Research skills Francesca Rossi University of Padova, Italy.

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