Guidelines to Students CPIT 695

1. Guidelines to StudentsCPIT 695

2. Outlines Introduction Before you start How do you do research? When do you start? How do you start? How do you find out what has already be done? Doing Research How do I make progress? How do I finish? What else can I do? Becoming Part of the Research Community Advice for Advisors All Work and No Play How to be a Terrible Thesis Advisor Issues for Women References

3. Introduction Research is a continuous process of discovery. What is the best strategy to follow in research?

4. 1- Before You Start Read books, journals and conference proceedings to know the most new trends in your interested field. Work on an ongoing project with your professors or start an independent research project by taking advices from a faculty member. Develop good relationships with your professors (this is very important for getting good recommendations).

5. 1- Before You Start (cont.) Contact faculty members and graduate students in your interested area through an e-mail to tell them about your background and interests and ask them about their research projects. This will help you narrow your choices. Prioritize a list of supervisors you are interested to work with and choose one of them.

6. 2- How do you do research? Identify the problem and start to solve it. Keep starting from first principles (which will be mentioned in next slides: when and how do I start) and keep in your mind what are you trying to solve. Believe that the problem can be solved. Don’t be upset and worried about the original statement of the problem. Try to find other problems in its neighborhood, maybe you can find other better ones. Work on it frequently. Explain it to other people.

7. 3- When do I start? Start from now. Start searching for your project right away. Look for something related to course, you know and like. Ask questions to yourself and try to answer them by discovering the answers yourself. Then, you can begin to understand the basic of addressing unanswered questions.

8. 4- How do I start? Ask a question and try to answer it. Work on something that is interested to you. Work on a new area which is not previously considered. Collaborate with subject-matter experts. Identify an important, unsolved, exciting problem. Begin with literature review first or begin with the problem itself ?

9. 4- How do I start? (cont.) • Both of them have strengths and weaknesses. • Starting with literature review: • Strength: learning the field and techniques and avoid rediscovering the wheel. • Weakness: time consuming and leading the research to see the problem in the same way it has been seen before. • Starting with problem: • Weakness: waste effort in resolving problem. • Strength: rediscovering the wheel in a different way that may have strengths beyond expectations. • In any event, start with literature review, so not too much wasted time in what is already done.

10. 5- How do I find out what has already be done? • Identify relevant work: • Relevant literature must be identified i.e. books, journal articles, technical reports, and conference papers. • Look at references so you can identify previous papers. • Talk to your professor, departmental visitors who may suggest other references.

11. 5- How do I find out what has already be done? (cont.) • Summarize the literature: • Read and understand relevant work while keeping the problem in your mind. • For example, if your problem is how to consider cost as a metric in web quality measurement tool. So, while you are reading the relevant work, focus on if the cost metric is addressed in the previous work or not. If it is addressed, then you can improve what is done. If it is not addressed, then you can start from this previous work to enhance it. • Read abstract, introduction and conclusion to help you sort the references.

12. 5- How do I find out what has already be done? (cont.) Answer these questions: • Are data available and how are they modeled? • What assumptions are being made about models? • What are the issues? • Is it an analysis or design problem? • What methods are employed? • How can the problem be extended?

13. 6- Doing Research • The Daily process of doing research • Staying Motivated • Getting to the Thesis • Finding an Advisor • Finding a Thesis Topic • Writing the Thesis • Getting Feedback • Getting Financial Support

14. 6- Doing Research (cont.)The Daily process of doing research Write down interesting problems, possible solutions, random ideas, references (to look for) and notes on papers you've read. Read a lot of technical papers to become familiar with your field. Ask your advisor about the most useful journals and conference proceedings are in your field. Read the abstract, introduction and conclusion sections of each paper to decide if it is useful to choose it in your research.

15. 6- Doing Research (cont.)The Daily process of doing research • Take notes while you read papers that help you to focus your attention and force you to summarize as you read. • Scan the title, the abstract of each paper, then glance the introduction and conclusions, but if your advisor tells you that this is an important paper. So skip this step. • Skim the whole thing and try to get the most important points. • If it still seems worthwhile and relevant, then read the paper in details and summarize as you read the important points like the motivations for the problem posed, the choices made in finding a solution, the assumptions behind the solution and future directions for research, what was actually accomplished or implemented, as notes. If you want to read this paper later, you read only your notes instead of read whole paper. • Set up an online bibliography for all papers you read like Zotero.

16. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Staying Motivated Have organized activities to force you to manage your time. Setup regular meetings with your advisor and attend seminars. Be realistic about what you can accomplish and try to concentrate on giving yourself positive feedback for tasks you do complete. Setting daily, weekly, and monthly goals is a good idea and works even better if you and another student meet at regular intervals to review your progress. Breaking down any project into smaller pieces is always a good tactic when things seem unmanageable.

17. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting to the Thesis Finding an Advisor • Finding the right advisor can help you to complete your thesis successfully. • The ideal advisor will actively be doing high-quality research and be involved in and respected by the research community. • Read research summaries by faculty members and attend courses given by professors you might be interested in working with. • Talk to other graduate students and recent graduates and ask them how their relationships with their advisors are/were. • A good advisor will serve as a leader to: • Help you to find the resources you need (financial and psychological support). • Introduce you and promote your work to important people in your field. • Give you advice on the direction of your thesis and your career. • Help you to find a job when you finish. • Help you to set and achieve long-term and short-term goals.

18. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting to the Thesis Finding a Thesis Topic A good source of ideas for master's projects is the future work section of papers you are interested in. Try developing and implementing an extension to an existing system or technique. Choose a thesis topic that is interesting to you, to your advisor, and to the research community. Be wary of the advisor who seems willing to let you follow any research direction. In order to do good research, you must be aware of ongoing research in your field. To finish quickly, it's usually best to pick a narrow, well defined topic. A good way to focus on a topic is to write one-sentence and one-paragraph descriptions of the problem you want to address and do the same for your proposed solution.

19. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting to the Thesis (cont.) Finding a Thesis Topic (cont.) Your advisor will help you to identify a realistic size problem. Writing a thesis proposal is considered the first step you should take to define the problem and outline possible solutions. The proposal should provide a foundation for the thesis and be structured as a rough outline of the thesis itself. You will probably have to take an oral presentation in which you present and answer questions of committee members about your proposal because you know more about your thesis topic than your committee. During the presentation, don't worry if you don't know the answer to a question. Simply say, “I'm not sure” and then do your best to analyze the question and present possible answers. Your examining committee wants to see your analytical skills.

20. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting to the Thesis Writing the Thesis Doing the research and writing the thesis are overlapping phases and interacting with each another. The divide-and-conquer approach, which is breaking down a problem into two or more sub-problems of the same or related type until these become simple enough to be solved directly, works well for writing as it does for research. Don't sit down and try to start writing the entire thesis from beginning to end. When writing a thesis, or any technical paper, realize that your audience is almost guaranteed to be less familiar with your subject than you are. Explain your motivations, goals, and methodology clearly. Presenting your ideas at several levels of abstraction, and by using examples to express the ideas in a different way. Having a “writing buddy" is a good idea if they're working on their thesis at the same time and in the same field to give you feedback on rough drafts.

21. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting Feedback To be successful at research, it is essential that you learn to cope with criticism. Learn to listen to valid, constructive criticism and to ignore destructive criticism. In order to get feedback, you have to present your ideas. Write up what you're working on, even if you're not ready to write a full conference or journal paper, and show it to people. Your advisor should help you find appropriate forums to present your work and ideas. Attend conferences and talk about your research. Talking to other people will help you to realize which aspects of your research are truly different and innovative. You'll want to read a paper of other students and colleagues at least twice (once to get the basic ideas, then a second time to mark down comments) for giving feedback to them that is very useful for you.

22. 6- Doing Research (cont.)Getting Financial Support • Most graduate students have a source of financial support that pays their tuition. • Start looking for money early and ask faculty members, department administrators, and fellow graduate students about available funding. • Go to your university's fellowship office, looking for grant support, the chronicle of higher education, foundation grants to individuals and fellowship programs. • For a research grant or fellowship: • You will have to write a proposal and need to tailor your proposal to the interests and needs of the particular funding agency. • Write for a general audience, since the people reviewing your application may not be in the same field. • Emphasize your goals and why the project you propose to work on is important. • Talk as much as you can about how you're going to solve the problem, and be sure that your proposed solution will satisfy the goals you've set. • Follow the rules for format, page layout and length. Else, your application may not even be reviewed.

23. 7- How do I make progress? Attacking your problem: • Use simple examples. • Spend time to work on the problem and explain it to others. • Meet your research supervisor every week. • Make many conjectures (opinions or conclusions): This may be the most important of all. • Use the computer as their laboratory for investigating statistical ideas. • Use the computer to try examples to explore whether conjectures are correct or not. • Use the computer to evaluate specific examples or cases when considering a more general idea.Begin with something simple and extend outwards toward the more complex cases. • Never forget that the computer is not a substitute for the need to think, it is merely a tool to speed up your learning process.

24. 7- How do I make progress? (cont.) The moment of discovery • There is no substitute for hard work. • There is need to live with the problem, think about it over and over. • Then one day, that random variable of all random variables, the mind puts things together in a slightly different way and it is solved. • The solution often then seems simple and obvious. • It only seems this way to one who is intimately immersed in the problem. • Certainly, solution comes only after weeks and months. • This is the moment which we enjoy the most.

25. 8- How do I finish? Beginning to finish: • Once you have what you feel is a new result or a set of new results, you must learn the process of developing a finished product or products (This might mean a project write-up and presentation). • One should begin by exploring and discovering your works: • Where you criticize and challenge your own result until you are satisfied with its accuracy and you understand its advantages and disadvantages. • Identify competitors. • Then explore where your method wins and loses • Anticipate what others might ask as if it were someone else’s idea. • Defend the method against these challenges, but try to be fair, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of your ideas. • Talk with others about your research project. • Finally, writing and/or presenting product.

26. 8- How do I finish? (cont.) Writing it down : • Writing is an important and creative part of the research process. • The most important is to sequence the writing for the reader and not in the way you did the work. • Draft the main sections of the paper first before writing the introduction and discussion sections; knowing what is in the main body of the paper makes it easier to introduce and discuss. • Capture the reader’s interest by allowing the reader to ascertain his/her level of interest in your research early. • Don’t use difficult terminology or mathematics. • Use words in the form that conveys your meaning as clearly and simply as possible. • It is important to be brief and concise, to be accessible to the readership.

27. 8- How do I finish? (cont.) Talking about it (Presentation): • Presenting your final product is an important part of the research process, as well and can even be prepared before a paper is written. • There are now a number of presentation media available to the presenter. The most common are the overhead slide, 35mm slides and computer-aided projection.

28. 8- How do I finish? (cont.) A general rule: • Dedicate each slide to a single idea which requires you a modest amount of verbal explanation. • Text should be sparse, easily read from a distance, and easily understood. • Don't read from the slide. • Use graphs rather than tables if possible. • A slide should not be filled with mathematics or proofs. • Carefully consider the time which you have

29. 9- What else can I do? • Try taking some science, engineering, social science, or business courses and look for opportunities for statistical thinking and research. • Talk to your friends in other disciplines about their problems. • Become a project and/or research assistant. • Be a summer intern in industry, business, or government to learn about and work on real problems. • Periodically browse journals to see what is being published. • Participate in selected activities as a group. • Meet with department visitors and prepare some questions beforehand. • Help a professor referee a paper. • Participate in writing grant proposals. • Accompany a professor on a consulting trip. • Have a subject-matter specialist as an active member of your thesis committee.

30. 9- What else can I do? (cont.) • Use electronic services such as newsgroups and e-mail, but be circumspect. • Attend some conferences and seminars. • Organize a seminar and get your professors to talk about how they do research. • Use statistics to solve seemingly simple-minded problems. • Make a map, a physical representation, of your research. • For perspective, read recent books.

31. 10- Becoming Part of the Research Community • One of the most important things a graduate student should do is to become established as part of the research community. • Your advisor can help with this process by funding conference travel, encouraging you to publish research results early, collaborating on joint publications, introducing you to colleagues, and promoting your work. • In turn, you can make yourself more visible by participating in conferences and workshops, publishing papers on your work, and meeting and maintaining contact with colleagues.

32. 10- Becoming Part of the Research Community - Attending Conferences Attending conferences is valuable due to: • chance to discuss ideas and to hear other people . • get a good sense of position of current state of research. • learn more about how to write conference papers and give talks. • opportunity to make an impression on other researchers. Tips for preparing talk to make impression positive : • Give a practice talk and invite people who will give useful constructive, feedback. • Make sure your talk in the time slot allocated. • It's better to be somewhat abstract than to get bogged down in technical details. • Use examples and pictures to illustrate and clarify ideas. • Talk about your ideas naturally whenever you get the chance. • You'll have a chance to respond to and think about questions that might get asked. • Make sure the slides are readable and simple. • Don't read from a script or word-for-word from slides, and don't talk too fast.

33. 10- Becoming Part of the Research Community - Publishing Papers Publishing your ideas is important for several reasons: • gives you a source of feedback • establishes you as a member of the research community • force you to clarify your ideas. • Properties of a good paper: original ideas that are well developed and good writing style. • If you have a great idea, but present it poorly, your paper probably won't be accepted. • Use a running example, especially if your paper is dense with equations and algorithms. • If you go through multiple revisions of a paper, you should only give a revised draft to reviewer if the paper has changed substantially and they're willing to re-read it. If your paper is rejected: • Take the reviews to heart and after reading the review the first time, put it aside. • Try to rewrite the paper, Come back to it later, reading the paper closely to decide whether the criticisms were valid and how you can addressing them.

34. 10- Becoming Part of the Research Community - Networking Networking: important skills should be learning in graduate school in order to be a successful member of the research community. • Presenting papers in conferences, since people will often approach you to discuss your presentation. • Introducing yourself to people whose presentations you found interesting and ask a relevant question. • Meeting other graduate students will provide contacts to the senior people they know. • Talking about your research interests and having summaries of your work of various lengths and levels of detail, makes you mentally prepared. • If someone expresses an interest in your work, follow up! and communicate with each other via e-mail. • Maintain the relationships you form via e-mail, and reestablishing contact at each workshop or conference you attend. • Use your initial acquaintances to meet new people

35. 10- Becoming Part of the Research Community - Networking (con.) Other professional activities can bring you into the research network as well: • Volunteer for program committees • Send your resume to a book review editor • Offer to give seminars at other universities • Write conference and workshop papers and send them to people you've met or would like to meet • Organize a workshop on your subfield at a larger conference. Finding specific mentors who can give you advice, feedback on drafts of papers, and suggestions for research directions can be extremely valuable.

36. 11- Advice for Advisors To be a good advisor: • Relate to your graduate students as individuals, identify them personally and professionally. • Work with all of your graduate students without bias to one of them. • Help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to work on overcoming the latter. • Give them honest evaluations of their work and performance. • Read all paper with an eye towards discovering aspects and see the experience from their perspective, which will be different for each student. The roles of an advisor: • Guiding students' research • Getting them involved in the wider research community • Finding financial support • Finding a position after graduation

37. 11- Advice for AdvisorsInteracting With Students Tradeoffs that have to be made in each advisor-student relationship: • Amount of direction: self-directed/hands-off vs. spoon-feeding. • Personal interactions and psychological support. • Amount and type of criticism: general directions vs. specific suggestions. • Frequency of interaction: daily vs. once a semester. Advisors should be aware of both long-term and short-term needs. When Advisor meet with students, help to identify their interests, concerns, and goals Give studentsproductive feedback and promptly. Give students specific, concrete suggestions for what to do next. Advisor-student relationships can break down if the advisor is setting goals that are too high or too low, or if the advisor is exploiting the student to meet the advisor's needs. Encourage your students to choose a topic that you're both interested in it. Make sure that they have the background to understand the problem, and that the methodology and solution they identify are appropriate and realistic. Give students pointers to useful references and help them find them.

38. 11- Advice for AdvisorsSocial Aspects of Advising • The relationships developed with students will vary: these will be side effects of good work in conjunction with students, but should not be the goal of relationship. • Because Advisor are in a position of authority over students, he must make sure that they both know where the boundaries are. • It is never appropriate to develop an intimate relationship with one of the students. If this should happen, advisor should not continue to advise the student. • Dating students is a bad idea and at many universities this violates the sexual harassment policy.

39. 12- All Work and No Play... • Finding a balance between work, play, and other activities isn't easy. • Graduate school isn't worth risking in your personal relationships. • If you have a family, you will have to balance your priorities even more carefully. • One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that's more or less consistent.

40. 13- How to be a Terrible Thesis Advisor • Assign students thesis topics based on the section headings in your grant proposal. • Read your students' papers at most once. • Have students handle computer system administration. • Plan for research seminars to last at least two hours. • Avoid meeting with students individually and discussions of research strategy. • Expect nothing much from your students. • Give all your students the same research topic, but with slightly different names. • Never suggest your students to contact other professors or other researchers. • If a student's work is not giving the results expected, belittle him/her. • Encourage your students to work on fashionable problems.

41. 14- Issues for Women • In many cases, women and men face the same obstacles in graduate school, but react differently to them. • For women, the additional factors that are sometimes present include isolation, low self-esteem, harassment and discrimination, unusual time pressures arising from family responsibilities, lack of a support network, and lack of relevant experience. • Having an unsupportive advisor can thus become much more of a problem for women than for men.

42. References: M. Hamada and R. Sitter, “Statistical Research: Some Advice for Beginners,” Am. Stat., vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 93–101, May 2004. M. desJardins, “How to succeed in graduate school: a guide for students and advisors: part I of II,” Crossroads, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 3–9, 1994. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer_algorithms