10.1 Analysis Development

Your draft paper should be saved in your docs/ folder. You may find it makes sense to create a sub-folder for your presentation slides - something like docs/paper/ - since the notebooks and their output will create quite a few files. Save both the editable source document in its native format as well as a .pdf rendering of the document. When you create your final paper, do note overwrite the draft. Make sure both are saved separately (as in paper-draft.doc and paper-final.doc).

As with the presentations, there are not strict requirements for what you write your paper in so long as it is in wide use in academia. Options include Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Google Docs, or LaTeX. Most students will find Word or Pages to be the easiest choices, but I can provide some support to students who want to try their hand at using LaTeX. LaTeX makes much of the tedieum of academic writing easier, though it comes with a learning curve. As I mentioned in the “Presentation Tools” section, I recommending working with ShareLaTeX if you want to give LaTeX a shot and build some additional skills. This web-based tool would allow you to share your work with me in a way that I can easily provide help and feedback.

It is imperative that a .pdf version is present for both your draft and final submissions. Since I do not have strict software requirements, I need to be sure that I can open your paper and it looks as you intended it to look!