Writing 2 -- due Wednesday February 12

Christopher Wilt, Jordan Thayer, and Wheeler Ruml A Comparison of Greedy Search Algorithms Proc. Third Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search, July 2010.

1. Your writing should be approximatively 500 words.
2. When writing, avoid simply rehashing the abstract of the paper or writing many pages paraphrasing the paper. Use your own words and summarize the ideas presented in a clear and concise way. Make sure you understand the key concepts presented in the paper.
3. Here are suggestions for what to cover in your summary/review:
   1. What is the main topic of the paper?
   2. How would you define the type of paper: is it proposing new methods or algorithms? looking at a new application area? or is it more like a tutorial on existing algorithms?
   3. For what type of problems are the algorithms described appropriate?
   4. How do the authors validate their approach: experimentally or theoretically?
   5. Are the experimental results included in the paper sufficient to show the power of the algorithm? Are the datasets used in the experimental work available for others to use?
   6. Are the conclusions supported by the results presented?
   7. Is the paper clearly written and easy to follow? are the algorithms described clearly so it is possible to implement them and replicate the results?
   8. What did you find most interesting aspect of the paper?
4. You need to include in your paper at least 5 bibliographical references of the following five different types:
   • a book,
   • a book chapter,
   • a conference paper,
   • a journal article, and
   • a technical report, or thesis, or unpublished manuscript.
   When you look for references, make sure you check where the papers you cite were published, so you can include citations of all those different types. You can cite some of the references from the paper itslef, as long as you have all the five types listed above. You have to format the references using bibtex. You can look at http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/latextutorial3.html for details on how to do bibliographies in Latex.
5. The writing has to be done using latex and bibtex. You need to submit the pdf file produced by latex and the bibtex file.

• 60% for the completeness of your summary. Use the suggestions above to make sure you address the many different aspects that are important in the paper;
• 10% for expressing your own opinions on the strengths and weaknesses you see in the paper;
• 10% for using latex and bibtex for the citations;
• 20% for the quality of writing (spelling, grammar, clarity of expression, structure).