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Why I Keep a Research Blog

gregorygundersen.com

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Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#11

Post by cushychicken »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
cushychicken wrote: post #4

I absolutely love this. It's a great distillation of many of the reasons I myself keep a blog. It's a means, and an end, of learning more, and keeping yourself accountable to your knowledge. It is difficult to know what you should know when you have a lot to learn and are in an intelligence-signaling environment. A side effect of having written detailed technical notes is that I calibrate my confidence on a topic. If…

I don't have a blog, but I find it much, _much_ easier to write comments here on HN. And I greatly improved my electronics knowledge through answering questions on electronics.stackexchange. There are some important questions which are easy to phrase but hard to answer. One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". I al…

One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron".

Ha! I'm just starting to grasp that - been going through chapter 8 of Art of Electronics, 3rd Ed. Getting a hard and fast education on noise. Shot noise is fascinating. I still don't have a great mental model to compare it to. The closes I've come is dripping water vs a continuous stream of water.

I also plan to dig out my highest-rated HN comments and turn them into blog posts or even an ebook some day.

I had this same notion the other day. It's neat how an internet post can inspire such clarity of thought.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#12

Post by bachmeier »

As I was reading this, I had two thoughts:

1. The author must be young. That's a really small font.

2. The same could be said for teaching a class. No matter the class, even a basic undergrad class, I always try to work a few new research results (not necessarily my own) into the lectures. Edit: I was specifically referring to "Learning with intention" in this part of my comment.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#13

Post by agentultra »

"Writing is Nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is" [0]

Writing is my primary tool. I keep a blog... and journals. I keep a journal for my reading: what I've read, what I thought about it, choice things I'd like to recall. I keep a journal of my mathematical reading, thoughts, and work. Programming too!

Keeping your writing in a blog and sharing it with others puts a bit of pressure on you to keep a public persona but it's worth doing, as the author points out, to keep one honest. It has taken a while for me to learn this as evidenced on my blog but I have taken it more to heart in recent years.

Be careful writing with an authoritative voice if you yourself have not researched the topic deep enough to convincingly defend your findings! It's much easier for your audience to accept your work if they know you're in the process of discovery when they find an error or omission. It makes you more credible as well.

The more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

[0] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/721037

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#14

Post by gwgundersen »

sciencewolf wrote: post #9

Off-topic, but Gregory - I was a participant in your C4Q Python workshop several years ago! So good to see that you're doing well in academia, and great article. Agree with many of the points you've made regarding writing-- as an example, one trick I've found for getting better at technical interviews was creating walk-throughs of problems I struggled with. Thanks for the great read and for helping to kick off my sof…

Hey, it sounds like you're still programming. Glad to hear it's going well!

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#15

Post by sam537 »

I don't understand any of the specialized concepts in this blog post but I am no stranger to this:

"Under pressure, my mind, like a cart on a well-worn path, finds the same old ruts. Once again, writing breaks this cycle because it requires more active participation."

Being in medicine, I sat on a paper for over a month because I knew that on the last week I would be able to just jump-start writing in the same way I have done so for the last few years. It is embarrassing to think that in any realm of science there is this autonomic system that just takes over when the deadline draws near and poorly thought and researched concepts full of jargon fill the pages.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#16

Post by freehunter »

cushychicken wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a blog, but I find it much, _much_ easier to write comments here on HN. And I greatly improved my electronics knowledge through answering questions on electronics.stackexchange. There are some important questions which are easy to phrase but hard to answer. One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". I al…

One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". Ha! I'm just starting to grasp that - been going through chapter 8 of Art of Electronics, 3rd Ed . Getting a hard and fast education on noise. Shot noise is fascinating. I still don't have a great mental model to compare it to. The closes I've come is dripping water vs a con…

If I get into a long conversation on HN I usually turn it around and make it into a blog post, cleaning up the arguments and discussion. I only write for myself and don’t publicize my personal blog but I’ve had some of those then turn around and be posted back to HN by someone else which becomes an interesting lifecycle of internet arguments :)

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#18

Post by pdm55 »

_fbpt wrote: post #7
kingsara wrote: post #6

Great article and very concise. I've found myself and my writing "addiction" represented. There are many concepts I couldn't grasps until I tried to put them to paper. On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? I've been looking to find a simple theme and this (or something similarly minimalist and text-focused) would be perfect for my needs.

This seems to be a static site generator. http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2020/01/12/why-research-blo... has a HTTP header last updated on 01/13/2020 04:34:31. http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2019/12/23/random-fourier-f... is 01/13/2020 04:34:30, or 1 second earlier. Also the source code has a link to http://gregorygundersen.com/css/markdown.css which 404's.

For his css files try http://gregorygundersen.com/css/ Better still try his GitHub https://github.com/gwgundersen especially his notebook software https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#19

Post by gwgundersen »

kingsara wrote: post #6

Great article and very concise. I've found myself and my writing "addiction" represented. There are many concepts I couldn't grasps until I tried to put them to paper. On a different note: does anyone happen to know if that's a standard Wordpress theme? I've been looking to find a simple theme and this (or something similarly minimalist and text-focused) would be perfect for my needs.

I just use Jekyll to build a static site (Markdown + MathJax). I wrote the HTML/CSS myself, but maybe I can put the "theme" on GitHub later today.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#20

Post by AstralStorm »

cushychicken wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a blog, but I find it much, _much_ easier to write comments here on HN. And I greatly improved my electronics knowledge through answering questions on electronics.stackexchange. There are some important questions which are easy to phrase but hard to answer. One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". I al…

One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". Ha! I'm just starting to grasp that - been going through chapter 8 of Art of Electronics, 3rd Ed . Getting a hard and fast education on noise. Shot noise is fascinating. I still don't have a great mental model to compare it to. The closes I've come is dripping water vs a con…

A great analogy would be rain vs shower. Rain is shot noise, shower is AWGN.
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