phd students fourth class. a common error chinglish? if x equals to y, then... ok: if x equals y,...
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Amusing We find a solution by exhausted searchTRANSCRIPT
PhD students
Fourth class
A common error Chinglish? If x equals to y, then ...
OK: If x equals y, then ... If x is equal to y, then ... If x and y are equal, then ...
Amusing We find a solution by exhausted search
Should be: We find a solution by exhaustive search
The name of the method is: “exhaustive search” or “brute force search”
Others need hyphens: Depth-first search, breadth-first search, ...
Strange section heading Problem formation
Any of these is OK Problem formulation Problem statement Problem description Problem definition
What is wrong here? In this paper, we discuss the problem of
computer visions.
Count vs non-count We study computer vision. (non-count)
Joan of Arc had visions. (count) She saw God and He told her to go to war.
He saw a vision in a red dress. (count) A vision = an amazing-looking woman
In an abstract Our method solves the 18 queens
problem in 6.96E+3 milliseconds
6.96E+3 milliseconds Just say 6960 milliseconds
Better: 6.96 seconds
In an abstract, maybe just: Under 7 seconds
How much precision? Their algorithm takes 49.87321 seconds Ours needs only 6.12345 seconds
Their algorithm takes 49.9 seconds. Ours needs only 6.1 seconds.
Our algorithm is over eight times faster.
Numbers One to about twelve, write it out Also zero Also hundred, thousand, million, billion,..
Avoid using billion, trillion, ...! US billion = a thousand million, 109
UK billion = a million million, 1012
Ordinal suffixes First or 1st
Second or 2nd
Third or 3rd
Fourth, fifth, ... 4th, 5th, ... 0th
Others depend on last digit 245th 973rd 121st 900th
April 1, 2011 Do not use these: US:04-01-2011 Canada & Europe: 01-04-2011 Beware of them when reading
International Standard & Chinese way: 2011-04-01 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
Exponents Not good in text: 3.2e-3, 4.77E4 10^7, 10**7
Better .0032 or 3.2*10-3, 47,700 or 4.77*104
10 million, ten million or 107
Handy numbers Pi seconds is a nano-century 232 seconds is about 130 years
Atoms in universe < 1081 ~= 2270
Age of universe ~= 14*109 years < 260 s
Two ways to say somethinglAnglo-SaxonlBreaklUselMethodlDo, performlSendlChange
lLatin, Greek, Arabic, ...lFracturelUtilizelAlgorithmlImplementlTransmitlTransform
Greek & Latin Much used in technical English Some odd plurals
Often use roots from those to make words eg. trans = across Transfer, transcend, transpose, transmit,
transform, translate, ... trans vs cis in chemistry
Another example Cryptography, from Greek roots: κρυπτός kryptós "hidden," γράφειν gráfein "to write"
Geography, photography, biography, ...
More Greek Auto = self Automobile, moves itself Automatic Autobiography
What is wrong here? We give the following statement of the
definition of x. x is ...
If it is our definition We give the following statement of the
definition of x. x is ...
We define x as ... Let x represent ... Call ... x.
Someone else's definition Bloggs [cite] defines x as ... x is defined as ...
We use Bloggs' definition of x [cite] as ... We follow Bloggs [cite] in defining x as ...
Reviewing your own paper Spelling checker & grammar checker
Can you simplify? Nouns to verbs? Move data to tables?
Can anything be cut? Is there repetition? On my own papers, I shorten about 30%.