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Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

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Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#4
(I really enjoyed this article) It does take some effort to translate from academia to a corporate environment I'll try do so in a reply.

High level points:

Lecturing

Blackboard Technique

Publish the Same Result Several Times

You Are More Likely to Be Remembered by Your Expository Work

Every Mathematician Has Only a Few Tricks

Do Not Worry about Your Mistakes

Use the Feynman Method

Give Lavish Acknowledgments

Write Informative Introductions

Be Prepared for Old Age

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#5
I wonder how the "Publish the Same Result Several Times" recommendation ties into the "publish or perish"-mantra. I suspect that 1997 was a different time. Many academics have a super-human publication cadence, not so much because of all the new knowledge they've extracted from the universe but because they aggressively re-publish their existing results. Very low read- and citation counts are common implications.

From the outside, it seems hard to sift through all the redundancy. At the edge of knowledge it gets harder to verify what is genuinely new and what is a rehash.

It feels like the infrastructure and format around scientific publishing could benefit from compression, consistency and version control.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#6
post #3

Damn, I really like the design/layout. Anyone know where to find it by any chance?

The AMS uses LaTeX for typesetting. They release packages for their other journals [1], but not Notices, which apparently [2] uses Lucia Bright, a font that is not free.

[1]: https://www.ams.org/arc/journals/journal-produce.html

[2]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/76053/which-font-is-...

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#7
post #4

(I really enjoyed this article) It does take some effort to translate from academia to a corporate environment I'll try do so in a reply. High level points: Lecturing Blackboard Technique Publish the Same Result Several Times You Are More Likely to Be Remembered by Your Expository Work Every Mathematician Has Only a Few Tricks Do Not Worry about Your Mistakes Use the Feynman Method Give Lavish Acknowledgments Write I…

>After writing a rather long paper, I began to draft a thorough bibliography. On the spur of the moment I decided to cite a few pa- pers which had nothing whatsoever to do with the content of my paper to see what might hap- pen.

>Somewhat to my surprise, I received letters from two of the authors whose papers I believed were irrelevant to my article. Both letters were written in an emotionally charged tone. Each of the authors warmly congratulated me for being the first to acknowledge their contribution to the field.

That's a very interesting approach.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#8
post #2

This seems to be related to doing well in Academia

It is, but the advice isn't strictly academic. How to give good lectures -> how to present well in a meeting.

How to acknowledge mistakes, and differentiate between fatal mistakes ones of lesser detail

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#9

I wonder how the "Publish the Same Result Several Times" recommendation ties into the "publish or perish"-mantra. I suspect that 1997 was a different time. Many academics have a super-human publication cadence, not so much because of all the new knowledge they've extracted from the universe but because they aggressively re-publish their existing results. Very low read- and citation counts are common implications. Fro…

I think this was the version control when paper was big :)

Over of the other points on the article was "lengthen your summary" which was to address that very low read count!

I wonder if it's possible to make a "github of research" where articles are more publicly revised only showing the most recent (celebrating Theory 2.0! And 2.0.1 -fixed typos)

I took the publish process to be: iterate on your thesis.

I saw the pattern as: Ask for feedback from a small group. Improve ask a larger, more reputable group. Repeat.

I'm not current on what constitutes a prestigious Journal today (is Nature still a top Journal?).

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#10

I wonder how the "Publish the Same Result Several Times" recommendation ties into the "publish or perish"-mantra. I suspect that 1997 was a different time. Many academics have a super-human publication cadence, not so much because of all the new knowledge they've extracted from the universe but because they aggressively re-publish their existing results. Very low read- and citation counts are common implications. Fro…

> what is genuinely new and what is a rehash.

I struggled with this in grad school, as it often felt I was rereading the same material in multiple journals, and the examples of my successful peers appeared to me to be the same paper with 8 different introductions!

But the example Rota gives of Riesz is illuminating: by refining an idea over time, not simply rehashing, the product improves and eventually becomes "perfect". I think this is the original and benign intent of what has often devolved into the appearance of "publish or perish".

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