Writing a Research Paper: Important for Those Thinking about FYP

I have been approached by many students specially in their final year of BS Computer Science for some tips and basic guidelines on writing research papers. So today I decide to blog about it based on what I have gathered from my experience. These techniques are based solely on my experience and anyone having additional suggestions is welcome to contribute.

Writing a paper is not a complex task at all: the most important thing in my opinion is o love what you're doing and be really excited about it. In the words of Meeyoung Cha:

"If you fancy a career as a researcher, you'll spend tens of thousands of hours on work over the next 10 years. The only way you're ever gonna spend 10,000 hours on research is only when you truly deeply love it. If something really engages you and makes you happy, then you will put in the kind of energy and time necessary to become an expert at it." - Click for Source

So find a research topic that really fascinates you and makes you want to invest your hours and hours into it without any regrets.

Divide your activity into phases:

1) Literature Survey

2) Design Phase

3) Implementation Phase

4) Experimental and Analysis Phase

5) Writing the Paper

Literature Survey

After the initial finding of identifying your area comes the real task: narrow down the specific domain from the area in which you want to work i.e. find a problem and conduct a literature survey i.e. see what approaches the research community has proposed to deal with that particular problem for example say there's a problem coming from the web crawling domain. Search for the best conferences in that domain like SIGIR, WWW, CIKM, ICDE etc and browse through the conference proceedings and read the famous papers relevant to your problem. To further explain I take another example from the domain of Computer Networks, suppose you want to take up a problem on Network Virtualization, then go through the famous conferences NSDI, SIGCOMM, SIGMETRICS, OSDI, SOSP etc. and read papers of some of the renowned researchers of the field.

This phase is the most important and crucial for here is from where you can extract all innovation and ideas and it serves as a prelude to the next phase of design.

Design Phase

This phase is the core of your research project/work, from the literature survey that you conducted in the last phase you must have come up with some potential shortcomings of each previously proposed solution. Now is the time to gather all what you gathered and design your own effective solution to deal with the problem at hand. During this phase I would personally advise to take suggestions from researchers working in those domains, the research community works in a collaborative environment and many would love to listen to your approach of handling the problem at hand. You can even write to authors of papers you read during the literature survey phase and they might write back to you with some further suggestions.

Implementation Phase

As obvious from the name in this phase you do the programming part, you can choose any platform suited to your research needs. Best thing about the sciences is that there is no limitation on development platform but try to choose a platform that has a large support from the worldwide community of scientists and engineers so that if you get stuck somewhere finding help is easy and if you choose a platform that lacks such support then bravo, chances are you might end up being one of the pioneer researcher for implementing your idea in that platform.

Experimental and Analysis Phase

Make no mistake about it, this phase is also very crucial and is what adds the real value to your work. It is what distinguishes it from the rest of the works in the field and highlights your research contribution. In this phase you must compare your approach with existing approaches and there must be some important comparison metrics for example bandwidth, throughput, jitter etc. in case of some computer networking research. This phase also serves as a valuable part of your research paper so don't overlook its significance and concentrate your efforts on it with due care.

Writing the Paper

1- Save all related data in one folder including results, pictures or any related text of literature survey, previous reports you have written for the project (if any) etc.

2- Download the specific format of conference/journal from their website. It will be easier for u to directly write as per that format, rather than first writing in a blank word file and then struggling/fighting with word.

3- Write abstract at the end of paper, rather than in the start.

4- The easiset way is first just write all first level heading e.g. (JUST AN EXAMPLE) Introduction, System overview, Algorithm Design, Results, Conclusion, References etc etc . The next step is to write second level headings (where-ever applicable).

5- Then make tables, flow-charts, figures and paste HIGH resolution images in corresponding headindgs.

6- Now your paper needs text stuff. If you are going to copy/paste text from self written reports, do not forget to keep continiuty in your script. Because something might be clear to you (as you have worked on this research/project) whereas for others there might be some "hidden details".)

7- After you finish your paper, write short summary in the form of abstract and assign proper keywords to your paper. The abstract should be such concise that the relavant reader is forced to read your paper!

8- Read your papers yourself a number of times and then ask some of your friend (with good English grammar) to go through it for correction of a/the/an etc.

9- Remember a very important norm, you should inform and give a copy of your paper to all those Professors/Persons whose names you have mentioned in your paper. One should NOT submit any paper in any conference without notice of co-supervisor and Professor.

10- Try to submitt paper some hours (at least) before the deadline time. Because mostly just before the deadline hour, a lot of people upload and thus system/server gets jammed. If however this is the case with you, just send the organizers by email (mentioning problem and time of submission).

There are a lot of related other things which one learns from his own personal experience. Remember as I mentioned no work is worthless !! You just have to present them in a proper and systematic way and find a conference which matches the technical depth of paper. Most of conferences in Pakistan provide a good nursery to write/present your work. So do not under-estimate your work. If anyone has any query, please feel free to ask me on my personal address (arjumand_younus@yahoo.com) or I would recommend to discuss on the group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youth-today/

Lastly a very important announcement from my side for the final year students, I have many research ideas and am looking for some students for research collaborations, if anyone wants to pick up any idea for his/her Final Year Project then feel free to contact me again on the email address given above or the Yahoo group.

All the very best in this venture of final year project!!!

Avatar Review: A Movie Relevant to Today's World

Avatar is the new talk of the town these days with most of the people highly impressed by its high-quality graphics and awesome visuals but in my opinion there's more to it than just that. I am quite disappointed by the review I got from people of it being somewhat predictable and storyline being ordinary.

On the contrary I found Avatar highly relevant to today's world: a world of war and destruction caused by the greeds of capitalist US.

Avatar depicts US as the "sky people" who portray the peaceful Navis as a threat to their security and these "sky people" claim to fight terror with terror: a propaganda well-known in the real-world too where the US portrays and propagates Muslims as following an evil ideology aiming to annihilate the world with terror. The same bundle of lies is used against the Navis that the US has been using against the Muslims: in reality they wanted something else, a precious stone found in the forest where the Navis lived peacefully. They lied, distorted facts, showed the Navis as dangerous people simply to further their evil designs: a strategy they used in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan. The movie takes us to how they manipulate and use lies for their benefits and do not stop from destroying peace of the world simply for their materialistic pursuits.

Jake Sully - the main character in the movie who is an ex-Marine is used by the "sky people" as an impostor to penetrate into the Navis, pretend to be one of them, get access to their secret world and then either make them negotiate on evacuating their forest or helping the "sky people" in destroying the innocent Navis. In return Jake would get back his legs, but in the course of pretending he realizes the evil designs and the truth, purity and integrity within him stops him from being a part of this evil plot. He decides to help the Navis for they were innocent and harmless unlike what was being spread by the "sky people", they had a world of their own: a beautiful world. This is what is happening today: the evil, capitalist US in pursuit of oil ran over the Muslims and is bent upon destroying them basing its war on a bundle of lies.

Below is an interpretation of Jake Sully's words in our real-world of today:

"The Sky People (US) have sent us a message(occupation). That they can take whatever(oil) they want, and no one can stop them. Well, we will send them a message(by reviving Caliphate). We ride out as fast as a wind can carry(to call people to Haq). You tell the other clans(people,influentials) to come, we will show the Sky People. That they CANNOT take whatever they want. And this..THIS IS OUR LAND!"

The movie concludes with a message, an important message to the US and its allies and to those who believe that US is invincible and Islam's return as a system is a mere dream: I say to those watch Avatar (a movie from an Canadian director himself) and get that message loud and clear!!!!

THE MESSAGE:

Wars cannot be won through technological advancements and numbers, wars can only be won through the power of truth, power of honesty, power of purity and above all power of unity!!!

The Quranic Style and Narrative

As I said in my last post I will be describing briefly about my role in brother Khalil's conversion to Islam so here goes.

It all begin with a heated debate on the profile of my school mate Shamikh Ahmed and I was debating against a US citizen Faizan Rizvi who also happened to be my class fellow back in school but in the other section so I didn't recall about him immediately. Later on brother Faizan by the grace of Allah realized he was wrong and then began this wonderful mission of ours: the writing of articles for brother Khalil.

Brother Khalil formerly brother Michael has a Ph.D. in English Literature and he wanted to know somethings about Quran's literary style, brother Faizan knew him and wanted my help in this task. This is the paper I wrote which played a large role in his conversion Alhamdullilah:

The Quranic Style and Narrative

The article touches upon the Quran’s style of narration and its supreme literary style. No doubt Quran is a miracle given to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) by Allah (McAuliffe). In the opening part it talks about the structure and history of preservation of the Quran. Later the article focuses on the narrations in the Quran: the unique style of conveying the Message to Mankind through stories repeating the same story and continuing it in several different Surahs, something known in literary terms as cross-referencing. This is a unique literary style found in only the Quran but it serves important purposes as mentioned in the article itself: “1) to sustain interest in the story, 2) to test the reader’s comprehension of its implications and 3) enforce the significance of the story within the text’s context.”
One example the writer has focused and picked is the story of creation which the Quran mentions in several places: Surah 41, Surah 79, Surah 15, Surah 2, Surah 7. The story is narrated in a way that leaves the reader captivated and makes him absorb the sublime message of truth. The creation of “Heavens” serves as a reminder to Mankind of the favors to those who will follow the path prescribed by Allah. Each time the reader reads the story of creation it leaves a different impact on his mind and heart, although the story is the same yet each time the underlying message is different with a unique touch. For example when talking about the unbelievers’ attitude in Surah 41 Allah admonishes them in strong words whereas in Surah 15 the style changes to a less stricter tone but Allah predicts what would unbelievers say even if they were to be taken to the Heavens.
Also the significance of the event of Satan not only stresses the importance but serves as reminder of the challenge he poses for Man, the Satan will continue to divert Man from the way of the Lord till the Judgement Day. The dialogue between the Lord and Satan is repeated many times in the Quran and each time it leaves a different impact on the reader’s mind.
This is enough evidence for a person to see that the Quran is definitely a literary masterpiece and is seen as such by both Muslims and non-Muslims. (Boullata 2000). The Qur'ān never tells a story for its own sake, but rather uses it to drive home the point it happens to be making in a sūrah or in a section of it. As a rule, considerations of the thematic unity determine which portion of a story will be narrated in which sūrah. In other words, the story told in a given sūrah is likely to be sūrah specific, the apparent disjointedness of the Qur'ān in this case concealing a carefully worked-out technique of storytelling.
The literary excellence of the Quran is unmatchable, As a gift from Allah to mankind, the Quran employs the most sublime literary art. The Qur'ān possesses a rich literary repertoire of its own. Besides making a masterful use of language on the level of words and phrases, it contains figures of speech, satire, and irony; employs a variety of narrative and dramatic techniques; and presents characters that is spite of the sparse personal detail provided about them, come across as vivid figures. This is evident from the second series of narrations touched upon in the article which constantly makes mention of the people of the Book and how they treated Moses and then Jesus. After the narrative part is the warning for their deeds and then it goes on to mention the reassurance for those who did not go astray. It so well-connected and appealing and the series of stories seem to follow a connected chain of events. At the same time within these narrations come time and again the legislative aspects of the Holy Book serving as a reminder that Quran’s actual purpose is not simple narration: its ultimate aim is to take Man out from the shackles of human slavery and give him as a sub-ordinate and slave of Allah, the Exalted and High. The challenge of Quran is to replace legislator of law by only Allah and He is the only Legislator alone and this is what is to be kept in mind. (Qutb)
The narrative aspect of Qur'an style remains one of the most creative and innovative of the Holy Book, one which has profoundly influenced and enriched the Arabic language. Whatever narrative style the language had in pre-Islamic times were relatively crude and primitive. Even though the narrative parts of the Qur'an were clearly put to the service of the main theme of the Book, i.e., religion, the narrative was so highly developed and integrated that it became a work of art in itself. The Qur'an is remarkably innovative with respect to its method of presentation, which involves four different techniques. One common technique is that if beginning a story with a short summery, followed by the details from beginning to end, as in sura 18 (al-Kahf). The second technique is that of beginning a story by presenting the conclusion first, then the lesson to be derived from it, and then the story from beginning to end, as in the story of Moses in sura 28 (al-Qasas). The third technique presents the story directly without introduction, as in that of Mary following the birth of Jesus in sura 19 (Maryam), and the story of King Solomon and the ants in sura 27 (al-Naml). The fourth, and perhaps most innovative, technique is that of presenting the story through dramatization. This technique gives only a brief introduction signalling the beginning of the scene, followed by a dramatization of the story with a dialogue among the various characters, as in the story of Abraham and Ismail in Surah 2.
The story of Joseph narrated towards the ending of the article is one of the most beautiful and touching stories found in the Quran. In fact rarely has It left an eye unwept and part of it can be attributed to the unique narrative style in which Joseph’s whole narrative is related. It has a unified plot, and that the plot is organized on (the analogy of the rhetorical device of 'involution and evolution': the first half of the story creates a series of tensions which are resolved in reverse order in the second half (Mir 1986)
One of the elements indispensable to dramatized narrative is change of scenery, which the Qur'an utilizes fully. In the story of Joseph in sura 12, the reader is presented with a succession of scenes, each of which leads to the next, picking up the main thread of the narrative. Joseph's story comprises some twenty-eight scenes, each of which leads to the next in a manner which maintains the organic unity of the entire narrative. All such scenes are presented through dialogues replete with details and ideas. The result of such a well-knit passage is that the reader finds himself drawn to the narrative, moving anxiously from one scene to another. This effect is achieved through a coherent series of events which sustain his curiosity and interest. In one scene, for example, we find one of Joseph's brothers entering the king's court in Egypt where Joseph is the keeper of the store-house. In this scene, Joseph stipulates to his brothers that they should bring their younger brother to the king's court in order to receive provisions. The next scene presents the brothers deliberating among themselves, which is followed by a scene in which they have returned to face their father, Jacob. The following scene takes the brothers back to Egypt to confront Joseph. The presentation of the narrative in dramatic form involving a succession of scenes brings home effortlessly the main theme and the lessons to be derived from the whole narrative. The use of dialogue makes the scenes more vivid and closer to life. This is an art in which the Qur'an excels, and an art in which it is remarkably innovative. It is clearly a form of literary composition which the Qur'an, the first book in Arabic, introduced to the language.
The very aspect of self-referencing in the Quran further stresses its unique literary style; the Quran was very well aware of its literary style. The Qur'ān claims to be inimitable and challenges its opponents to produce a work like it (e.g. 2:23; 11:13; 17:88; 52:33-34). The inimitability later came to be constructed essentially in literary terms, and the theologians made belief in the matchlessness of the Qur'ān part of a Muslim's faith. In its historical exposition, the doctrine of inimitability made the literary study of the Qur'ān a handmaiden to the theological aspect of the scripture. But the doctrine overlooks a crucial fact. The Qur'ānic challenge was addressed not to the believers but to the unbelievers, and was not simply denunciation of the unbelievers, but constituted an invitation to them to carefully examine the Qur'ān and see if it could have been, as they claimed it was, the product of the mind of a man possessed. Irrespective of what conclusion one reaches on the question of the Qur'ān's origins, one must agree that the underlying assumption of the challenge was that the merit and beauty of the Qur'ān could be appreciated even by those outside the fold of the faith. And if that is the case, then it would be possible to dissociate the literary study of the Qur'ān from the theological study of it.
The pagans of Mecca were bent upon proving Muhammad(SAW) as a liar. They were thirsty for his blood and who else could have wanted more to silence that man for the control of whom they were spending huge amounts of money and fought several battles. Had the Quran been the product of a human mind, they could have easily accepted the Quranic challenge to produce the likes of it but they knew in their hearts of hearts that it is a Divine scripture and the “Quran’s challenge” left them speechless. Last but not the least, one of the most fascinating aspects is the language of the Quran: You can never feel the actual literature because the words you are reading is not the word of God, its just a translation. To Feel that you have to know Arabic and its literature. For those who can read the Qur'ān in Arabic, the all-pervading rhythm which, in conjunction with the sustained use of what may be called rhymed prose, creates in many Surahs a spellbinding effect that is impossible to reproduce. There is the characteristic terseness of the Qur'ānic language which makes for some complex constructions, but which is difficult to convey in English without being awkward. The existing translations of the Qur'ān impose a further limitation, for they fall so far short of the highly nuanced original that a detailed study of the Qur'ānic language and style on their basis is well-nigh impossible (Mir 2000).



Works Cited
McAuliffe, Jane Dame. Encyclopaedia of the Quran. Brill, 2002-2004.
Boullata, Issa. Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Quran. Curzon Studies Int He Qur'an Series, 2000.
Qutb, Sayyed. “In the Shade of the Quran” v. 14 Islamic Foundation.
Mir, Mustansir. The Qur'ānic Story Of Joseph: Plot, Themes, And Characters, The Muslim World, 76 (1986) 1:15.
Mir, Mustansir. Islamic Awareness: The Quran as Literature, Renaissance, 2000.

The Story of a Muslim Brother in USA

Firstly my apologies on having left out blogging for quite long. It's a busy MS out here in Korea.

Today I want to write about a special person in the United States of America. It brings tears to my eyes when I think of his story and the special way of Allah to spread His Message to us, human beings.

This is the story of my brother Michael Tores who is now Khalil Tores by the grace of Almighty Allah.

What's more remarkable and amazing about his story of conversion to Islam is the way in which Islam appealed to him:n through the beauty of Quran's literary style and way of addressing people. This brother has a Ph.D. in English Literature and what shook him deeply was the style and literary beauty of the Quran which according to him cannot be the work of any human and is definitely Allah's word to Mankind.

It amazes me to say that Islam appeals to so many different people in so many different ways. Allah's Sublime and True Message is spreading in the masses. Brother Michael, now Khalil kept searching for this Truth all his life and he found it in Islam.

In my next post I will be sharing how I played my role in his conversion and Allah blessed me with this grand opportunity.

My words for brother Khalil: you now belong to the Ummah that is most superior of all Ummahs, you and I have a responsibility to carry the Truth we hold to other people around us. May Allah always keep you blessed by keeping you on the path of Truth and may we be of His loved ones, those who are guided.

Linux into the CS Curriculum: Part 1

This will be a series of articles advocating the integration of Linux into the CS curriculum along with ways in which to do that.

Linux is quite a popular operating system and in my opinion it should be given a place throughout the CS curriculum from introductory courses to advanced level courses. All throughout my Computer Science career I have learnt quite a lot through this operating system.

I advocate this idea of integrating it into the CS curriculum because it is remarkably complete, with servers of all types, programming tools, databases and the like, and the source code for same, routinely included in Linux distribution. Moreover it provides a steep learning curve to those looking for a challenge, some of the brightest CS students.

Most operating systems hide details behind a GUI shield. Linux being transparent offers a view into the workings of an operating system that can be of use in all CS areas. Want to know about processes? Just type ps -ax and all processes show up. Devices? The /dev directory gives info about them. Want to see real operation of TCP/IP? Type netstat -r and see the routing tables, or netstat -p to see what sockets are open.


Thanks to the determination and vigilance of its creator Linus Torvalds, Linux remains a free operating system. So in line with this spirit many developers have produced a bunch of no-cost and high-quality software for Linux platform including compilers compilers (gcc, kaffe, Forte, Jikes), web servers (apache), and databases (postgresql, mySql). This is not shareware or trialware, but genuinely free software that is bundled with
most Linux distributions. Of course, you can find commercial software — vendors are always interested in making money — but the software that comes with Linux is of extremely high caliber.

Linux is vastly different from the Mac OS or Windows; and just as with programming languages, studying another OS offers insights into one’s preferred OS.

For all the above reasons, Linux deserves to have a major presence in the CS curriculum.

Our Humble Lab Mates

It was a wonderful experience when we went out for Member Training with the team of Database and Multimedia Lab at Computer Science Dept, KAIST.

It was a trip of two and a half days. It fell parallel with KIISE Computer Conference, so we attended the conference and enjoyed some sight seeing. Today I write on a bit different topic, first some pictures of lab mates to illustrate my point.

These are pictures of seniors at my lab: including Ph.D. and MS students. Look at the poses they have given and the way they have enjoyed themselves. This is a great rarity in Pakistan where anyone above BS considers himself or herself as out of this world, where people think quite high of themselves just due to their education. They regard juniors as inferior and this is a very sad trend.

This is what I strongly feel on seeing seniors here in Korea and comparing them to what we have in Pakistan. Of course there are exceptions but the overall situation isn't good. In fact even the Professor of our lab is extremely humble and he sure is a big shot here, see his profile for that: Professor Kyu-Young Whang

We should surely learn from this attitude especially the educated and privileged class of Paksitan.

Programming vs Coding

Recently I saw many people rejoicing over Pakistan being declared as one of a great outsourcing destination, and to many within the Pakistani software industry this is a big achievement but I am skeptical about it. Is it really a sign of progress for us or has hidden repercussions??
In my opinion being a great outsourcing destination is not much, the question that we must ask ourselves is where do we stand in the Computer Science research community? How many publications do we produce every year? The answer is of course highly unsatisfactory.
It makes me sad to say that our universities are producing coders but not programmers: many would argue with me saying they are the same but there is a world of difference between the two. The question was raised by my Professor Kyu-Young Whang in his Database class few months back and I really liked his answer:

“Programming is about design and attention to detail while coding is about knowing few tips and following them without much thinking.”

Coding is just mindlessly typing out computer commands, whereas programming is actively thinking about abstract solutions to a problem and then expressing it in code. To be a coder, you need to know the syntax, but to program, you need to understand various algorithms and data structures. Mathematics forms the core of good and efficient programming skills whereas for a coder mathematics is not of much importance. Students who are adept at math tend to perform better in computer science. They are better able to understand relationships in data, scientific computations, and algorithm design. This allows them to be better at solving problems and generating good designs from requirements and hence be a programmer. On the other side of the spectrum are the coders who just know about the language features and are aware of the features of the platform they are working for.
The harsh reality is that many of the graduates in the computer science field in Pakistan are just coders but not programmers. Many of them do not do justice to the computer science field since they either switch to MBA or they go for software development (database development, web portals, community websites etc) jobs doing monotonous work all along.
In the Computer Science community in Pakistan there is a lack of proper research being conducted and in my opinion one big reason for this is that Computer Science research needs programmers and not coders. The scenario in Pakistan is that many computer science majors, those desiring to eventually become computer scientists, programmers, systems analysts, computer hardware designers, networking specialists, or software engineers, do not have the background knowledge needed to succeed in their studies. Nor do many of them desire to get this necessary math background if there is any possible way to avoid it.
The programmers are the ones that invent thereby producing new researches in Computer Science and coming up with new, innovative ideas. Whereas coders do labor work just playing with some new technologies and enjoying the outside glimmers. After all Google was just another research with two brilliant programmers Sergey Brin and Larry Page coming up with a new algorithm of ranking. Why isn’t such research being produced in our country: answer is simple, I guess!!!