White-Paper Studio

Today’s Agenda

• Three rounds of peer review
• Turning two reviews into a revision list
• Drafting the reflection paragraph
• Deploying before you leave

Today Is a Working Session

Last class of the term

• No lecture: three rounds of review, then your revision list
  • You read two papers, two people read yours
• Then you draft the reflection, in class, while it is fresh
• I am here the whole time for rendering and deployment

Leave today knowing exactly what is left to do.

What You Should Have in Hand

• A rendered draft, even if sections are thin
  • Thin is expected, and a rough draft is the point
• Your three figures, produced by code in the document
• Your test output: means, statistic, p, and effect size
• A project that builds without error

If your render is broken, raise your hand now.

The White Paper, 250 Points

• The largest piece of the course, due finals week
• Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, References
  • Plus your one-paragraph reflection
• Published at a public URL through GitHub Pages
• Graded on the study, the writing, and whether it reproduces

Where the 250 Points Sit

• Introduction: 30
• Methods: 60
• Results: 50
• Discussion: 50
• Abstract and references: 20
• Reproducibility and publication: 25
• Reflection: 15

Reading the Rubric

The full rubric, with what earns full marks in each row, is in the syllabus. Read it as five questions:

• Does it answer its own question?
• Could someone repeat it?
• Are the numbers complete?
• Is it honest about limits?
• Does it deploy?

Round One, the Introduction

Read your partner’s Introduction only. Fifteen minutes. Answer in writing:

• After one paragraph, do you know the question?
• Is the theory doing work, or is it decoration?
• Does it promise what the study can deliver?
• Name one sentence that could be cut with no loss

Round Two, the Methods

Fifteen minutes, Methods only. Answer in writing:

• Could you repeat this study? Where would you stall?
• Is the sample described: how many, drawn how, from what?
• Is the coding rule clear enough to code the same way?
• Are the choices disclosed: bins, caps, filters, dropped cases?

Round Three, the Results

Fifteen minutes, Results and Discussion. Answer in writing:

• Does every figure have a label, units, and a sentence?
• Is the test reported in full, with the effect size?
• Does the Discussion claim more than the Results support?
• Are the limits real limits, or apologies?

What a Useful Review Sounds Like

• Not useful: “this is good, maybe add more detail”
• Useful: “I could not tell whether your cases were drawn at random”
  • “Say which, in paragraph two”
• Point at a location, name the problem, suggest one fix
• You are not grading, you are the first reader who is not the author

Common Problems Reviewers Find

• The Introduction and the Results answer different questions
• The effect size is missing, so “significant” overreaches
• Default axis labels, still reading message_length
• A cap or filter in the code and never in the prose
• The Discussion says “proves.” Nothing here proves anything

Back at Your Own Paper

Take fifteen minutes and turn the two reviews into a list:

• Must fix: anything that makes the paper wrong or unreadable
• Should fix: clarity, labels, tighter prose
• Disagree, and here is why: you are the author

Put the list in your project as a plain file. It is your plan for finals week.

The Reflection Paragraph

• One paragraph, not part of IMRaD and not a result
• Your candid account of what the study taught you
  • What turned out harder than expected
  • Where a coding rule proved ambiguous in practice
  • What the dataset could not answer, and why

What a Good Reflection Avoids

• The bland version: everything went well and I learned a lot
• The anxious version: everything went wrong and I am sorry
• A reflection is evidence of judgment, not an apology
• Saying precisely where a study is weak is understanding it

One honest paragraph beats a page of hedging.

Render and Deploy Before You Leave

v2v::deploy_portfolio()

Run it today, even on an unfinished draft. Deployment failures are the classic finals-week disaster, and they are much easier to fix with me in the room.

If the pre-flight checks stop you, that is the function working. Read which of the three failed and fix that one thing.

Checkpoint

Before you leave today you should have:

• Two written reviews, handed to their authors
• Two reviews of your own paper, in hand
• A three-part revision list saved in your project
• A first draft of your reflection paragraph
• A successful deploy, or a specific error and a plan

Before Finals Week

The White Paper is due finals week

• Work the must-fix list first, and the rest is optional
• Re-render after every change, so the numbers stay yours
• Deploy early, and not the night before
• You began with a curiosity and no tools, and you finish with a published, reproducible study at a public address

Questions?