Research skills

1. Research skills Francesca Rossi University of Padova, Italy

2. The process of searching carefully with a method to answer a question Research

3. 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? Skills - Wikipedia

4. 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 enough • People with great talent and no skills obtain much less than what they could do • Not only technical skills

5. Many types of research • Theoretical • Theorems and proofs • Experimental • Algorithm development, experimental results • System development • Coding, testing, engineering, … • Basic research skills don’t differ much

6. 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

7. 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 1: Curiosity

8. 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 2: Patience

9. 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 3: Enjoyment

10. 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 4: Problem formulation

11. 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 5: Look for important problems

12. 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 6: Review existing work

13. 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 7: Problem solving and adaptability

14. 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 8: Self-critical eye

15. 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 9: Being able to learn lessons

16. 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 10: Independence and courage

17. 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 Skill 11: Communicating your results

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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 Skill 12: Participate in the academic system

22. 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 1: Work hard

23. 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 2: Drive and commitment

24. 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 3: Openess to other people

25. 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: Collaboration

26. 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 4: Trust your advisor

27. 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! General advice 5: Be open to many diverse experiences

28. 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 Summary

29. 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