Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Reminder: paper submission deadline for ICIST 2012
The deadline for submitting papers to the International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Technologies (ICIST) 2012 is December 30, 2011. This conference will be held in Tokyo, Japan, 29-31 May 2012.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Common grammatical errors
English is the result of Norman soldiers attempting to pick up Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and is no more legitimate than any of the other results. - H. Beam Piper
Despite the murky origins of the English language, it is the language of international commerce and science: if you attend an international conference in, for example, China, the presentations and proceedings will be in English. The same applies to the international scholarly journals. Being able to communicate effectively in English is therefore essential for anyone who wants a good career in academia.
Now, if you ever heard me speaking, you'd have probably have trouble understanding me: my New Zealand accent means that I flatten my vowels, my voice is nasal, and I speak too quickly. But, I do write fairly well, and I do avoid the grammatical errors below that really annoy me. Don't feel too badly if you aren't a native English speaker and make these mistakes: I noticed most of these mistakes while teaching New Zealand undergrads. That is, these are the kinds of mistakes that native speakers make in some parts of the world. They're still mistakes, though, and should be avoided.
1) Reversing imply and infer. For example "What are you inferring by saying that?". An inference is made from an implication. That is, the implication is made, then the inference is drawn from it. For example, someone once said to me: "Are you inferring I'd lie?", to which I replied "No, I'm implying you'd lie - you are inferring it". I know, I'm a bad, bad man.
2) Following from that is the distinction between implicit and explicit. If something is implicit, you know about it through inference. If something is explicit, it is stated. Saying that something was "explicitly implied" (and I have seen that written, but a university student no less) is not just bad grammar, it is complete nonsense. If something is explicit, it cannot be implied.
3) Literally means what you said is as it actually is. If you were to say "it is literally raining cats and dogs", then cats and dogs should be falling from the sky. Jamie Oliver is particularly bad for abusing this word: "and you literally put the mint in the mixture..."!
4) Your and you're. "Your" means it belongs to you. "You're" means you are. Can you see what is wrong with this picture?
Dear Tick Tax: this is your sign, and you're using incorrect grammar.
5) Using the term "begs the question". The original meaning of this is to assume as true something that cannot be taken for granted. The more correct way to saying this is "raises the question". This is probably a lost cause now, as the incorrect meaning of begging the question is widely established.
6) Its and it's. It's is short for it is. Its means something belongs to it. For example: "I saw a dog and said "it's wagging its tail"".
7) There, their and they're. There is a place. Their means something belongs to them. They're means they are. Example: "They're at their house, which is over there".
These are the errors that annoy me the most. For two excellent articles on common errors in academic writing, see "Don't torture your reader" parts I and II, by Professor Corey Bradshaw at the University of Adelaide.
Despite the murky origins of the English language, it is the language of international commerce and science: if you attend an international conference in, for example, China, the presentations and proceedings will be in English. The same applies to the international scholarly journals. Being able to communicate effectively in English is therefore essential for anyone who wants a good career in academia.
Now, if you ever heard me speaking, you'd have probably have trouble understanding me: my New Zealand accent means that I flatten my vowels, my voice is nasal, and I speak too quickly. But, I do write fairly well, and I do avoid the grammatical errors below that really annoy me. Don't feel too badly if you aren't a native English speaker and make these mistakes: I noticed most of these mistakes while teaching New Zealand undergrads. That is, these are the kinds of mistakes that native speakers make in some parts of the world. They're still mistakes, though, and should be avoided.
1) Reversing imply and infer. For example "What are you inferring by saying that?". An inference is made from an implication. That is, the implication is made, then the inference is drawn from it. For example, someone once said to me: "Are you inferring I'd lie?", to which I replied "No, I'm implying you'd lie - you are inferring it". I know, I'm a bad, bad man.
2) Following from that is the distinction between implicit and explicit. If something is implicit, you know about it through inference. If something is explicit, it is stated. Saying that something was "explicitly implied" (and I have seen that written, but a university student no less) is not just bad grammar, it is complete nonsense. If something is explicit, it cannot be implied.
3) Literally means what you said is as it actually is. If you were to say "it is literally raining cats and dogs", then cats and dogs should be falling from the sky. Jamie Oliver is particularly bad for abusing this word: "and you literally put the mint in the mixture..."!
4) Your and you're. "Your" means it belongs to you. "You're" means you are. Can you see what is wrong with this picture?
Dear Tick Tax: this is your sign, and you're using incorrect grammar.
5) Using the term "begs the question". The original meaning of this is to assume as true something that cannot be taken for granted. The more correct way to saying this is "raises the question". This is probably a lost cause now, as the incorrect meaning of begging the question is widely established.
6) Its and it's. It's is short for it is. Its means something belongs to it. For example: "I saw a dog and said "it's wagging its tail"".
7) There, their and they're. There is a place. Their means something belongs to them. They're means they are. Example: "They're at their house, which is over there".
These are the errors that annoy me the most. For two excellent articles on common errors in academic writing, see "Don't torture your reader" parts I and II, by Professor Corey Bradshaw at the University of Adelaide.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Reminder: Paper submission deadline for ICSI 2012
A reminder that the deadline for papers submitted to the Third International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI) 2012 is December 31, 2011. This conference will be held in Shenzhen, China, June 17-20, 2012.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Reminder: paper submission deadline for ICML 2012
A reminder that the deadline for submitting papers to the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2012 is 24 February 2012. This conference will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 26 - July 1, 2012.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Reminder: Paper deadline CEC 2012
A reminder that the deadline for papers submitted to the 2012 Congress on Evolutionary Computation is December 19, 2011. This conference is part of the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2012) and is held concurrently with the 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) and IEEE Conference on Fuzzy Logic (Fuzz-IEEE). WCCI 2012 will be held in Brisbane, Australia, June 10-15, 2012.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Reminder: Paper deadline FUZZ-IEEE 2012
A reminder that the deadline for papers submitted to the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) is December 19, 2011. This conference is part of the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2012) and is held concurrently with the 2012 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) and the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). WCCI 2012 will be held in Brisbane, Australia, June 10-15, 2012.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Reminder: Paper deadline IJCNN 2012
A reminder that the deadline for papers submitted to the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks is December 19, 2011. This conference is part of the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2012) and is held concurrently with the 2012 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) and IEEE Conference on Fuzzy Logic (Fuzz-IEEE). WCCI 2012 will be held in Brisbane, Australia, June 10-15, 2012.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Reminder: paper submission deadline for IEEE-IS
A reminder that the deadline for submitting papers to the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IEEE-IS) is 20 December 2011. This conference will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria, September 6-8, 2012.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Google Scholar Citations
Google has just launched a useful tool for academics: Google Scholar Citations. This is a service on top of Google Scholar that allows you to track the number of citations each of your publications has received. One of the metrics by which academics are judged is the number of citations their publications have received, the theory being that good and useful papers will be cited more than papers that are not useful, or good. This has been encapsulated by measures such as the h-index: to have an h-index of n, you must have at least n-papers that have been cited at least n-times each. It is useful for things like grant applications to be able to quote the number of citations you have received and your current h-index, insofar as convincing the grants committees that you can do the work you propose.
It was possible to track citations with Google Scholar in the past, and to calculate your h-index manually, but this could be a bit laborious and error-prone: Scholar Citations makes it a lot easier. I was impressed to see that even with a common name like mine (there are a lot of Michael Watts in the world, and some of them are also academics) the software found almost all of my publications - there are a few that aren't available online yet - and to find the citations to them. I was quite pleased to find that I had a few more citations than I thought.
It was possible to track citations with Google Scholar in the past, and to calculate your h-index manually, but this could be a bit laborious and error-prone: Scholar Citations makes it a lot easier. I was impressed to see that even with a common name like mine (there are a lot of Michael Watts in the world, and some of them are also academics) the software found almost all of my publications - there are a few that aren't available online yet - and to find the citations to them. I was quite pleased to find that I had a few more citations than I thought.
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