Reading
When to read?
- Hamming: If you read all the time what other people have
done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new
thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people
do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any
answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you
would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the
correct one. So yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more
to find out what the problems are than to read to find the
solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is going on and
what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to
be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers. You
read; but it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.
What to read?
- For interesting research directions in the area
- Find out what the best journal in the field is, maybe by talking
to someone who knows about it. Then skim the last few years worth
and follow the reference trees. This is usually the fastest way to
get a feel of what is happening, but can give you a somewhat warped
view.
- Skim workshop papers, there are often some inspiring ideas
there.
- Google key ideas such as "DB and IR"
- For a specific topic
- A reference graph is a web of
citations: paper A cites papers B and C, B cites C and D, C cites D,
and so on. Papers that you notice cited frequently are always worth
reading. Reference graphs have weird properties. One is that often
there are two groups of people working on the same topic who don't
know about each other. You may find yourself close to closure on
searching a graph and suddenly find your way into another whole
section. This happens when there are different schools or
approaches. It's very valuable to understand as many approaches as
possible-often more so than understanding one approach in greater
depth.
- Talk your idea to other people and if they said "this reminds
X's work ..." or "have you read the paper by Y", find the papers and
read them
- Read PhD theses - even though they are long they can be
very helpful in quickly learning about what has been done is some
field. Especially focus on:
- Background sections
- Method sections
- Your advisor's thesis - this will give you an idea for what
he/she expects from you.
- For basic knowledge in an area
- Google some reading lists in this area
- Some course websites have some good references
- For learning other people's work
- The best way is to go to their homepages for recent talk slides,
or go to the talk in person
How to read?
- Reading papers is a skill that takes practice. You
can't afford to read in full all the papers that come to you.
There are three phases to reading one.
- The first is to see if there's anything of interest in it at
all. The table of contents, conclusion section, and introduction
are good places to look.
- Once you've figured out what in general the paper is about
and what the claimed contribution is, you can decide whether or
not to go on to the second phase, which is to find the part of
the paper that has the good stuff. Most fifteen page papers
could profitably be rewritten as one-page papers; you need to
look for the page that has the exciting stuff. Often this is
hidden somewhere unlikely. What the author finds interesting
about his work may not be interesting to you, and vice versa.
- Finally, you may go back and read the whole paper through if
it seems worthwhile.
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