Abstracts

A student emailed and asked a last-minute question about the Abstract assignment. I've already given feedback to some groups, but thought some of you could benefit from this question and answer:

Question:

Just to make sure I'm following the assignment correctly, I wanted to double check with either of you about how the abstract should be structured. I was looking at some websites to make sure that my abstract was on the right path, and found out that there are two ways to write an abstract. One that is more descriptive that talks about the topics to be covered and one that is informative that is more of a summary or overview. I guess the one distinction between the two is that the descriptive abstract is more laying the groundwork for the organization of the content in the report, but doesn't really go into much detail about the content itself.

In regards to this assignment, what would you like to see out of the abstract?

Answer:

Professor Camp will be grading these and says either way is fine. A project that is further along can provide the second, but those projects that cannot provide more description can get better feedback.

In addition, here's some general advice about Abstracts:

The Abstract should let the reader know exactly what she is about to read. She should be able to know the gist of your experiment/research and how you went about getting to that point (methods/process). Essentially it should lay out the structure for the entire rest of the paper, so she is not stuck on page 3 wondering what this section is about and why the author decided to include it. It is okay to ask stimulating questions and talk about the topic in general, however, I recommend you don't lose the sense of purpose and a conclusion I just mentioned while doing that.