bau: Or I had 3 bullets here, so he looks at it in 3 major different ways. Through some extra things, and then…
David Bau: And then at the end, he says, okay, now that I brought you on this journey, here's other stuff you should know related to work and discussion.
David Bau: Right, and so this is… oh, I think this is an ICLR, so this is a single column format.
David Bau: But you can kind of see what this looks like. So, short introduction, no really work, just into the motivating observation in the method.
David Bau: And and then after he describes what it is he's going to be looking at with you.
David Bau: He goes and he tries to look at it in several different ways.
David Bau: And, and then describes what he's seeing.
David Bau: And then… Yeah, and then along the way, as he's doing it.
David Bau: He's… he's trying to build this picture of what this is that he's found, and that keeps the discussion short again.
David Bau: So it's, again, it's, like, different from, like, a science or nature paper, where the discussion section might be long and tries to describe the concepts.
David Bau: in, like, Ganorb's paper, you try to describe the concepts along the way as you go, or maybe it's the introduction.
David Bau: It talks about it.
David Bau: Yeah, so, okay, so that's… so that's, that's, that's, that's just a couple papers to give a sense.
David Bau: So, okay, so let's talk about…
David Bau: The introduction. So, okay, introduction versus… what's the difference between an introduction And abstract.
David Bau: What's the difference between an introduction and an abstract, you guys?
David Bau: So, anybody? Yes? The amount of words you use. What'd you say? The amount of words you use. The amount of words he used? Okay, so which, which, then, which one would have more words? Introduction. Introduction has more words, so introduction seems to be longer. Yeah, usually introduction's longer, usually abstract shorter. It's probably not the right way to think of it.
David Bau: I mean, you could have a very short introduction, it does its job.
David Bau: Very briefly, and it could be very good, even if it's short in the abstract. Introduction could,
David Bau: start with defining a problem, and go forward with… Yeah. Yeah, I think that's closer. So what's the purpose of an abstract, and what's the purpose of an introduction, maybe the way I should ask.
David Bau: The abstract summarizes the whole paper.
David Bau: That's right. And then what's the purpose of an introduction? My advisor always told me about, put your puzzle ended in the beginning. Put the puzzle name. That's exactly right.
David Bau: That's exactly right. So, you know, people will say, so, okay, so the introduction is maybe the most important part of the paper.
David Bau: But the funny thing about it is that in the introduction.
David Bau: At least according to the standard form.
David Bau: You're not supposed to answer the puzzle.
David Bau: You know, you're supposed to present the puzzle.
David Bau: And then, now, not every introduction is like that. Some introduction into the puzzle at the same time, right?
David Bau: But the job of introduction is to, you know, make sure that the reader knows what is the puzzle, what is the question.
David Bau: That is being asked.
David Bau: And that's his job. And like Ted Ellison would say, and why you care about it. Like, okay, this is a puzzle, I don't care. So it should be, like, this motivational, thing to say, well, here's a grand puzzle on, but why, why you, your reader, should care. And now, the abstract is different.
David Bau: The abstract is supposed to summarize the document,
David Bau: For a bunch of different purposes, but the abstract is not necessarily supposed to be that.
David Bau: motivational, well-written, right? The abstract is really just supposed to tell you Everything that's in the paper.
David Bau: And so if you look at a standard abstract.
David Bau: It'll literally just march through the sections of the paper, okay, so, you know.
David Bau: we do this, you know, it's one sentence summary of the introduction, right? Then, you know, it's related to that, one sentence summary of the literature review, you know, to do this, we use this method, you know, one or two-sentence summary of, like, the methods.
David Bau: And then we conduct this experiment, that experiment, the other experiment, the other experiment, and then, you know, our conclusion is that this. And that's, like, that's like an abstract, and it's almost like digesting every section of your paper down to, like, a sentence or two.
David Bau: Right. And… and it's usually very boring.
David Bau: But… but, like.
David Bau: But what's the abstract good for? It's really important in the peer review process, because somebody is gonna have to, like, assign you one paper to be reviewed by somebody.
David Bau: And they're like, okay, so, like, what's in this paper? Like, yeah, maybe the puzzle is something I could read your introduction and see it, but the method that you use is some…
David Bau: weird diffusion model method or something like, oh, we need to have, like, a reader who knows that method, who would be a good reviewer for it. So you're… so you're abstract, and you're related to work, so there's a couple sections that actually kind of determine who's going to review your paper.
David Bau: Even though it's, like, all these machine learning systems that are…
David Bau: you know, sending your paper off to review now, it's the same thing. Like, one of the functions of a bunch of this front matter in the paper is to decide who it is that peer reviews it, so…
David Bau: So something to… something to think about.
David Bau: Okay, so, okay, so the introduction, but you're right.
David Bau: The introduction must ask the main question.
David Bau: That the paper addresses.
David Bau: Oh, this is actually an interesting point.
David Bau: Because the introduction has to ask the question.
David Bau: But then, once you're done with your paper.
David Bau: And it's easy to make this mistake.
David Bau: You need to double-check that this question is actually answered by the paper, too.
David Bau: Right? You know, so you want to make sure the question's really interesting and important,
David Bau: But then if you make it too interesting and too important, then you might realize, oh, actually, that's too interesting, that's, like, beyond what our paper accurate answers. And so you need to scope the question.
David Bau: Properly, so that when the reader gets to the end, they're like, just as promised!
David Bau: You know, you promised that you were going to ask this question and investigate it, and just like you said you would.
David Bau: Here it is. And that's, like, a satisfying pampering.
David Bau: Make sense?
David Bau: Okay, so… Here's a couple introductions, I guess. What I do.
David Bau: Yeah, see? Here's me, here's one of my papers.
David Bau: I'm, like, following this rule.
David Bau: Where does a large language model store its facts?
David Bau: Question mark.
David Bau: It's like, if the first sentence of the introduction is a question, then you're probably following this rule.
David Bau: You know, at least as long as it's a question that's answered.
David Bau: By the paper. So that's a nice paper.
David Bau: Yeah.
David Bau: And so this is a function vector paper from Eric.
David Bau: Since the study of the Lenos Capitalist. 1936, citation from 1936.
David Bau: So, okay, maybe, maybe people have been interested in this for 100 years, right? Blah blah blah…
David Bau: you know, in this paper, we report evidence that autoregressive transformers, not enlarge develop a rumored function references. So… so it's… it's a little different from posing a puzzle. It's a little bit answering it, right, right away, but it does… it does…
David Bau: it does, you know, serve this function. It says… it says, you know, there's this idea of function references that people have been studying for a long time, here's why you should care about it.
David Bau: And… and here, if you read this paper.
David Bau: And we'll resolve the puzzle for you for, like, how function references might show up.
David Bau: In, in big language models.
David Bau: So… So, so more advice from different people, Jim Kaida.
David Bau: It says.
David Bau: You know, the most important thing about the paper from his point of view, is it's gotta be easy to read.
David Bau: It's gotta be easy to read, you know, this poor academic stuff. So, who here has, like, been doing peer review for different things, like, you know… Peer review by ISNL, peer group, whatever, right? So, you know, it's one of the terrible duties of an academic to go, you know, do peer review for other people.
David Bau: You know, you get a big pile of pen papers, you gotta read, and you gotta kinda grade each one.
David Bau: And so, at least it's when you're going through the peer review process, but even afterwards, right, you have to sort of take pity on the readers.
David Bau: you might have this incredibly dense amount of information that you want to convey, and you can write really, really complicated prose to, like, convey every single detail. But… but, like.
David Bau: You know, the peer review is just trying to understand your paper and trying to figure out whether it's good or not.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: And, and so, so… so you, so they're trying to figure out what is the problem you're solving.
David Bau: Is it interesting?
David Bau: Is it new? You know, is it cool?
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: And… and… and it's easy to make a mistake.
David Bau: Of writing too much.
David Bau: And losing track of these core things.
David Bau: And so, where the reviewer or the… your future reader, past reviewer reads the paper, and can't figure out what it's about, whether it's new, you know, exactly what you're doing, because you have so many thoughts in your head, and you're getting them all out.
David Bau: Right? You know? And so prioritize your thoughts, and look, this is a nice priority list.
David Bau: All the stuff that you just have to… Make sure you're doing… Make sense?
David Bau: There's, I mean, there's, I mean, you know, you guys are all brilliant. I, you know, reading your papers as people go through the PhD, and people have, like, brilliant things that they do, and their introductions. Oh, let me teach you a little bit of…
David Bau: Ancient Greek history. Let me teach you a little… like, there's, like, there's brilliant things to do that can make a paper a lot of fun to read, but you have to be careful, because you need to, like, kind of do your work, right? You have to, like, you have to make it really clear, really easy to understand these things first.
David Bau: Great.
David Bau: And so… and so… and so his advice is, not only do you have to do these things well.
David Bau: But it should be the first thing that you do. They should do it up front. In other words, like, you have to write a really, really good introduction, that's these things, and it should be the first thing that people read.
David Bau: Okay, so that's… that's the connection. So, stating the problem and the concept, context is important.
David Bau: Beyond that, Right.
David Bau: So what… the common thing about, like, what makes it interesting.
David Bau: is… That there are implications of what you're investigating.
David Bau: And, and if you can clarify the implications.
David Bau: Then it makes it clear to people why your paper is interesting.
David Bau: So this is… this is, like, a key technique to use, especially, you guys are coming in with
David Bau: concepts from left field that are going to be interdisciplinary. You say, hey, I'm going to study the concept of, you know, XYZ,
David Bau: You know, computer science reader, you know, take a look at my paper.
David Bau: And you might have to explain to them, like, why XYZ is…
David Bau: important what the implications are, if you find one thing out or another. It'd be exclusive on it.
David Bau: So, like, yes, the implications are obvious to you, right?
David Bau: But if they're not obvious to your reader.
David Bau: Then they're gonna be like, I don't know why somebody's done this.
David Bau: Right? So they will have… they'll have empathy.
David Bau: Or your point of view, but you have to explain your point of view.
David Bau: Yeah, my students call this the sobot problem.
David Bau: Yeah, so what? So, imagine the reviewer saying, so what?
David Bau: So what?
David Bau: Dude, I'll tell you, so what?
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: Oh, who knows who Donald Knuth is? Donald Knuth.
David Bau: He always has a funny perspective.
David Bau: And look, and here's Knoop with his advice, with his own custom font that doesn't work well, right? Knoop is famous for making custom everything.
David Bau: And so,
David Bau: But… but he says that not only should you pay attention to the first paragraph, the first section.
David Bau: Of your paper, but the first paragraph is super important. And not only is the first paragraph super important, like, the first sentence is really important.
David Bau: And so… so, Panuth would advise, that you should… really…
David Bau: scrutinize that first sentence that you did. We'll do that exercise in a minute.
David Bau: So here's some of his advice. He says.
David Bau: You know, it should be an active sentence, it should get to the point, so he says, it's really bad for it to be past the sentence. An important method for internal sorting is quicksort.
David Bau: And he says, you know, you should say quicksort, it's an important method for internal sorting, right?
David Bau: So, so, like, don't write in a weak way, in the first sentence, like, You know, be direct.
David Bau: You know, right off the bat, I think, you know, it's sort of his suggestion.
David Bau: And so, okay, so… so you guys submitted things. I'm gonna pick on one, I'll pick on one soon. So Grace submitted this thing.
David Bau: Okay? So, here's, like, an exercise.
David Bau: So, Grape says that she did, she did, this, introduction
David Bau: exercise by feeding her notes into Opus and pasting it in. And so, this is what Opus wrote for an introduction.
David Bau: And the question is, which is… I think it's fine, but then you need to ask this question that I'm asking how to write, right? Which is, can we write better than Opus?
David Bau: Think we can? I don't know if this is fixed or greater. What do you say?
David Bau: For humanity's sake, I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. So, like, can we write better than all this? Yes, let's try. Let's try. So, the font here, I had to make the font small.
David Bau: Because Opus is very tireless.
David Bau: I'm happy to write lots and lots of words.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: So I squeezed on and said, take a minute to read it, and think about this. And so I, I, I want… I want you to code to me
David Bau: Let's do the Donald Knuth exercise.
David Bau: What should be the first sentence here?
David Bau: Would you be the first sentence?
David Bau: I'll be very interested to see what you guys come up with. I have my things, but I, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna see what you guys think.
David Bau: Would be a good question.
David Bau: Okay, and… What might you say? What will happen when bank discrepancy… Is that kind of…
David Bau: Improved phenomena, kind of thing.
David Bau: What does it mean? Okay, think about it, think about it, yes. Yes, yes, yes. How about in the lines of, is your LLM lying to you?
David Bau: Is your… so you could say, is your LLM aligned to you? Alying to you. Is your LLM lying to you? Yes, so I like the directness of that question, except that the main thing that I would…
David Bau: caution me about, and you need, like, context to be able to criticize it in this way, is that LLM deception
David Bau: is a huge… Question. It's, like, a huge area.
David Bau: Of, like, oh, is your LLM lying to you? It includes a lot of other types of lying.
David Bau: Besides this type. And so, if you… so you could start your paper off with that, but then you wanna… you wanna…
David Bau: fit with that other advice I gave you, right, which is, it does need to ask an interesting question. That is a very interesting question.
David Bau: But it has to be a question that your paper answers, right? And so… so if… if you… so is your lying to you is a little bit too broad for this paper, because it's studying a specific kind of lying.
David Bau: Right? And, or, or… or something, a certain specific kind of behavior. So I would, I would probably…
David Bau: Not use that sentence. Sometimes the way you do a news report would cover your paper.
David Bau: Is your Alan lying to you? Yeah, that's more of a news… that's more like a headline. That's something that, like, Rupert Murdoch would put on the top of your paper, and then… and then you read, you know, you open the Wall Street Journal, and you're like.
David Bau: He's like, the headline lied to me. It's not what the article is about. But Rupert would be like, well, you bought the paper, didn't you? It's like, I guess I did.
David Bau: And so,
David Bau: So there's… so there's… so there's a little bit of this going on. You want to avoid that, because you have to go through two rounds. You're not just getting somebody to read your paper.
David Bau: You have to get through the peer reviewers first.
David Bau: And the peer reviewers are like, this is false advertising.
David Bau: You know, and they will really say this. This is actually one of the most common ways of getting a paper rejected. It says, where people say, you know, you didn't support the claims in your paper.
David Bau: Oh, you claim to be asking
David Bau: If you're answering the question, did your LM lie to you? But you didn't actually do that.
David Bau: Any other ideas?
David Bau: Yeah. At least you're not allowed to say anything, because it's your, you're writing it, and…
David Bau: This is your fault. Yeah, it was my fault. To clarify, it's much shorter than the list of bullet points that I fed in. Oh, okay.
David Bau: Yeah. It's interesting, alright, yeah. Yeah.
David Bau: Any other, any other ideas? A combination of what they argued, the third…
David Bau: So the third sentence… so can you read the… tell me which words? Yeah, we argue. We argue…
David Bau: That sycophancy has not been rigorously characterized.
David Bau: Or something like that, but, like, do you like this sentence? Yeah, but the person doesn't know, maybe they don't know much to…
David Bau: Yeah, they maybe don't know what it is. It's hard. It's a hard job you have on that first sentence. What the heck can you do?
David Bau: Right, because they… they need to understand what it is, and… and but… but I agree with you, this is a, like…
David Bau: Like, this sentence is appealing, Because it describes what you're trying… to do.
David Bau: But then it has the problem that it doesn't explain what it is. Yeah, I feel like you could do the, you know, clickbait first thing, where you're like.
David Bau: Yes? Is your LLM lying to you? Please you? Please you, yes, okay, yes, yes. Sicovince, past work on Sykvins, he would suggest. Okay. Yes. Okay, so you could immediately follow it up with…
David Bau: But it didn't… they didn't differentiate…
David Bau: The user level kind of confess in its own.
David Bau: No repeat for me.
David Bau: Yeah, but I think that's… that's right. You can have a pair of sentences, so you're not… that first sentence doesn't stand alone, so if you come in right away with your caveats.
David Bau: you know, as long as those caveats are interesting to read, then you can rescue the first sentence before the… yeah. Probably what I want to do, I was…
David Bau: I would probably try to get a, like, quote from one of the past, like, popular anthropic papers about pregnancy, where they suggest, like.
David Bau: It's trying to blog with your private, like, it'll, like, have some sentence where, like, this is the… Both the thing. But, like, is this an Android? Like, like… Yes.
David Bau: Yeah. Yeah. And, anthropic depreciation. And throw all your good stuff on. Yeah.
David Bau: Yeah, so you could use a quote to give context, and that helps make it so that, well, I'm not saying the crazy things, and it said the crazy thing.
David Bau: Yeah, any other ideas? Like, okay, okay, you guys, how would you… what would you pick for the first sentence?
Jasmine C.: What about, like, a historical anecdote? So something like,
Jasmine C.: During the Great Leap Forward, Mao's officials told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and, like, 30 million people died for it.
Jasmine C.: Well, I'm just saying, like, some… sometimes it's, like, it's, like, illustrative, you're like, look, like, yes men bring down countries, like, I don't know.
David Bau: You're better than Rupert Murdoch! This is… this is gonna sell some papers. No, I think this is… I like it. I think that's great because it communicates
David Bau: why you're interested in it. But then I think that you, right after you do that, you do have to do the thing that Grace talks about. You have to sort of rescue this.
Jasmine C.: Yeah, of course, of course.
David Bau: Does that make sense? Yes. I think that maybe when we could put it as well as, like.
David Bau: Basically, like, the way…
David Bau: the way that you deal with problematic behavior depends on the root cause of it. Yes, yes. And so, like, if someone is lying to you because they're, you know, a 4-year-old that wants more candy, or if they're lying to you because they're, you know, a ruthless sociopath, you know, these are different, and so… Absolutely.
David Bau: We can say that, like, people have documented Awesome.
David Bau: behavior, but have not actually tried to look at the psychology of… So, as a writing exercise, right, you see a few different approaches here. So, you know, one of the approaches is
David Bau: if the job is to ask a question, you just ask the question.
David Bau: Up front. And then you can… and then while we're asking questions, you can sex it up. You can be like, you know, so, you want to kill half a million people? Right? You know, kind of thing.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: So, you know, you can ask the question, but then there's a second job that you're trying to do in the introduction, which is make sure that the reader understands your scope.
David Bau: They understand, like, what…
David Bau: Like, so, like, there's this tension between the broad, expansive question that you want to ask.
David Bau: And the narrow scope of, like, what you're actually going to be able to do in these 8 pages.
David Bau: And we're navigating between them, and you see that there's this…
David Bau: Two ways that introductions are often written.
David Bau: Which is doing one, and then the other, or the other, and then the one. And they're both… they're both fine, right? You know, it's a style choice for the specific paper of what you might…
David Bau: It's like, oh, let me tell you the big question, oh, and, you know, here's my scope, or let me introduce a little bit of scope, and then this, you know, once you have the scope, here's…
David Bau: the question that you might want to know. And so, the problem that I have with what Opus wrote here, like, personally.
David Bau: is that…
David Bau: It, like, mixed up scope and con… you know, it mixed up, you know, the scope and the question.
David Bau: In this big paragraph, which is mostly scope.
David Bau: It's mostly about scope, but also, like, talks a little bit about the question, you know, hints at the question in there, but not totally clear, right? And then, and before, like, so, so, so see these three words?
David Bau: In this work, blah, blah, blah. So as a reviewer.
David Bau: When you're, like, reading a paper that's kind of wordy and not that well written, right? You, like, skip, skip, skip, skip, and then you're flipping pages, and, oh, look, on page 3, finally, like, in this work.
David Bau: Right? And then you're like, ha! Now I can read, like, what the heck this paper's about.
David Bau: Right? That makes sense?
David Bau: because they're just, like, they have too much they want to get out of their head. And so Opus here has too much, it's trying to get a… you know, Grace… Grace gave Opus, you know, 53 bullet points, and, like, Opus is like, okay, I better, like, talk about all that stuff, like, my head is full of this stuff. And then finally it says, in this work is what's going on. But… but, like, you know, this… so, like…
David Bau: Like, in concept, whatever job this sentence is doing, or this paragraph is doing, like, that could be the first sentence.
David Bau: Except that… except that, like, this… the way that Opus has constructed it here, Hence, like, totally dependent on
David Bau: this, this paragraph. So, but you could imagine, like, writing this paragraph in some way that, you know.
David Bau: you know, it could stand alone, and that's a good first sentence. Or it could be a good sentence, second sentence. And that's sort of the way that I… I think of it. So you want to see what I wrote?
David Bau: What would you say, you guys?
David Bau: What would your first sentence be?
David Bau: Okay, we'll do this in a minute.
David Bau: So I, so I have, I have a couple attempts here.
David Bau: But I did, I did the thing that you guys suggested. I said, oh, let's ask a question up front. We'll see if that works. So I said, are LLMs being deceptive when they act as sacrifice?
David Bau: Or are they just getting confused?
David Bau: Right.
David Bau: So I, so I tried to…
David Bau: I tried to do two things in that same sentence, I don't know if it's successful.
David Bau: Right? Which is, I'm asking the question that you're asking.
David Bau: Is your LLM lying to you? But I'm trying to scope it down at the same time.
David Bau: I'm trying to scope it down. I'm trying to say, okay, I'll take this word sucripantic and stick it in there. It wasn't quite the right word form for the sentence I was constructing, so I said it a different way.
David Bau: Right, but maybe close enough that people know that I'm talking about succinctly.
David Bau: And… and then… and then I… and then, you know, when I digest what was going on in the…
David Bau: First paragraph about what the contrast is.
David Bau: of what's doing, I say, oh, actually, it's like an either-or. It's like, are they being semantic and kind of deceptive to you, or is it just, like, they're just messing up, they're just getting confused?
David Bau: Right? And so I feel like if that's the main argument, you can kind of put it up front.
David Bau: And say, this is what we're going to try and distinguish between, and then you have to…
David Bau: And then you have to, like, say something. Oh, look, and then this is the thing that I… that… this is… this is the thing that Grace says that you should do.
David Bau: You know, the appearance-specific behavior has been widely observed with quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, I don't know what quotes, but, like, I could, you know, you could do a little literature review and say, oh, Anthropic says this and that, right? And then you could cite somebody and say, this is why you care.
David Bau: Right? And it actually leads users to assume this, and so this is… this is why Anthropic cares. Maybe this is why you care.
David Bau: Right? So, like, we're gonna do this, this is why you should care, everybody cares about it, so don't accuse me of…
David Bau: Doing a piece of research, nobody cares about
David Bau: I've proved to you twice in the first paragraph somebody cares about it, and then… and then… and then I do the thing that, like, I didn't like.
David Bau: Which is, I have this in this paper thing, and a little too late, in the second paragraph, here we go. In this paper, we present with our… based on this, and we do this, right? So… but… but this is the job. So this is… so this… in this paper sentence.
David Bau: It's the one that's doing the job of telling you, like, what the…
David Bau: what the paper's about, what the core puzzle is that you're solving, or something like that. But this is my… this is my first attempt to rewrite. It's fewer words.
David Bau: Right? You can kinda, kinda see, right?
David Bau: And, and then after I wrote this, and I was like.
David Bau: And then you edit it again, right? So here's my second attempt, you can see.
David Bau: And I just deleted all the stuff in between this, and I said, okay, you know, you should just get to end this paper. So I take the end paper sentence, and just shove it up as far as I can.
David Bau: And so the first… I don't know, I thought the first sentence was okay, I might have removed a couple words, but, like, okay, our elements means that there's…
David Bau: And then… and then we say, in this paper, we present evidence that AI sufficiency might not arise from this, but from that, or something like that.
David Bau: And then now, this is, like.
David Bau: You know, okay, I'm gonna prove this.
David Bau: Right? Just, like, as quickly as you can, you just, like, get to the point.
David Bau: you know, you might not agree with me, but I, you know, in the next 8 pages, I'm gonna argue, you know.
David Bau: Or something like this.
David Bau: Right? That make sense?
David Bau: Yeah, so you see? See how much I deleted?
David Bau: Yeah.
David Bau: And then… and then… and then you say, okay, and then… and then introduction, and then you might be like, okay, then I can actually scope it more. I can say, in this… to say this, we begin with this, I'm gonna define how we're going to ask the question.
David Bau: Right? So this is a little bit of giving away the game, but it's an analysis paper, so the… you know, you have this question.
David Bau: So in a methods paper.
David Bau: you probably didn't… don't want to start with this. Like, in a methods paper, you don't want to say.
David Bau: In this paper, we're going to prove that our method is the best method, since all methods have ever been invented.
David Bau: Like, we're the best. Like, you wouldn't say that in the introduction.
David Bau: Right? Because that's a little bit of a puzzle. In this paper, you know, we ask, is there a better way of doing this method? You know, there's some indication that it should be a good way, so there's this nice thing that you can do.
David Bau: we bring this idea and that idea together, to bring our method together. And then later on, you know, we ask, you know, is this any better? Right? And then you can ask… answer that and the rest of the story. But in an analysis paper, which I think this is an analysis paper.
David Bau: then I think that the,
David Bau: the answer to your puzzle is the analysis itself. So, you state your hypothesis.
David Bau: You say, hey, I'm gonna say this controversial thing that you might not even think is measurable.
David Bau: Like, does… does an AI really believe what it says?
David Bau: Right? And then you're like, that's not even a scientific question, right? How do you do it? And then you're like, we think we can answer that. We're gonna do this, we're gonna probe this, we're gonna look at that, we're gonna change this. I think that we're gonna try to get a signal on whether Alan believes what it says, or something, right?
David Bau: And then how that all rolls out is, like, the interesting meat in the paper. And so you can kind of think, like, what is…
David Bau: Like, what's… what's the…
David Bau: what's the interesting thing that you're answering? It might not literally be the answer to the question.
David Bau: Makes sense. Okay. And then you'd hold that back. Okay, so your turn. So let's do this. Okay, everybody, gonna do this.
David Bau: So, so this is the URL, so if you go to the course website.
David Bau: click on the link that says… I forget what it's called, like, interactive.
David Bau: You know, editing, And, and do these 5 steps. Will you do these 5 steps?
David Bau: So, it's a spreadsheet.
David Bau: Put your name in column 1.
David Bau: To claim a random piece of writing.
David Bau: Don't put your name next to your own.
David Bau: Until… until all the… until all the rows are full.
David Bau: Right.
David Bau: If you didn't submit one, it's okay, you can put your name next to one anyway, but just make sure all the rows are full. If the rows…
David Bau: If there's a…
David Bau: And this empty road payment. And if all the roads are already full, then take a break.
David Bau: We can put your name, you can put a second name next to one.
David Bau: And then… and then take the text out and copy it out to a Google Doc, so that you just write, like.
David Bau: You know, in a regular Google Doc.
David Bau: And then think about, what is the first sentence? What's the best first sentence?
David Bau: your comment might be that this is already a brilliant first sentence, I want to change it, and it's okay. But, like, really think about this question. What do you think is the best first sentence, the first two or three sentences of the thing, and then make a shot at editing the document to just write what you think would be the…
David Bau: The best, like, the most banger first sentence for the paragraph that you picked.
David Bau: Right.
David Bau: Or the first… it could be a few sentences. And then… and then once you're done, so just think about that for…
David Bau: 10 minutes?
David Bau: Once you're done, paste your suggestion back.
David Bau: And alcohol time at… I'll call time in 10 minutes. So, relax, guys, and work on it.
David Bau: And then, and then, and then we will reveal…
David Bau: Whose thing you edited, and go find who edited your thing.
David Bau: I can't
David Bau: These are intros, right, so these are not abstracts.
David Bau: Now that you know the difference between an intro and abject.
David Bau: Hey guys, so,
David Bau: If you ever put… pasted your thing, your suggestion into the spreadsheet, take a minute to do that now.
David Bau: You can take the sentence that you've written, or on your notes, and paste them into the third column.
David Bau: And, give me a minute to do that. And once you're done with that.
David Bau: I want you to find the piece of writing that you wrote, submitted last night, or the other night.
David Bau: And find who it is who's been editing.
David Bau: And go find them.
David Bau: And ask them, why God would have you done to my writing it?
David Bau: Alright, do you do that?
David Bau: Yeah, and go and just chat, and then chat a little bit about the sentence and about thoughts. Yeah, like, actually stand up, everybody stand up. Are people gonna be going to, like… Oh, yes, okay, yes, so it's a little bit chaotic, so, try to find…
David Bau: And then if… if they're already talking to somebody, then wait.
David Bau: Until somebody wants to chat with you? Sorry, it's…
David Bau: there's probably, multiple cycles of people, but… but I think that we could probably do it about 2 rounds. I think 10 minutes…
David Bau: There's no easy way to define it. There's no easy way to define it. So, so, yeah, so, because we did it in this chaotic way,
David Bau: But, I wouldn't go down the… we could go down the list.
David Bau: So who, who was the… who… who had their thing edited by, you know, Avery? Who was, like, the first on the list?
David Bau: I don't know who's that, who's that was.
David Bau: So yeah, so come back to Avery. And who was the second on the list?
David Bau: supposed to say. Oh, just, just, just.
Jesseba Fernando: Second on the list is me.
David Bau: Oh, it was you? Oh, okay, sorry, you're… so you're… you're online. So, what you can do is you can log into the Zoom and chat, chat. Who, who was,
David Bau: So you were the… so Emery edited yours, right? So…
Jesseba Fernando: Maybe. Yep.
David Bau: Maybe Emery can, like, log into the Zoom and then chat with you a little bit, but I can mute the Zoom.
David Bau: So that you're not talking out loud, or what you can do is you can put in the Zoom chat.
David Bau: Just have a, maybe your own Zoom that you can use to chat with, Amy.
Jesseba Fernando: Oh, yeah, I can do that.
David Bau: That's great, thanks.
David Bau: And then, Okay, and then, and then down, and down the list. So, let's…
David Bau: Basically, all I wanted to do is just talk about, like,
David Bau: you know, what,
David Bau: You know, why you chose a different first sentence.
David Bau: You know, what might be missing, that type of thing.
David Bau: You know, does this really capture what's needed?
David Bau: Just, just for 5 minutes.
David Bau: Nobody's talking about.
David Bau: Oh, okay, should we just keep on going down the list? Who, who, who, who is… Yu Chen added one. Where is Yu-chan?
David Bau: Oh, here you. Yeah, yeah, so, so, yeah, go, go talk to whoever, whoever's…
David Bau: you know, whoever your… yours is from. And then Claire edited one, but you're already talking, so you… Oh, that's…
David Bau: Grayson, Grace said the next one, so, I noticed the broken one, and Grace had any people taking this starter. Or maybe what we should do is we should, like, you could reveal who you were that I deleted.
David Bau: Should I find that?
David Bau: I can find it, I have it in this
David Bau: Should I just put whoever it was so that you guys continue to check that out? Alright. Let me go do that. I'm sorry.
David Bau: I, I shall review.
David Bau: bubbled.
David Bau: Improving a formula, like… We show that. Maybe it does have answered this question, or at least helps to…
David Bau: Oops.
David Bau: Okay, oh.
David Bau: No problem, I think.
David Bau: Okay, now you know who you should talk to.
David Bau: Original, right? Oh, there it is!
David Bau: Chill.
David Bau: Yes, I would. Yeah. The first two sentences is fine.
David Bau: That's what I did, too. And then I just started writing, so… No, I don't…
David Bau: Oh, that's okay. I'm good, I'm good. And then you can… so, if your student is online, then… Trying to make rounds in Canada.
David Bau: They are. They are at very similar cases a little bit.
David Bau: However, it's not a canon.
David Bau: Senator Diaz. I don't think…
David Bau: I wonder if that… burning is going to definitely have to change based on the rest of the space, because, well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I mean, I tried to pull out the things I thought you were in pieces, but I, you know.
David Bau: Especially as it gets further down. But I put this question in my beginning, this just came out.
David Bau: That's okay. Now, I realize, like, after this class, I need to definitely…
David Bau: And also, like, we have not… I'm not understanding. Oh, okay.
David Bau: Whether it's something that… Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know, I find the introduction…
David Bau: My advisor always seems to write the introduction box. Like, write everything else, and then once you have realized that there was that sufficient, I can't go back.
David Bau: outrage my work.
David Bau: No, it's okay, Bob, it's like a lot short time.
David Bau: Oh, right. Yeah, so, no, it's…
David Bau: I'm going to just change this to discriminations.
David Bau: No, I called the word that, investors look at a company's currently called them, I seamlessly, I call them decisions.
David Bau: I,
David Bau: But the most important.
David Bau: I don't know that.
David Bau: So, so now… It makes it easier.
David Bau: What is it? Right. Actually, I know, it's not, it feels, it feels, it feels like…
Kai Nylund: That's amazing.
David Bau: No, why… why do they always do that? The idea that they can't do that.
David Bau: bed… I'm gonna, pick up the background.
David Bau: And continue lecturing for a bit now that everybody's chatted for a couple minutes. Is that okay? Everybody's cool?
David Bau: I have a few more things to say, and just a few more things to relate, okay? And we can chat more. We'll have another writing exercise, so thank you guys for kind of warming up.
David Bau: with this warm-ups exercise for a few minutes, we're gonna do more of it on the Thursday, so now that you get the idea, you know, on Thursday, so who here thinks that
David Bau: It needs to be a little more organized than what I do.
David Bau: Okay, so I will organize it a little bit better.
David Bau: I'll, like, maybe make a spreadsheet of, like.
David Bau: of, like, rounds, of, like, who talks to who on which round, and stuff like that, so it's a little bit clearer. But to give me some ingredients, we're gonna… look, I want to try it on paper, so that it's sort of physical, so come, come, you know, come if you can, in person to class.
David Bau: If you're stuck on Zoom, then, you know, put them on Google Docs, it's fine, right? But, like, I'd like to see if we can… we'll just try it on paper.
David Bau: Just for one round. We'll probably go back to Google Docs after this, right? But I think it's a nice exercise.
David Bau: Okay. So, alright.
David Bau: So, that's introduction, and… and… and you get the idea, right? So, okay, so let me talk about the rest of the sections of the paper, because when you write your thing for Thursday, I want you to write…
David Bau: of stuff as well, right? So, so after you talk about introduction and actually talk about related work, you, you talk about the… you talk about the background and method. So this is where we teach.
David Bau: So, one of the things that I always tell my students is that research He's a teaching.
David Bau: Research is teaching. Research is not… just discovery.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: Research YouTube.
David Bau: Teaching.
David Bau: There's, you know, it's not just that Columbus might fit find Latin America.
David Bau: Or something.
David Bau: That he came back and wrote all these books.
David Bau: about it. That's why it's so amazing.
David Bau: You know, if he had just gone there and
David Bau: Hung out there and retired, then it, like, wouldn't have been as amazing.
David Bau: And so… so don't just go and do your discovery and go and hang out and rehire. You're gonna teach it. And so, this is where the teaching happens, in the background method section. It's, like, where the technical details are taught. And so, so why is this thing covering my, my slide? But… but it's,
David Bau: But the idea here is… Where's… where's mine?
David Bau: Mouse.
David Bau: Hmm, not here.
David Bau: Love these custom computer systems.
David Bau: Set up professional audio. Great thing, it's like an advertisement.
David Bau: Okay, so… Okay.
David Bau: So this is, like.
David Bau: This is, like, a typical… section, like, paragraph in a method section, blah blah blah blah blah, right? So…
David Bau: So the… the thing… the thing that you want to do
David Bau: like, if you have, like, if you have an equation of any technical material, one, one Greek letter, right, one, one formula, anything, it doesn't matter, like, you, you, you have some numbers, right?
David Bau: You know, to have pity on your reader.
David Bau: take some time and make a figure that explains the technical idea. Like, if you were trying to teach your idea to an undergrad, who's like, hey, come and join my project.
David Bau: And the undergrad's like, I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it, right? Then you would probably take your whiteboard marker, you'd probably draw something on the whiteboard and help them understand it. So draw that. Draw that for your reader, right? Take some time and draw a nice figure that explains what's going on. And so there's some secrets for making a nice figure.
David Bau: Right? But if you… like, so there's a lot of different figures you can always make for a paper, there's a lot of different ones, and so… but a really good figure for, like, a figure 1 serves as a conceptual map.
David Bau: the paper. And there's a lot of different things that you can do, and a really good
David Bau: bigger to help out a paper, right? Like, like, you have to… you have to have empathy with your reader and think about all the weird jargon that you're using that… that, like, is natural to you, but to a new reader, they don't… they won't, like, understand what that word is.
David Bau: So if you… if there's any words like that, it's like, my… my… my blah blah blah, sophisticated, awesome data set, you know, my… my R3, you know, user, you know, group, my, my, my whatever, right? Like, if there's any jargon.
David Bau: it should be on the figure, like, with the jargon on the figure, like, next to, like, the arrow or the box that that jargon, like, indicates. Like, don't… don't, like, use jargon in the paper and then not put it in the figure. The whole point of the figure is to make it easier to understand your jargon, so the jargon should be here, too. So, like, so, like, all these crazy Greek letters, like.
David Bau: This is a good figure, because all the Greek letters are on the paper… on the figure. Like, they're in here. Like, you might still not understand them.
David Bau: But at least they're in the figure, so you can point at them, and if you see them in the paper and you don't understand what's going on, and you're puzzling over it, at least when you're puzzling, you can stare at this figure and wonder, like, why is this… why is this Greek letter here?
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: And it's next to some arrow and whatever. Does that make sense?
David Bau: And so… so that's, that's, that's sort of that thing. And then there's, like, little keys, like, this Greek letter means this, this Greek letter, those little pictures, right? So, like, all the jargon is supposed to be here. Some of the jargon is in English.
David Bau: oh, this is… this method is called the ESD method, this method is called the whatever, you know, you know, so there's English in here, right?
David Bau: Okay, so, so that's, that's my suggestion.
David Bau: Is… is… and… and… and you can also think of it as… so, like, every major concept, ideally, would be in a good figure, and… and then you can also think of it as sometimes
David Bau: a figure is, like, actually a map of the paper. If you have, like, three major things you're doing in the paper, sometimes a figure will have, like, three sections in it that correspond to the expediency data. You know, so… but think of it as, like, a map.
David Bau: Not just as, you know, a picture.
David Bau: And, okay, so, Bill Freeman says that when you're teaching something difficult technically, what he likes to do is he likes to start with a simplified setup.
David Bau: And it's especially important. If you've worked on your method for a whole year, and then by the end of it, your method is, like, really good, that it's a little complicated.
David Bau: And so, if you just start off by, like, hitting somebody with, like, a complicated form of your method, then it'd be like, oh my god, what is this? It's like, you know, you have to… you have to deal with all these rounding error problems, right? Like, this whole method is about rounding errors. No, what if it's not, right? What if the rounding errors are just to get the last 5%?
David Bau: of performance, and actually the core of the method is something else. So Bill says, you know.
David Bau: you can take some time in your method section to introduce the simple version of your thing. Like, maybe even a toy problem. Maybe even, like, don't solve the real problem yet, like, consider what happens in this toy thing, look at how this simple thing works.
David Bau: If you do your writing well, you can sometimes, you know, describe the simplified toy question that you're asking in a couple paragraphs, and then you can ask the question
David Bau: you know, what happens if you take this toy thing and then, you know, do it on a scale experiment. So that's, like, one technique. And so these are all examples of papers that have been published recently
David Bau: That used FOI examples to start off with, which… which I liked a lot.
David Bau: And so, okay, so, so those, so those are the couple things that I would suggest about your methods thing. And then, and then separate your methods from experiments. So, you're, you know, basically,
David Bau: Your… your methods section is the section where you're teaching all the concepts.
David Bau: So that if a reader is like, I don't get it.
David Bau: They're gonna go back to that section.
David Bau: And then your experiment section is a little bit of the section for readers who are like, I don't believe it.
David Bau: Right? That makes sense.
David Bau: And there's where you're defending
David Bau: your paper, with your experimental evidence, and then there… so there, you're a little bit nerdier, you're like, okay, this is exactly how we measured it, and exactly what we did, exactly what we saw. You're very neutral, you're like, I'm not trying to hide anything from you, you know, I just tell you all the facts, right? So this is a classic science paper section of it.
David Bau: And, you know, it's important, like, you have to… you have to have convincing evidence, and you have to be very forthright.
David Bau: About what's going on there, and there's a little bit of teaching going on as you go through there, but, you know, most of your conceptual teaching is done by the time you're done with your meditation.
David Bau: And so, and so, the key thing to think about when you're doing experiments is triangulation.
David Bau: So, you're… the… What you want to avoid is, like, an experiment section That has 5 different experiments.
David Bau: And each experiment
David Bau: Like, wanders to, like, a different part of the continent, and, like, let's take a look at this experiment, looks over here…
David Bau: And then, oh, there's this other interesting thing, this experiment looks over here, and there's this other interesting thing, and this experiment looks over here. So, what you would rather have as a field for your experiments is
David Bau: Here's the thing that we're interested in. Right here, this is the spot in the introduction, it says we're interested in this question.
David Bau: And we have 5 experiments.
David Bau: One experiment looks at it like this way.
David Bau: And then the other experiment's, like, over here, and we look at the same spot, like, over here this way. You can see a different thing. And then here's our third experiment. Our third experiment, like, is over here. And then once you get, like, to the third experiment, and you look at the same phenomenon, like, the third way, people will start to get convinced. They're like, well, I don't know, I didn't know if I believed the first experiment, but the second one's kind of…
David Bau: surprising, because you looked at the same thing. The third one, I can't, like, it's hard to deny, there's something going on here, and then… and then you hit them, and you're like, no, no, there's a fourth way. You could look at the fourth thing, there's a fifth thing, and then… and then if you do that, and then you take… then you step in there, and you do that, and you throw it into the air, and it does something else.
David Bau: Then it also happened, and people were like, wow, that's crazy.
David Bau: Right? And then they're convinced. That's, like, what a good experiment section feels like. Does that make sense?
David Bau: So it's not just, like, a tour of the British Museum.
David Bau: Right? Does that make sense?
David Bau: And so,
David Bau: And then after you've done that, hopefully you've wowed your reader, they're like, oh, there's really something here, and you just write a very brief, humble conclusion section.
David Bau: That says, well, this paper proposed that you could figure this thing out.
David Bau: We introduced this method that you use to figure this out. We did some experiments, it turns out that you can figure it out, it works.
David Bau: You know, this, this, this probably has some implications.
David Bau: for future sciences.
David Bau: And that's it.
David Bau: That's your introduction, that's your conclusion.
David Bau: Make sense?
David Bau: And that's sort of the social form here. So, you know, you might point out,
David Bau: What the implications are of your work.
David Bau: But just very briefly.
David Bau: Don't make a big deal at 5.
David Bau: So Bill says that… This is very common for, like, first-year students.
David Bau: Don't do it.
David Bau: Future work.
David Bau: So, you know, in your conclusions, you're like, okay, here, here's, like, what we did.
David Bau: Future work. Here is, like, future stuff that we're also going to do.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: Never put future work in your paper. Never write it down.
David Bau: There's, like, so many problems with future work. So, one, like, is to, like, if you're in a competitive area.
David Bau: Like, everybody's trying to, like, make a cool new method. Then your future work reads like this.
David Bau: It reads, oh, so it reads, okay, here is a list of all the things that we wish we could do, but we didn't have time, we, like, ran out of time.
David Bau: break?
David Bau: And so the reviewers were like, huh, Why didn't you do that?
David Bau: kind of reject it, because you didn't do that thing. It's just like a list for all the reasons a reviewer should reject you. It's like, why are you listing this out to the reviewer? Right?
David Bau: Or, it's like, oh, here's a… like, we did all the good stuff, but there's, like, there's even more ambitious stuff you should do if you're reading it. Here's a list of good ideas that you should go and steal from us now, and you do it before we get a chance to do it. It's like, why… why are you doing this to your research competitors? It's like, please do this for us, right?
David Bau: You know, it's like… like, there's a couple, you know, functions that, you know, future work
David Bau: You know, serves. And neither one of them is really in your interest, and neither one of them is really of interest to most readers.
David Bau: Right? Like, the readers don't want to be told what they should be doing in the future. They're going to figure that out for themselves. Unless you have a really great idea, and then you can steal it from them. Yeah, I don't know. Don't write future work.
David Bau: Right?
David Bau: If you, if you read the paper, so write a paper to be read, Like, 10 years from now.
David Bau: It's really weird to go… like, if you wrote an important paper.
David Bau: And then somebody went to read it 10 years later, and there's, like, a future work section. It's no longer future work, right? Like, maybe that happened, or maybe it didn't. I don't know, it's weird, right? So no matter what happened, it's like, it's weird, like, you wouldn't read the paper to read the thing that happened in the future, you'd read the future paper, right? And you also…
David Bau: But then also, you know, maybe the future didn't happen the way that you imagined.
David Bau: And then it's this weird anachronism. Future work? This is, like, what they thought was gonna happen in the future didn't work out that way at all. It's, like, very strange. Like, don't write this.
David Bau: Make sense?
David Bau: Okay.
David Bau: So, just to end with the conclusion or summary, just say a few words, don't write a lot in your
David Bau: That's, that's my rule of thumb.
David Bau: Don't worry too much about it.
David Bau: Okay, so, okay, so as you write your things for Thursday, a couple general tips.
David Bau: Couldn't hear a response again.
David Bau: Perhaps the most important principle of good writing is to keep the reader uppermost in mind.
David Bau: Yeah, what does the reader know so far? Okay, so actually, you know, I… I… so… so there's… there's a couple things about this introduction I want to…
David Bau: to cover. Because there's a thing that's my own personal beef that's not really here on one of these slides.
David Bau: So, what people are saying here is they're saying.
David Bau: you know, be kind to your reader. So the hardest thing about writing, I can work on a technical project.
David Bau: For a few months.
David Bau: Is… is to have empathy, To the reader who hasn't thought about it as long as you have.
David Bau: Right? And so, it's like a guest coming into your house.
David Bau: You know, like, for example, in my house, I've got this toilet that doesn't quite work right.
David Bau: And I know that it doesn't work right.
David Bau: But if I don't have empathy for my guests.
David Bau: then when they come and use that toilet, then they'll be like, oh no, I'm here in the bathroom, I can't figure out how to use the toilet, whatever, right? So I realized, oh, this is one of the things that I have to explain. And your paper's kind of the same way.
David Bau: Right? You know, you know there's all these things about your technology.
David Bau: And if a reader needs to understand it, then he should
David Bau: Try to have empathy and explain it.
David Bau: Up front. So it's like, oh, would you like the panels? And, oh, by the way, let me show you how to get this toilet to work.
David Bau: And, and then here's the sheets for your bed.
David Bau: And breakfast is served at 6.
David Bau: You know, whatever.
David Bau: That make sense?
David Bau: And, Right? Fewer words.
David Bau: Oh, no, what does drunken White saying? They said, omit needless words. Oh, they're so much more elegant. But I say just write fewer words. Yes. Okay, yes, we're almost done. So, so we already did the writing exercise, but here's the suggestion.
David Bau: as I was thinking about all the introductions you guys wrote, there's a really common way of writing the introductions, and like, I would recommend trying to be bold and not writing this way.
David Bau: So, in our field, we write these funnel introductions that start like warranties.
David Bau: But it was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
David Bau: Right? It's like… you know, In recent decades.
David Bau: artificial intelligence has grown in importance until it's, like, taken over the entire world, like, it's such an important thing. You know, AI is, like, this big, big thing. It's, like, like, important for this, it's important for that. AI is everywhere, there's no avoiding AI, and then you take this funnel, and it's like… and then in our town, AI is used everywhere, and in my neighborhood, AI is used everywhere, and then in my… on my street.
David Bau: at my house.
David Bau: Right? On my countertop, right here on this table, right here is AI! Right, and then you're, like, a page into your introduction, and then you say, so, since AI is right here, we're gonna study this.
David Bau: Right? And it's like, you don't need that section. You can just say, what, the reader? Look at this whole thing here, we're gonna do this, right there on this table.
David Bau: And you can do that in, like, the first sentence, but it feels very bold.
David Bau: It's like, why would anybody care about my funny little thing on my table? Right?
David Bau: That make sense? But, like, but actually, it's refreshing.
David Bau: to read it. It's easier to read. It's actually… if you write it well, it's kind of cool.
David Bau: So that's what I would suggest, like, write your words, get straight to the point, don't write these big funnel things, that make sense? And have empathy for your reader. Okay, so I'll have more to say later, but…
David Bau: Write a couple sections of your paper with your team, bring 5 copies of it on paper on Thursday.
David Bau: more this.
David Bau: Thanks, everybody. See you later today.
David Bau: You've been pretty special, but…