Re-Writing Abstracts

After the title, the part of a research paper that is read the most often is the abstract. However, many abstracts are not well written and do not contain the right information. An abstract should be a preview of the paper with the most interesting parts, like a trailer for a movie.

For this assignment, you will re-write three abstracts from published papers. (These papers could be your own.) You should choose one that is written poorly, and one that is written well, but with the wrong information. The third selection is up to you.

We will be talking about how to write an abstract in class, but here is the general structure of an abstract.

• One sentence of introduction and/or motivation
• One sentence on the problem being solved
• One sentence on the method used
• One sentence on the result
• One sentence of conclusion
• (optional) One sentence to wrap up, e.g. applications, implications, future work

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