Pre-Paper Checklist

This is a list of things I always forget when writing a paper or thesis. They will seem obvious, but not when you're a few months into some research and then have to write it down in a way others can read.

• Write an introduction which exhaustively explains your problem, previous work, and describes what work you'll be showing
• Don't forget others have no idea what you're doing, things are obvious, but every single assumption must be dropped
• Every figure has to have a legend
• If you're talking about aggregated data, aggregate it
• Gather citations as you find them
  • Retroactively gathering them all is next to impossible
  • You might want to check back on them anyways