Seminar Papers

Each seminar includes writing a paper of your topic.

You can start working on your paper before or after your presentation. The timing is up to you. The closer the preparation is to the presentation, the more present the content will be to you.
Please, hand in your submission via email: db-lehre@cs.uni-tuebingen.de (do not send your submission to individual team members)
Submission deadline for the first version of your paper is February 15 in winter term and August 15 in summer term.
Submission deadline for the final version after the review cycle is March 15 in winter term and September 15 in summer term. Please include paper, slides, and code (if applicable; preferably a GitHub link/invitation) in your final submission.

The paper of your programming topic must be written with LaTeX. For this purpose the two-column SIGCONF Proceedings template must be used. You can use the original template or this reduced version.
For figures, you can use TikZ.
The paper should be 4-6 pages in total and written in English.
For linguistic correctness in English, we recommend using Grammarly, DeepL or similar tools (not ChatGPT).
Literature to improve your writing: Zobel, Justin: Writing for Computer Science

[for our programming seminars:] Your paper should include some form of discussion where you critically review your work in terms of
- performance analysis (O-notation). Please, do not include measurements on how long the programm ran on your personal laptop. These numbers don’t tell us anything.
- scalability. Does run time increase significantly when choosing larger inputs? When are space limitations met (e.g. stack overflow)?
- programming language. In hindsight, was the programming language appropriate for the problem? Which language properties were especially useful/difficult?
- your implementation. Are there aspects of the implementation you would do differently next time?

The following evaluation criteria will be applied to the papers:

Form (typesetting, illustrations, formatting)
Language (grammar, comprehensibility)
Presentation of the own solution (intelligibility, correctness, comprehensibility, critical view)

As a rule, the paper makes up the main part of the final grade.

we often find student papers to be/have…	please, instead …
❌ incomplete in terms of content	✅ abstract, introduction, discussion (critical view) and conclusion are also inherent parts of a paper.
❌ frequent orthographic and grammatical errors	✅ use Grammarly, DeepL or similar tools.
❌ punctuation errors	✅ use commas, hyphens, dashes, semicolons, and colons correctly (different from German).
❌ passive voice	✅ use active voice as often as possible: “I/we analyse/implement/investigate” is perfectly fine.
❌ complicated sentences that (are supposed to) sound intelligent	✅ KISS is as important for writing as for programming.
❌ wall of text vs. one sentence paragraphs/sections	✅ choose appropriate paragraph lengths.
❌ show off your intellect by using phrases like “obviously”, “very easy”, “as we all know”	✅ stay objective. At best, something is “well-known”.
❌ ie, i. e., “… mammals e.g. elephants, …”	✅ know your latin.
❌ “there are 3 different …”	✅ spell out numbers 1-10. When to spell out numbers.
❌ several synonyms to vary expressions and avoid repitition	✅ stick to one word/phrase for a concept, no need to confuse the reader.
❌ lessen the strength of your statements by using filling words etc.	✅ be clear (even if it feels bold).
❌ “in figure 3…”, “in the upcoming Section…”	✅ If a figure, table, section,… is referenced by number, capitalize. If not, don’t.

Additionally,

listings: provide a caption, reference it in the text, provide line numbering, use syntax highlighting and a typewriter-style font
figures: provide a caption (below!), reference it in the text, pay attention to similar spacing above and below the figure
tables: provide a caption, reference it in the text, use booktabs style