Welcome to the Weekly Paragraph!

The Weekly Paragraph is a public record of the activities of the Effective Modeling research group.  Group members are encouraged to send in a paragraph summarizing the results of their work during the week by 5:00pm on Monday.  All paragraphs will be collected and make available to everyone before the meeting on Tuesday.  At the meeting, all participants get a chance to summarize their paragraph and answer any questions regarding their work.

Your weekly paragraph should consistent of four distinct elements:

• Title:  You start selling your idea at the very first point of contact with the reader's eyes.  Often, this is the title.  Invest wisely in choosing an accurate and descriptive title.  It's fun to think about news headlines when thinking of what a good, effective title should be like.  If you think that a title is a simple matter, think again.
• Your name:  You did the work and you want to get credit.  Mention your name and the names of anyone involved in the work early on in your news entry.
• Positive news:  You are reporting an achievement, progress towards your goals and the goals of the group, or an attempt you made at solving a problem of interest to the group,
• The next step:  Include a clear statement of a problem that you have encountered as well as a description of your planned activity for the coming week.

In addition to the following our guidelines for good paragraph writing, your weekly paragraph should also follow some basic conventions:

• Write in the third person.  This means that instead of saying "I wrote a paper" say "[Your name] wrote a paper".  Don't sign your name at the end.
• Get directly to the point.  Eliminate any greetings such as "Hello" or "Dear reader".  Your goal is to create one self-contained paragraph.  If necessary for good writing, you can write two paragraphs.  But the goal is to write exactly one paragraph.
• Pay attention to visual presentation.  Remember that you can send in HTML, and it is a good idea to take advantage of basic features of HTML such as URL links, formatting, the inclusion of pictures or videos, and so on.
• Make your examples as simple, elegant, and informative as possible.  Examples are your most important tool for communication.  Make the best of them.
• If you mention the title of a book or a paper, try to include the name of the author(s), and whenever possible provide a link (attached just to the title) with more information about the book.
• If you mention a person, try to link (to their name) their personal home page.  If such a page is not available, link to a good document that provides more information about that person.
• If you mention a phrase that you think might not be familiar to some members of the group, put a link to a reference that defines and provides more information about that term.

And finally, when you've made sure that your paragraph is communicating your report effectively, work to make sure that it presents this information as beautifully as possible.  The more aesthetically appealing your communication is, the more people will be interested in reading your work.