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Research skills
Francesca Rossi
University of Padova, Italy
Research
The process of searching carefully with a method
to answer a question
Skills - Wikipedia
A skill is the learned capacity or talent to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both.
Talent or learned capacity?
Talent or learned capacity?
Most of the skills can be learnt or improved over time, if one wants
Some talent is needed, but alone it is not enoughPeople with great talent and no skills obtain
much less than what they could doNot only technical skills
Many types of research
TheoreticalTheorems and proofs
ExperimentalAlgorithm development, experimental
resultsSystem development
Coding, testing, engineering, …
Basic research skills don’t differ much
Clear about our goal
Our goal is to produce good research results, to make advancements in science and technology
NOT to get a job, or to make more money, … If we do good research, these things will
come, but they are not the goal, they are a side effect
If we go for the wrong goal, good research will probably not come, and not even the goal
Skill 1: Curiosity
Intellectual curiosity How does it work? What
if you change this? Why did you do this? …
Ask questions to everybody (and to yourself) and in all circumstances
Look at what others do Can be very helpful in
learning how to recognize the interesting questions
Skill 2: Patience
Good research needs time Don’t expect great results
immediately Theorems may be hard to
prove Coding may take more
time that initially thought to be bug-free
Experiments need to be tuned to show interesting results and lessons
Allow ample time to do either theoretical or empirical research
Skill 3: Enjoyment
Research has to be something you like to do
Don’t do it for some other reason (money, recognition, fame, jobs, etc.)
If you enjoy it, more chances that the results will be interesting, and all the other things will come
Just relax and have fun Think carefully if this is what
you like If you can imagine a
better life, you should go and take that life
Skill 4: Problem formulation
A problem should be formulated in a simple and crisp way
Everybody, even non-expert people, should be able to understand it
An unnecessary complex formulation may hide the essence of the problem and also its solution
Talk to others, define your problem to them, get feedback
Skill 5: Look for important problems
Working only on the details of your latest propagator or theorem can be useful for the next paper
But devote some time also to think about the larger picture
What are the important problems in my field?
Read what others work on Discuss with other students,
your supervisor, anybody you meet at the conferences
Skill 6: Review existing work
Being able to find and evaluate previous work
Look for what others have done before starting your research project
It helps defining and tuning your problem
May give you ideas on how to solve it
Avoids reinventing the wheel and wasting time
Skill 7: Problem solving and adaptability
Find suitable tools to answer a question or to solve a well-posed problem
Be able to adapt yourself to the context Turn a problematic
situation into an interesting research problem
Read, read, read Don’t get discouraged, a
solution can always be found
Skill 8: Self-critical eye
If you are too sure of your research results, you will never notice the flaws
If you are too unsure, you will never start
Flaws should be considered and noted, they may be useful later to modify the theory to make space for them
This can be a source of great results
Have your work read by others and listen to the comments and suggestions
Humbleness: there is always something you can learn from others
Skill 9: Being able to learn lessons
A system or a tool may be a useful object, and experiments may be good, but what is most important is the general lesson learnt by developing it
Others (or yourself) can use this lesson to build different tools or to define other experiments
Same also for a theorem, but less crucial since a theorem is already a way to abstract and generalize what has been seen in a specific case
Learn also from failures (or from rejected papers)
Work locally, think globally Work hard on your specific
propagator, but think about the general consequences of your results
Skill 10: Independence and courage
Independent thoughts Not just following others’
ideas Courage to pursue your ideas
Self-confidence Also courage to know
when to stop Don’t worry to state your
ideas and to be criticised Better to be criticised than to
be ignored No need for people who
follow others
Skill 11: Communicating your results
A paper A talk A Ph.D. thesis General advice:
The idea and motivation is important, not just the technical details
The simpler your way to present your idea, the more chances people will pay attention
Writing a good paper
Papers communicate ideas The purpose of a paper is to convey your idea
Here is an interesting problem examples + general case
Here is my idea examples + general case
My idea works details, evidence for the claims
Here is how it compares to others’ approaches Giving creadit to others does not diminish the credit for your paper
Simple is better Be crisp and clear in the introduction
Bulleted list of contributions Once the reader has the intuition, she can follow the details, not viceversa
Even if details are skipped or not understood, at least she has something valuable Start early, not a week before the deadline! Have the paper read by experts and non-experts
Every criticism is important to improve the paper
Giving a good talk
A taster for your work Main idea, not technical details Examples to motivate the problem considered Answer this question during the talk: If someone
remembers only one thing from my talk, what would I like it to be?
Open questions, problems in your research Be open, others may help
Synthesize sentences in bulleted points Your work, no matter how brilliant, becomes valuable
to others only in so far as you communicate it to them
Writing a good Ph.D. thesis
Explain clearly your original contribution to knowledge and science Question that you want to answer (or problem to
solve) Why is it important to answer it? Did you answer it adequately? Did you make an adequate contribution to
knowledge? Takes longer than you think
Not just a collection of your papers More depth than papers
Skill 12: Participate in the academic system
Write a review Reviewers are there to help
science go forward, just like authors
… not to help their papers by killing others!
Ethics The most important asset of a
researcher is his reputation Freedom in what to do, but we
need to have high ethical standards
Honesty Have a good attitute!
The advancement of science is a distributed collaborative effort
General advice 1: Work hard
Given two people with equal abilities, the one who works 10% more will produce twice as much
The more you know, the more (and faster) you learn, the more you can do
General advice 2: Drive and commitment
You should be committed to your research
This is not a 9 to 5 job
It should not be a sacrifice, but an opportunity to do something you enjoy
General advice 3: Openess to other people
Be open to others and to others’ work
Read a lot Talk a lot with other
people Open vs. closed office
doors People who work with a
closed door produce more in the short term but obtain less, and less interesting results, in the long term
General advice 4: Collaboration
Most great work comes out of collaborations with others
More than one point of view
Faster definition of the problem
Solving eased by resorting to more available techniques
More fun
General advice 4: Trust your advisor
He is largely judged by the success of his students
He gets great inspiration by working with graduate students
He can learn a lot from graduate students
General advice 5: Be open to many diverse experiences
Take different courses Go to summer schools
and conferences Spend periods in
industry or other labs One never knows what
can come out Never a waste of time!
Summary
Many research skills You can learn/improve
your research skills You can produce
sustained great research results if you are committed, open, enthusiastic, honest
Work hard and enjoy what you do
Some useful sources You and your research, R. Hamming Technology and courage, I. Sutherland Basic research skills in computing science, C.
Johnson What is research in computing science?, C.
Johnson How to give a good research talk, S. L. Peyton
Jones, J. Hughes, J. Launchbury How to write a good research paper, S. Peyton
Jones How to organize your thesis, J. W. Chinnek How to have a bad career in research/academia,
D.A. Patterson Ethical constraints, Toby Walsh