mas.940 resources

Writing

• Strunk Jr., W. & White, E.B. (1999). The Elements of Style. New York: Allyn & Bacon.
  
  The Elements of Style is, without a doubt, the greatest book ever written. Read it. Study it. Love it. It will become your best friend.
  
  
• Handbook of Technical Writing
  
  
• Driscoll Notes
  
  Words of wisdom from Jack Driscoll, former editor of the Boston Globe.
  
  
• Writing Practicum
  

Bibliographic Databases

• MIT Databases
  
  List of databases available through MIT.

• ERIC Databases.
  
  ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is a massive collection of references to work in education, psychology, and other social sciences. Searching the various clearinghouses will lead to all sorts of sections, including the coveted (for us) Information & Technology database.

• INSPEC
  
  Covers physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computing and control, and information technology. Can only be accessed through the .mit.edu domain (i.e., don't try this trick at home).

• ACM Digital Library
  
  Oodles o' computing articles from ACM journals/conferences. You have to join the ACM, but but it's cheap if you're a student.

• IEEE Computer Society Digital Library
  
  Same as the ACM ... lots of full articles without ever leaving your browser.

Research Methods

• Brightman, H.J. (1986). Statistics in Plain English.Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press.
  
  The "Strunk & White" of Statistics. Finally, someone worked out how to write the material people need to make useful inferences without having to go through 80 quarters of math.

• Leedy, P.D. (1997). Practical Research: Planning and Design.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.
  
  Some Stanford people pointed Smith to this book when they were ragging on the lab for not doing evaluations. It's not bad. But it's pretty big. Every so often, we'll pass out handouts from this text.