Introduction

The goal of this course is to implement sound principles of writing technical papers. The students graduating the course should learn the structure of research papers, technical communications and conference abstracts for the fields of financial engineering, mathematics and statistics.

Course Description

Welcome to FE505! Students will learn how to structure technical communications, craft effective arguments, and discuss technical data and results. Throughout the course, the LATEX typesetting system will be utilized in conjunction with the BibTEX reference manager for both writing papers and presentations.

Course Outcomes

The course teaches students how to present their work to both technical and non-technical audiences by creating cogent, striking, and well-designed figures and presentation slides.

Textbook

Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded. by Schimel, Joshua.New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Glasman-Deal, Hilary. Science Research Writing: A Guide for Non- Native Speakers of English. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Publishers, 2010.

Frank Mittelbach , Michel Goossens, Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, Chris Rowley. The LATEX Companion (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting). Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004.

Additional References

Grading Policies

To earn an A in the course, students must successfully complete all of the homework and in-class assignments. In order to emphasize the highly collaborative nature of the writing and revision processes students are encouraged to work in small groups. However, each student must submit his/her own assignment. In the even that a student does not satisfactorily complete an assignment, he/she will be given several opportunities to revise and resubmit his/her work. Only students who satisfactorily completed all of the assignments will earn an A, all others will be given an F. No intermediate grades will be assigned in this course. The impetus behind this grading philosophy lies in the belief that all writing, regardless of how poor it may be initially,can and should be improved. The most effective way to learn good writing habits is by acknowledging and finding ways to fix ones mistakes.