Comments on: Term-paper Crime Syndicates, Pt. II

By: sungwon

sungwon — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 03:52:42 +0000

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

Or you could simply have your computer write your paper for you. A few enterprising MIT grad students wrote a program that generates a computer science research paper complete with graphs and overused terminology. Quite hilarious if you’ve ever read a “real” CS paper. They even gave “randomly-generated talks” based on their randomly-generated papers using slides they’d never seen before.

By: exitr

exitr — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:39:34 +0000

lovely.

By: lapata

lapata — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:46:16 +0000

Jonathan: Funny how carefree that skill seems in retrospect, almost like a game. Now that would make an excellent quiz show! Take a bunch of PhDs and give them all different paper topics from the randomizer, and then….

Amir: Is that an “I’m just asking because I want to know” question, or a sarcastic jab?

zp: I’d send you my old Spivak and Bhabha via parcel post, but unfortunately I donated them all to a church fair a few years ago.

By: zp

zp — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:01:12 +0000

jonathan, ouch. amir, ouch. and “After all, how would academia survive if it were built on a foundation of recycled ideas, shaky transitional arguments and scholars who don‚Äôt know how to parse a sentence?” double ouch.

By: amir

amir — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:29:10 +0000

how many Phds are produced annually in the states .how many

of them give fresh and geniune ideas? and out of those fresh ideas how many make a difference. really, what is it all about? i’m just curious.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:24:27 +0000

I had imagined a group of young intellectuals, or perhaps some greying scholars of the humanities, sitting down and pouring their hearts into these term papers.

Yeah, in my more tired moments I think how much fun it would be — and how remunerative — to go back and write undergrad papers — easy comparisons, thought pieces, short reviews — instead of grading them. I was a great undergrad….