Some Advice on Writing (Algorithmic) Papers

The introduction. The introduction usually starts with a description of and a motivation for the general problem area. After introducing the general problem area, you zoom in to the specific problem studied in the paper. I like to already discuss previous work here. This way you can explain where the specific problem fits into the state-of-the-art and why it is interesting. Ideally, the discussion of the previous work culminates in a clear statement about what is still missing in the current state-of-the-art: namely an answer to the specific problem you study. Then you give an overview of your results. Link your results to the state-of-the-art. Of course you want to focus on the strong points of your result, but don’t oversell. It can be nice to not only state the results, but also give the reader an idea of how you obtain them: