 So, this I am glad to be back I would like to give some share some thoughts that I have with you. So, I have in fact called it some random thoughts. So, there is no specific thing, but let us see whether there any idea comes out. The outline is as follows even though it is a random set of random thoughts I thought I would organize them. First of all I want to spend some time on how I go about organizing thoughts. I think I was I was a graduate student at Rice University and I had I had studied in Tamil medium before going at the school level. When I was a student at IIT Bombay I spend most of the time trying to figure out my English improving it learning to talk to other people and so on. When I went to the US as a graduate student I learnt how to write articles from my roommate. I thought that because some of these things I learnt through help towards the later part of my life I remember them. So, I want to spend some time on organizing thoughts how I go about organizing this work that I always do before starting to write the paper or writing report or giving a talk creating a slide creating a set of slides and also for writing books I have written couple of books and I use the same use the same strategy and I believe that if I did not do this work I am tempted to say what what this lead actor in Fiddler on the roof says I will be you know without the correct tools. So, this is a very important tool for me then I will talk about the sequence of writing the thoughts I have been organized and then I would start writing the paper or a report. So, I want to talk about the sequence of writing I want to spend just a few minutes on English I believe that later on it is going to be covered in great detail in a session to be given by Dr. Mukta Atre, but I thought that you know this particular point that I would mention here is important namely to be precise. So, I want to spend some time on this latex is a word processor that I use extensively I use that. In fact, the amount of time I spent in writing a book that I mentioned earlier two books in fact would have doubled if I did not use latex if I had used word or open office or something like that double. So, I want to spend some time on this and then I just want to conclude this with a easy workshop that can be organized for all of you on latex. So, this is the outline of my talk. So, organizing the thoughts how do I do that now this is what I learnt from my friend Bala here who was my roommate when I was a student at Christ how do you begin. So, throw in all the thoughts the thoughts that may come to you randomly these are not organized thoughts at all whatever that comes to you just go on adding as they come the main objective of this exercise is that you do not forget any important point. The objective is so that you do not forget any point include all of them do not worry about the sequence do not worry about the importance just go on adding and typically one would take few days to do that. I just have a paper and I just go on adding these points the second thing is. So, you might have depending on the you know how long they expected article or a report or a book is going to be you would have you know it may take a few days it may even take few months. If it is a book for example, I took about 10 years to write my book digital control. So, during the time the book evolved, but I always had this outline and in fact remember this is organizing the thoughts I have not started writing the report yet I have not started writing anything I have not started writing the article not started writing the book this is just collection of thoughts. Of course, even this I write down I make a note of them in a paper, but I refer to this as organizing the thoughts the main objective is that you do not miss out an important point. Once this is done the next thing that I do is to group the related ideas you have lots of things as you rewrite them and then strike them off from the original list. So, this allows me to group them in an ordered orderly fashion that is extremely important after this is done then I want to check is it possible to arrange them in levels sections subsections for example, in the book I would always say do I have sections subsections and things like that. In fact, I ask all my students before they write the paper or write a report their thesis or whatever I tell them give me the outline give me the outline what does an outline look like I will just show you for example, this is from my book digital control. So, I always give the table of contents show the table of contents to my students for example, here is chapter 7 structures and specifications then you have subsection sorry chapter section subsection and I ask the students that I had to give this to my publisher before the book was written before the publisher accepted my book I had to give the table of contents I had to give the details because this allows the reader to figure out what this person has in mind after the student writes this then I ask the student please write one or two sentences on each of them typically what the students do is they write the whole report and give it to me and I am not at all happy with that I tell them I please let us discuss the structure of the report let us discuss the outline let us discuss them the flow let me try to understand what you have in mind I want to do that before you you know I do not want to go through the you know report because you have let us say 30 pages of report and I do not want to start by saying you are making this English mistake punctuation mistake you know these are lower levels of giving feedback I would like to give feedback at a higher level. So, I would like to help you structure the report please give the report please give the outline of the report. So, students often find it difficult how can I write the how can I give the title how can I give the how can I give the outline before actually writing it it requires little bit of practice. So, this is why I call it as organization of thoughts you have still not started writing the report you are just thinking about organizing them in a particular sequence and so on I have one more point on that one or two more points on that the next thing that I do is. So, you have seen that I have detailed these two various sub levels then this is another important thing I tell my students I asked the students to make. So, let us take it is a paper that we are talking about if it is a paper then it will not have chapters it will only have sections at most sections sub sections and typically people do not even go to the sub sub section level if it is a thesis or a book or something like that you will go to three levels, but a conference paper journal paper you might do only about two levels. I tell the students to make the sections approximately equal size equally length it is not it is not it is not a hard and fast rule, but I tell them that the length of a section to some extent indicates the importance of the material that goes into that. So, if you are going to write let us say two pages on some topic presumably you have lot of things to say about it. Presumably there are lot of things you want to convey to the reader and there is one more section that is only half a page then it is not so important. I have seen people you know coming up with an outline only exception perhaps this is an introduction introduction can be a brief one, but all other sections I would say try to see if they are approximately equal. How does it help structure the report? I have seen students writing a whole chapter for example, in the report whole chapter is only half a page long and in some other chapter chapter you have chapter section subsection subsection is four pages long. Subsection is four pages long the third level and in the first in some other chapter which is a first level it is only half a page long. So, the question is should that half a page thing should it be a separate chapter or should it become a subsection somewhere should it become a section somewhere and similarly what you called a subsection which is four pages long should it be good enough to be elevated upwards to higher level for example, as a chapter or at least at a section level. So, I tell them this is extremely important and this helps organize the report. So, that is why so I ask the students to write bullet points for each of them here is the outline you have I showed you the outline from my book the table of contents I tell them write the table of contents for your proposed report and write bullet points and I typically have a one on one discussion with the students. So, what do I do? What do you convey here please write down I would not understand before they even start writing the report this is I like to do with my students to help them plan their report. So, you can call it organizing the thoughts or helping plan the report then after this is done. So, you understood the important thing is not that I am bureaucratic not that I want them to do lots of this preliminary things, but this is going to help me figure out which is going to be an important thing that he has done because sometimes I do not really understand all the details the student has done because in some section he must have done he might have done lot of work although he might not have told me because a research scholar M. Tech students and so on they are supposed to do lot of things by themselves it is their PhD thesis it is not I am not doing PhD I am only giving guidance. So, the student might have done lot of work they might have read lot of papers. So, the thesis supervisor may not really understand all the details that the student has done. So, I may not know that my student has done lot of work in some particular section and I go through it and I figure out hey you have done so much work maybe it is as important as a chapter itself. So, let us you know shift it. So, it is easier to do this at the concept level before you start writing the report because you will if you have the whole report in front of you and you have to rearrange always you have to spend a lot more time to do this because you get buried in details you will not be able to do that. Then of course, it is important to ensure that the flow is smooth and logical that each chapter or a section will lead to the next section next chapter and so on and so forth without repetition you do not want them you do not want the you do not want to tell the reader again and again go back there and see that equation to the extent possible let the flow be in one direction. You have to remember that the paper that you write even if it is published may not be read by many people you do not write a good paper. You are going to make a presentation whether it is for your thesis committee if you are a faculty member if you are working in a company you want to bid for a project your management should say that look the project that you are proposing is good I want to give you money I want you I want to give you freedom I want you to identify your own people to work on it so that you have freedom. So, whatever may be the case whether you are a faculty member whether you are a student trying to get a degree or a person working in industry it is extremely important for you to articulate your thoughts and convince the reader that whatever you are doing or whatever that you are proposing to do is extremely important. If only a few people read only a few people are going to cite your paper then later on the value of your paper will go down so it is extremely important you write good papers write good books good reports and of course good presentations. So, whatever I am saying now can be used to write reports documents and so on and also for presentation. In fact, this is what I call as the top down design start from the top design and then work out the details for each section subsection and so on. Next is I have organized the thoughts now I start writing. Typically what I do is start with the conclusion what is it I want to conclude and typically I go from bottom up and I start writing start with the conclusion move in the reverse direction progressively of course it is not hard and fast you can move back and forth, but I would like to say I would like to know at the beginning what am I going to write in this what is the main theme and then I come to whatever may be what in whatever sequence I may follow for the all other sections introduction is always the second last that I write and abstract is the absolutely last one that I write. This is the sequence in which I write of course people may have different ways there is no one method to do, but the reason for doing this is the introduction is supposed to be introduction is supposed to be an overview of what is coming in the paper what all you have written. So, you have written all of it. So, here is a question yes I will repeat the question also. So, the question here is good question in some conferences there are two types of conferences one is a referee conference the other one is a conference in which they will just look at the relevance of your paper relevance of your title or your paper whatever you are going to write to the conference. So, suppose you do not have to send the whole paper you just have to send the abstract. So, how do you do well it is all the more reason why you have to do this properly you have to organize the thoughts you have to put bullet points of course, because in this particular case in the question that you asked in conferences sorry I am not sure whether I repeated the question the question is for conferences that do not require papers in the beginning that want only abstract how do we follow this. So, the answer is that you do this again you may want to go in little more detail for each of the sub levels you know instead of two bullet points put three or four bullet points rearrange them make the size large small all that you do. If you have done the work if you have a fairly good idea of what you are going to write in that this need not take more than half a day. There is another thing that you know I always tell the students please spend a lot of time on organizing the thoughts. In fact, those of you who have written computer programs who have taken a course on software engineering for example, you will know a rule called 40 20 40 rule what is that 40 20 40 rule you write a program you say 40 percent of the time we should you should spend in designing the program 40 percent for coding the program and the remaining 40 percent for debugging documentation testing and things like that. This is some principle it is a rule of thumb. Similarly, I would say the same thing for writing a paper also I would of course, you know testing debugging may not happen in documents, but planning is extremely important right. In writing a program of course, you have to write you have to write you have to draw flow charts you have to assign variables and you have to do lots of things. So, the 40 percent is required here even if 40 percent is not spent it is important to assign substantial amount of time in planning this is what I call as organizing the thoughts. I ask the students typically to write the outline of the report at least three to four times the students get they get upset you know why am I not letting them to start writing the report why am I not letting them to start writing the report. I tell them that if they do this properly that is the most efficient way to write the report because you have by this procedure you have the structure and you have got up to let us say third level second level or third level and for every lowest section you have got bullet points. If you want you can even add things like I am going to put this figure I am going to put this table just as bullet points you finish that outline then it is extremely easy to write the report. At that time your guide will not ask you why did you write this or why did you exclude this why did you not write this in detail you do not want to write the whole report your guide give it to your guide and you do not want him at that time or him or her to say well actually I wanted you to write about this all those miscommunications will not happen if you do this properly. So, I ask the students to write the content table of content thing at least four times and I strongly believe that this is the fastest way to write the report or paper and most efficient way and I would encourage all of you to do that. The other thing that I of course always do it is not something I am not sure whether you people like that or not what I always do is I always write the thing on paper before going to computer. I write it on paper and then I go to computer and start typing because I believe that if you sit in front of the computer you will be thinking more about formatting should it be centered should it be bold should it be but you are not thinking about the what you have to write. So, I would say I mean of course it is my personal belief that it is better it is also of course in old days this was the method suggested because you write and you give it to the typist and the typist is going to type the typist will just will not even try to interpret will go on typing. But it is extremely important that you dealing formatting from the content these two are two different things write down first what you have in mind then go to the computer and write this is my personal thing this is what I would advise but obviously there are people who do not listen to this even my wife does not listen to it. So, how can you expect other people to do now what I want to do is I want to given once again I want to spend a little bit of time on introduction and abstract. So, introduction the in fact I am going to give an example also sample of a paper with an introduction and then how I modified it. So, that it was to be send to a conference remember when you send a paper to a conference there is no review process unlike a journal article a journal article will come back and say that these are the suggestions please improve and write. But if you are serious about sending your paper getting your paper accepted in a conference conference schedules are very tight they will say that I have only one week two weeks to review the paper and then only so much time for you know completing it accepting it and then the proceedings will come. So, it is not at all possible for the conference organizers reviewers to come back and say you made a mistake please correct and send again they will first decide is it acceptable or not. If it is not acceptable they will say please try some other conference you have to send it to some other conference that is it. So, it is extremely important that you have to write the paper in a form suitable for a conference first time itself it is. So, the introduction should say it should give a brief idea of what is in the paper for example, you can say in what way it is different from the previous work of course, briefly I am not talking about writing in great detail, but it should come very clearly and of course, it can give the structure of the paper. Let me see whether I can show you this paper. So, here is the here is the paper that we wrote for a conference in Chile it is called a low cost scalable virtual control laboratory as a matter of fact this was the third paper in the series third paper in the series. So, here is the introduction. So, this is what my students had written if you see the introduction says why this is important says this paper depicts a low cost single body system virtual lab to address these issues these are the issues this is what we are doing and then immediately it says section 2 does this section 3 does this and so on this is what my students had written when I saw that of course, as I told you I wrote the introduction the last the point that I wanted to and it is a third paper in the series. The reader of this paper the reviewer of the paper will say you know you are saying it is a third paper in the series which means there is always a fear that I have done some work and keep on using the same material to write n number of papers. I have already published, but I am after number of papers or here is a student she wants a paper or he wants a paper. So, they have written that same paper same material that I have already submitted to another conference with a different title. So, first thing that I have to say is look in what way did I make a difference in what way is it different what have they done what has been done. So, I will show you the paper which we finally sent. So, for example, what I wrote was. So, I begin by saying the objective of this work is to provide control laboratory education to students and so on. This can be further detailed into the following specific objectives. So, first one says provide a low cost laboratory provide a remote provide remote access provide good learning experience scale the solution. Fifth one access to a large number of it is an experimental work we are presenting this to a control conference and then look at this paragraph this says the issues raised in points 1 a and 2 have been addressed in papers 1 and 2 through a single board heater system in the current work we address all the remaining issues. So, when you go through that paper it says that look this is the whole picture and we address these points in that paper and here I am doing this. So, in other words of course, in this case because there is there was a shortage of paper length we removed the how the paper is organized and you know things like that we got rid of all of that, but it is extremely important to convey the fact in what way is it new right how is it different from the previous papers extremely important for students who have lot of ideas and you want to write a sequence of papers on whatever you have done. In the previous session, you know concentrate your thing on your article on one topic focus on one thing you might have done lot of things focus on one the second one next paper whatever. So, it is extremely important for you to say that look this is the focus. So, the introduction section should clearly convey that example I have already done abstract this is extremely important for our students many of our students start giving a status report in abstract. It is not it is a brief summary of what is done in paper in fact I can here look at the last line it can be very brief as slow as four sentences for example, I did this I did this we did this we found this to be effective that is it it is not an introduction you are not supposed to say that you we all know that virtual laps are extremely important come on is it something you did I asked the students every sentence you had asked does it pertain to what you did only that should be in the abstract. Next one because we are running out of time I will go to the next point is about English writing you have outlined you have got all the structure in place now you have to start writing you have to I think this is probably going to be done in by Mukta in great detail although I this is extremely close to my heart but I will just flash this because of shortage of time this is by Stunken White and Dr. Mukta will give you the details in fact this book can be downloaded from the internet free of cost I will skip this I want to spend the remaining time on word processor the tool that you could use for writing latex is like a programming language by the way I the papers that I showed the books that I have written this presentation for all of it I have used latex if you do not know latex please learn all of you must learn it helps concentrate on ideas not presentation you do not have to worry about is it centered left bold all that you leave it to later you tell I want it that is it it does automatic numbering referencing and so on it is a great tool for paper writing report writing I wanted to show you how automatic numbering works because it turns out that I have I have been to many paper presentations or thesis progress report and unfortunately people spend a lot of time saying that you have not referred to this person and so on without really giving input if you do this if you follow this they can no longer ask you those questions because latex will make sure that your referencing is absolutely perfect and also figure numbers and so on let me just show you that make it smaller it does not matter I will just go to a specific place ok maybe I will do it with respect to references so essentially what I was trying to say was suppose imagine the case where you have written your let us say thesis and it say it has 100 equations it has 100 equations and your advisor says your guide says I do not like this equation please remove this equation and suppose that equation is the let us say fifth equation fifth equation is removed now all other equations have to be renumbered first of all they have to be renumbered and the citation of those equations will also change in your so just imagine the kind of work involved so that is why what happens is in latex it is a program it is a program so as a result it is going to remember it will assign the numbers for example figure 7 I call it figure 7 it will look at this this is the PID control with local PID tuning what will happen is this figure 7 will be assigned to a variable so when I compile it ok it will suppose this number changes to figure 6 suppose you have removed the previous figure that variable will now say figure 6 ok so in other words you will never hard code the equation number in your paper or report you will always say use that you can even use variable name something like you will say that get that figure PID control so PID control whatever number is assigned to it in the last minute will be used it is useful for referencing so for example here if you look at this references these I have been referred to using what is known as an IEEE referencing style where the sequence in which you have referred to has been used for example at present we are studying the efficacy of delay observers 14 15 what are 14 15 because they come in that sequence in fact they were there in the previous page also they come in this sequence 14 15 now suppose so for example in latex there is something called bibliography style can you see this see this bibliography style plane is commented out what I will do is what we are doing right now is IEEE transaction style which sorts things in the order in which they are referred to not in alphabetical order what I am going to do is I am going to comment this I am going to use the plane style plane style means use alphabetical style now so I will say PDF latex VLAB then I will say BipTec VLAB and then once more PDF latex VLAB when I do that remember this recall that these were called 14 15 in fact let me do compilation once more it says labels have changed let me do it once more now you see that these references have become 8 and 9 what are 8 and 9 same thing Jones Kemp and so on because now these are in alphabetical order J, K, L and so on so latex is extremely powerful depending on the style that you use it can renumber the whole thing and without making any mistake I would like to know whether anyone wants to do workshops on latex I would say use spoken tutorials do not have time I would have we have lots of spoken tutorials maybe I will just show you it is possible to learn all of this in about 2 hours this is our website spoken tutorial dot org and then you see study plans the first one says installation of latex letter writing and so on all the way up to references and then if you take references it says that you have to read these in sequence what is compilation report writing bibliography inside story of bibliography is not required if you are doing it on windows you need mctech update so latex runs on windows mac and also linux and so here is the spoken tutorial on references you cannot see what it is but you can play that if required so I will not play that because of shortage of time so I would like to find out we are ready to conduct later workshops for all of you I would like to know how many from each center would can you just have hands raised let me ask here how many people would want to go through a latex workshop I have lots of people here what about the remote centers can each center ask this question and give a quick number through the video chat I mean that how do we do that you come here all of you want to do that some centers say all of you would want to do some centers want 50 we want okay very good so in fact we conducted this workshop 10 times at IIT Bombay in the last semester 2 weeks and more than half the people were phd students almost 75% of them were phd students it is extremely important extremely useful to you we will be ready to do that we will in that connection we will give a modal post and you can respond to that so with that I have come to the end of my talk my session thanks very much.