Colons in computer science paper titles (2018)

http://www.kmjn.org/notes/colons_in_dblp_titles.html

by mjn • 7 years ago

40 21 7 years ago

shoo• 7 years ago

based on "bad extrapolation of trends by eye": we should expect to hit saturation point with a proportion of 1.0 cs papers containing colons by 2180.

this leaves directions for future research: "Colons in paper-titles: are other characters even necessary?"

jaclaz• 7 years ago

"Colons in paper-titles: are other characters even necessary?"

Of course: question marks, but are smiley making characters also needed ;-)?

mjn• 7 years ago

It seemed too frivolous to include in the blog post (I'm the author), but I fit an exponential to the last 10 years for Twitter consumption, which predicts 100% colon titles as early as 2050: https://twitter.com/mm_jj_nn/status/1055555513658810368

ape4• 7 years ago

Next time I am going to write algorithm64() instead of quicksort()

leothekim• 7 years ago

"XYZ considered harmful" is the other one I see in various papers and online posts. Boy does that one get mileage.

https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html

If only that were titled "'Considered Harmful': Considered Harmful".

ljm• 7 years ago

‘Considered Harmful’ considered harmful: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the contrived title.

Another format I see maybe a little too much

DominikPeters• 7 years ago

There's also The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Colons.

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

I don't think those 'considered harmful papers' are actually computer science papers though? Things like 'Go To Statement Considered Harmful' were magazine articles rather than papers.

ncmncm• 7 years ago

It was more like a letter to the editor. But the editor invented the title.

Probably should have been "considered as harmful". We would all be better off today.

wyldfire2• 7 years ago

IIRC "Communications of the ACM" isn't a scientific journal but it's not exactly light reading either.

See also, my earlier comment from a recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19961776

wyldfire2• 7 years ago

An English teacher that I had around ~20 years ago told the class that there were studies that considered the effect of a colon in the title alone and they suggested that having a colon in your title resulted in a better grade for your paper.

As a result, I generally take a second or two to write a title that works as phrases separated by a colon. I'll assume I've reaped some ever-so-mild benefit in my career. ;)

cgriswald• 7 years ago

I wonder if more colons in the title improves grades further: "The Broadcast MAC Address: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF"

Edit: On second thought, I think there might be some secondary psychological effects with that title that might harm the grade after all.

mannykannot• 7 years ago

Right now, 6 of the 30 headlines on the HN front page contain colons.

webwielder2• 7 years ago

https://www.theonion.com/a-statement-followed-by-a-question-...

leblancfg• 7 years ago

Minor gripe: that error band needs some tweaking. You can't have negative proportions.

phyzome• 7 years ago

It must have taken superhuman willpower not to title this "Colons in computer-science paper titles: Threat, or menace?"

klyrs• 7 years ago

Colons in computer-science paper titles: considered unreasonably harmful

bloak• 7 years ago

At least papers don't have subtitles (I think). When I have to record the title of a book, if there's a colon or a dash in it then I find it hard to know whether it's being used to separate the "title" from the "subtitle". Alternatively, if I know there's a subtitle then I don't know what to do when entering the data into a form that doesn't accept a subtitle. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(titling) for more information on this point of pedantry.

kd0amg• 7 years ago

At least papers don't have subtitles (I think).

I've seen a few printed as having subtitles, including one with both a colon and a subtitle.

http://brrian.org/papers/ecoop2011-javascript-eval.pdf

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.03832.pdf

https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pmmwp...

GGfpc• 7 years ago

A lot of the most recent titles featuring colons aren't the type "Proposition: Question?". Most of the papers I read with colons in the title are similar to "Project Name: Project Description"

joker3• 7 years ago

Somebody ought to do a breakdown by subfield.

Colons in computer science paper titles (2018)

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