University 113 Spring 2005

ML 251 Tu-Th: 2:30-3:50 PM

Technological Disasters and Catastrophes

"If anything can go wrong, it will."

Murphy's Law

An excellent article about writing a problem analysis can be found here, We strongly urge you to study it carefully before writing your first paper.

A major issue in writing a problem analysis paper is making clear the source of ideas. This is discussed in the Bios 202 website here. You want to do this for two reasons: 1. to get a better grade and 2. to avoid any hint of plagiarism. There are more information and suggestions on the Cain Project website.

Bibliographic References

You need to do some research for your paper and cite the references. If you are citing a specific fact, it is important to indicate in your citation where the information is located such as the page number. Thus a reference that might be suitable would be

1. Beaty, David, The Naked Pilot: the Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents, 1st Edition (Shrewsbury Press, London 1995) p. 25.

In citing web sites, you need to give the name and the general URL of the site of the site, the specific URL where the information cited is present and the date when the site was visited. Thus in the American Psychological Association style we have

2.Kilroy, C. and Morrell, D. (2000). EgyptAir flight 990 Cockpit Voice Recorder recovered. AirDisaster.Com [Online], 1 page. Available: http://www.airdisaster.com/news/1199/14/news.html [2000, August 15].

(Note: This URL is already bad, as might be expected when "news" appears in the URL.)

For stylistic matters, Diana Hacker's web site essentially has her entire Bedford Handbook on-line. It is a great resource.