You should have the following main sections in your paper:

1. Abstract
   The abstract is a brief summary of your work. It should be written to make the reader want to read the rest of your paper; think of it as your "elevator speech". Briefly state the basic contents and conclusions of your paper: the problem you are solving, why the reader should care about this problem, the algorithms/methods for approaching this problem, and the main results and/or contributions of your work. Limit your abstract to 200 words at most.

2. Introduction
   The introduction is the big picture of your work: what, why, and how. It includes a definition of the problem you are solving, a high-level description of the solution(s) you apply to the problem, and a summary of the main results of your paper. In addition, motivates the problem you are solving (why should a reader find your work important), and describes your contribution to the area (this may not be applicable to your project).

   Remember that the target audience is a classmate who knows about the topics covered in the course but not your particular research question. Your introduction should successfully convey the culmination of your 4 weeks of work. It should place your work in the context of both the course and related work in the field.

3. Related Work
   This is an essential part of a research paper; discussing related work is a good way to put your work in context with other similar work, and to provide a way for you to compare/contrast your work to other's work. If it makes sense to do so, you can incorporate related work into your Introduction. For example, if you are building on previous work. You can review a recent paper by my group as an example.

4. One or more sections describing your approach(es) This is some times referred to as Methods, Algorithm, Methodology, or Approach. Your section headings could even be specific to the algorithm, such as k-Nearest Neighbors. As a whole, these sections should tell the reader what you did, and how they could replicate it. Note that this section indicates how deep you investigated a problem, and mimics the presentation of methods as done in class. Be sure to address these issues:
   • Details of each algorithm and method you applied to the problem, at a algorithmic level. That is, tell me what a support vector machine is before telling me how you applied it to your data.
   • Your methods should include figures and/or pseudocode to help illustrate the approach. This could be a pipeline if you synthesize many approaches, toy example to explain a complex model, pseudocode (search for latex packages that fit your need), graphical models, and more.
   • Both a general depiction (e.g., dynamic programming) of the method and a specialization to your problem (e.g., Needleman-Wunsch).
   • Analysis if why these methods may be suitable.

   Be sure to discuss with me any questions you have about how this applies to your particular project. It is very important that this section is done in your own words - do not lift descriptions and images from other papers or online resources (except when citing very specific facts).

5. Experimental Results
   • Experimental Methodology: Explain how you gathered the data and details of how your experiments were run. Did you use any external software? Did you pre-process the data in any way? How did you generate features from the data? Did you use cross-validation? Do you need to define any questions you use for evaluation (e.g., Silhouette Index).
   • Explain the tests you performed (and why)
   • Present your Results
     Choose quality over quantity; the reader will not be impressed with pages and pages of graphs and tables, instead s/he wants to be convinced that your results show something interesting and that your experiments support your conclusions. Your results should be rich in meaning and concise.
   • Discussion of your results.
     Explain/interpret your results (possibly compare your results to related work). Do not just present data and leave it up to the reader to infer what the data show and why they are interesting.

6. Conclusions & Future Directions for your work Conclude with the main ideas and results of your work. Discuss ways in which your project could be extended -- What's next? What are the interesting problems and questions that resulted from your work?

7. References
   At the end of your paper is a Reference section. You must cite each paper that you have referenced -- your work is related to some prior work. You must cite all referenced papers within the text of your paper.

Writing Style Guidelines

1. Write in a top-down style
   First present the high-level issues, then expand them. This applies to the overall organization of your paper as well as the organization of sub-sections and individual paragraphs.

2. Conclude each paragraph, section and entire paper
   Each chunk of your paper whether it be a paragraph, a sub-section, a section, or the entire paper should have a conclusion. For example, each paragraph should be written as follow:
   • 1st sentence(s): main idea of paragraph
   • middle sentences: expansion of the idea (further explanation or elaboration of the topic)
   • concluding sentence(s)
   
   Each section of your paper should be organized as: high-level important points first, details second, summarize high-level points last.

3. Use active 3rd person
   We present, we show, we demonstrate...

4. Define terms and acronyms, and always define them before using them

5. Don't shy away from math - use equations and variables instead of overly verbose descriptions.

6. Use figures
   Use diagrams to help explain system design, and graphs or tables for presenting results. The best papers have figures to help introduce the paper and problem, methods, and results.