Welcome to 36-764: Writing in Statistics.

This course is an experiment.  I have advised many people --
undergraduates, Masters and PhD candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and
others -- on their writing.  I've developed some insights about
technical writing over time, that not only agree with some of the
literature on technical writing, they also seem to help people write
better.  This course is my attempt to better understand and
communicate some of these insights.

I hope to spend a part of each lecture talking about these ideas, and
a part of each lecture in "workshop", where we do some writing and
look at others' writing, with these ideas (and undoubtedly others) in
mind.

For this course, it is important that you have some real writing
project that you are working on: there is no better way to practice
your skills than to practice them on something that matters.  We will
touch on other topics such as grammar, usage & style, formatting and
outlining, tables & graphs, oral presentations & posters, referee
reports, grantwriting, ways of approaching writing and writing tasks,
etc., as time, need, & interest permits, but the main focus will be on
producing clear, readable, informative technical writing that serves
you and serves the reader.

A big part of this course will be actually writing, and reading each
others' writing.  To facilitate this sort of peer review, we will be
using a new course management system that the Eberly Center is
considering, called "Canvas".  The web address is

                  https://cmu.instructure.com

Please go to that site, and find and join "S16-Writing in Statistics"
(if you can't join the course, or you appear to need an invitation,
please let me know).

Before we meet Tuesday please go to the Discussion section on Canvas
and answer the following questions in a post.

1. PROJECT: A suitable writing project for the course is 10-50 pages,
   something like a thesis chapter, thesis proposal, ADA report, grant
   proposal, paper for a journal, etc.  You might have a whole draft
   already, a sketch or outline of what you want to say, or only a
   plan to write it.

   Tell me what your writing project will be for this course (if it
   doesn't seem to fit, you and I can talk about changing it later).

2. PURPOSE: Tell me what is the purpose of your writing project.  I
   don't mean an administrative purpose like "this is how I get my
   PhD" but rather a communication purpose: why is it important to
   communicate the specific information you are (or will be) writing
   about?  For what reader(s) are you writing?  Etc.

3. YOU: Tell me something about yourself:

   * What do you like about writing in Statistics (or technical
     writing generally)?  What do you find most challenging about it?

   * How often do you write, for your project or similar kinds of
     writing?  Once a day?  Once a week?  Only when you "have" to?

I'm looking forward to the course!

all best,

-BJ