White+Paper+Review+Assignment

The assignment is to review two white papers from the dropbox.com folder and create a one page report on each white paper. The value of the assignment is 30 points each. In order to receive full credit, your review should be a carefully written analysis of the white papers focusing on the three questions:
 * 1) What does this topic bring to the table? What changes? What's new?
 * 2) How does it work?
 * 3) Why does this make a difference?

Relate each of the above to the material contained in the White Paper. Better written papers will score higher.

A technique I offered in class to create a great paper:
 * 1) create a detailed outline
 * 2) create a rough draft that goes beyond one page
 * 3) edit to one page

Here is an article about how to improve your writing: "**Polishing Your Prose How to refine your writing, word by word, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence**," by Steven M. Cahn, //Chronicle of Higher Educatio//n, February 18, 2013 ---

http://chronicle.com/article/Polishing-Your-Prose-Word-by/137327/ > Here is the opening of an early draft of an essay about teaching mathematics written years ago by a celebrated professor. As he himself has acknowledged, he is a less than gifted writer, and our goal is to maintain his ideas while presenting them more clearly and gracefully. > It is important to recognize the fact that every subject, given that its content is not totally reducible to some other subject area, presents a special set of pedagogic problems arising as a result of the distinctive character of their contents and their essential nature. The problems may be regarded as particularizations of the general pedagogical considerations which must be treated by any and all teachers who seek to seriously discharge his or her educational responsibilities in a highly efficacious manner. > Where to begin? > The opening construction ("It is important to recognize the fact that ...") is overwritten. Ninety-five percent of the time when you write "the fact that," you can cut "the fact." Let's do so here, and the phrase now reads: "It is important to recognize that ..." > Better, but can we cut more? How about "It is"? When "it" has no antecedent, the combination is best avoided, and here is an ideal opportunity to excise it. But why not go further? After all, these opening words merely alert us to an "important" thought. Why not eliminate the warning and simply state that thought? > The sentence now begins: "Every subject." > How about the next phrase: "given that its content is not totally reducible to some other subject area"? > First, the adverb "totally" can be cut with no damage. Either something is "reducible" or it isn't. How about "area"? Can we distinguish between a "subject" and a "subject area"? Not easily. Let's remove "area." > Continued in article