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Parts of An Abstract: Motivation

The document discusses key components of an effective abstract: 1) Motivation: Explaining why the research problem is important and why the results matter. 2) Problem statement: Clearly defining the research problem and scope of the work. 3) Approach: Describing how the authors approached solving the problem, including methods and scope. 4) Results: Stating the key results and answers in clear, unambiguous terms with numbers when possible. 5) Conclusions: Discussing the implications and importance of the results, whether they are generalizable, and directions for future work. The abstract should convince readers to investigate the full research in under 300 words using these essential elements.

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25 views

Parts of An Abstract: Motivation

The document discusses key components of an effective abstract: 1) Motivation: Explaining why the research problem is important and why the results matter. 2) Problem statement: Clearly defining the research problem and scope of the work. 3) Approach: Describing how the authors approached solving the problem, including methods and scope. 4) Results: Stating the key results and answers in clear, unambiguous terms with numbers when possible. 5) Conclusions: Discussing the implications and importance of the results, whether they are generalizable, and directions for future work. The abstract should convince readers to investigate the full research in under 300 words using these essential elements.

Uploaded by

aqsa_munir
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Abstract

An abstract is a short summary of your completed research. If done well, it makes the reader want to learn more about your research. Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing a really good abstract has become even more important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. But now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the article from a library (or worse, obtain one after a long wait through interlibrary loan). In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of a report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to a journal paper abstract.

Parts of an Abstract
Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost as much work as the multi-page paper that follows it. In a computer architecture paper, this means that it should in most cases include the following sections. Each section is typically a single sentence, although there is room for creativity. In particular, the parts may be merged or spread among a set of sentences. Use the following as a checklist for your next abstract:

Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if your work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on. This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful. Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem statement

before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already understand why the problem is important. Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What was the extent of your work (did you look at one application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure? Results: What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers conclude that something is so many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand you don't have room for all the caveats. Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case?

Examples: 1."Their War": The Perspective of the South Vietnamese Military in Their Own
Words Author: Julie Pham (UCB participant in UC Day 2001) Despite the vast research by Americans on the Vietnam War, little is known about the perspective of South Vietnamese military, officially called the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF). The overall image that emerges from the literature is negative: lazy, corrupt, unpatriotic, apathetic soldiers with poor fighting spirits. This study recovers some of the South Vietnamese military perspective for an American audience through qualititative interviews with 40 RVNAF veterans now living in San Jos, Sacramento, and Seattle, home to three of the top five largest Vietnamese American communities in the nation. An

analysis of these interviews yields the veterans' own explanations that complicate and sometimes even challenge three widely held assumptions about the South Vietnamese military: 1) the RVNAF was rife with corruption at the top ranks, hurting the morale of the lower ranks; 2) racial relations between the South Vietnamese military and the Americans were tense and hostile; and 3) the RVNAF was apathetic in defending South Vietnam from communism. The stories add nuance to our understanding of who the South Vietnamese were in the Vietnam War. This study is part of a growing body of research on non-American perspectives of the war. In using a largely untapped source of Vietnamese history &endash; oral histories with Vietnamese immigrants &endash; this project will contribute to future research on similar topics.

2. Violence, Subalternity, and El Corrido Along the US/Mexican Border


Author: Roberto Hernandez (UCB participant in UC Day 2001) The Geopolitical divide that separates the United States and Mexico has long plagued the region with violence and conflict. However, its extent and political nature is often overshadowed and undermined by mainstream information outlets. The boundary inspires polarized reactions: tough on crime/immigration rhetoric from politicians and enforcement officials &endash; exemplified in current border militarization &endash; and appeasement through feel-good news reporting. Such contradictions desensitize and deny the essence and root cause of the conflict &endash; an ongoing sociopolitical, cultural, and economic struggle between the two nations. While information transmission in the north has a U.S. focus, south of the divide knowledge distribution is very Mexico-centered. However, the border region acts as a third space t hat gives birth to a distinct border gnosis, a unique form of knowledge construction among subaltern communities on both its sides. One form of subalternity, corridos, (border folk ballads), has functioned to create an alternative discourse to the borderlands imaginary. This study is an examination of the analysis and critique found in corridos that seek a critical approach to the violence at the nations' shared edges and its ensuing political implications. To illustrate their subaltern function, I will examine two incidents: the 1984 McDonalds shooting in San Ysidro, California, and the 1997 death of Ezequiel Hernndez in Redford, Texas. these cases are indicative of the politically charged environment of a border region that in becoming an increasingly militarized zone has also set the stage for a cultural battle amongst different forms of knowledge construction and legitimation.

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