Comment Re:results from different practices among discipli (Score 1) 81
In engineering, there tends to be less of a tendency to cite a paper with methodological info: Very few people using an FFT cite the Cooley-Tukey paper; likewise, someone talking about using an ADC for sampled data isn't going to cite Nyquist, even if they say "the sampling rate was 5 time the Nyquist frequency". Likewise, in engineering, you don't see: The dice were attached to the substrate using a eutectic mixture of lead and tin as recommended by Agricola in "de re Metallica".
Yes and no. In computer science experienced authors rely on a common and rather broad knowledge base when writing their publications. There is a tradition not to cite things which are part of the common knowledge. I would not cite just because I was using the FFT, unless I was doing something out of the ordinary with it which actually requires understanding all the details of the original publication.
A very common sign of an inexperienced author is sloppy references. Typically there are too many references, and to works which are not strictly relevant for the author. When you see an introduction with 60 references outside a survey you can usually toss the paper in the trash bin and tell the authors to start over...