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How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

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Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#81

Post by shivajikobardan »

wolverine876 wrote: post #61
N1H1L wrote: post #41

For journal papers I get you completely dude. I am a PhD, and now a research scientist. Reading and writing journal papers is what I have been doing for close to a decade now - and yet to really get a paper - I often have to dedicate two-three days to that paper. Many people in my field say that they have read a paper, but from my experience all they have done is read the abstract and the figure captions. That's not…

> the work in the paper often took several months, and then a few more months to write, revise and polish it. It literally condenses one to two man-years worth of acquired knowledge in 10 pages - it should not shame you then that it takes a few days for you to digest it all. Essential point, but in the interest of practicality: is there a way such knowledge could be communicated more efficietly?

I think they could be translated to slides and videos, but researchers don't have time to do that...

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#82

Post by ironmagma »

I was a very slow reader in college and found out later, after speaking to an eye doctor, that I had BVD (binocular vision disorder) which has a symptom of patients needing to read and reread text many times (in addition to general anxiety and walking problems, oddly). After getting corrective (prism) lenses my reading life improved drastically as well as a lot of other things. What's crazy to me is that I had no idea my eyes were pointing in different directions. How many people must go undiagnosed? Anyway, maybe something to look into.

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#83

Post by sogen »

pyuser583 wrote: post #39

I strongly suggest “How to Read a Book” by Adler. It’s an excellent discussion of types and levels of reading. When faced with a large, imposing text, my method is: 1. Read the title page, table of contents, index, and introduction several times. This should make it clear what the book is about and how it’s structure. 2. Read it straight through from start to end. No notes. Don’t worry about not understanding. Intell…

Thanks!

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#84

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

shivajikobardan wrote: post #73
r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #17

Back when I was a TA if a student had come to me with the problem you are describing and the compensatory technique you are using I'd tell them they might have mild to moderate dyslexia. If you're a university student you probably have access to a student support service that can assess you and advise you if that is the case. In the mean-time some people find using the [1] OpenDylsexic typeface helps and coloured ove…

I definitely agree with this. I might have dyslexia of some sorts. But my psychaitrist rejects that idea as I could read books easily in the past(when the books contained numbers)...I am medicating for schizoid personality disorder as it seems so idk if that is affecting me..sizodon, proate, and zosert are the medications that I am using currently.

Could be, a lot of meds can effect your ability to concentrate. A psychiatrist will tend to see everything through a psychiatry lens. Sure dyslexia and mental illness are both brain related but psychiatrists generally only deal with the second, so that is where they will first look for an answer. Get tested anyway as it can't hurt.

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#85

Post by N1H1L »

wolverine876 wrote: post #61
N1H1L wrote: post #41

For journal papers I get you completely dude. I am a PhD, and now a research scientist. Reading and writing journal papers is what I have been doing for close to a decade now - and yet to really get a paper - I often have to dedicate two-three days to that paper. Many people in my field say that they have read a paper, but from my experience all they have done is read the abstract and the figure captions. That's not…

> the work in the paper often took several months, and then a few more months to write, revise and polish it. It literally condenses one to two man-years worth of acquired knowledge in 10 pages - it should not shame you then that it takes a few days for you to digest it all. Essential point, but in the interest of practicality: is there a way such knowledge could be communicated more efficietly?

> Essential point, but in the interest of practicality: is there a way such knowledge could be communicated more efficiently?

Papers could be restructured better in my opinion. Journal papers are still written as if they are for a print magazine - hyper tight and page constrained. Print scientific journals are basically dead, so why write them like that? The supplemental information should be a part of the main paper.

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#86

Post by rramadass »

hprotagonist wrote: post #7

https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape... Keshav knows what’s up. I tend to read the abstract, figures and captions, conclusion. Then i know if it’s worth really reading it, at which point i print it out and break out a pen. if it’s really REALLY worth reading, ipython usually comes out to play, too

+1

The same technique with necessary modifications is also applicable to figuring out whether it is worthwhile to completely Read a Book. These days Books have so much unnecessary filler that a lot can be skipped with no loss of information/knowledge.

PS: The same author has also written two great books on Computer Networking; 1) An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking 2) Mathematical Foundations of Computer Networking

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#87

Post by waoush »

baby wrote: post #23
awild wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should not take someone a week to read a research paper. Depending on the paper maybe a day but usually a few hours. Carefully studying it is something else and that might take a week, but not every paper needs that kind of attention and it's a valuable skill to learn skimming and differentiating between un-/valuable and un-/interesting papers.

> It should not take someone a week to read a research paper Either you have never read a research paper, or you are gifted, or you have been doing that for so long in your field that you forgot how hard it can be when you start.

I took a graduate-level reading course where the point was to critically read and discuss two research papers per week. These were research papers at top computing conferences in areas related to IoT.

You definitely don't need a week for just one paper. I wasn't even a graduate student. Papers are usually around 16 pages. It would take me a good 4-5 hours to read and digest things, and even longer when it was my turn to present a paper, but never an entire week... Professors go over these things even faster.

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#88

Post by warrenm »

Lots of great advice already - here's what I do

First, I was introduced to this "type" of reading at a fairly young age (early-mid teens), so I've got over a quarter century of practice

The key to reading these types of things are threefold, imo:

- skim for major topics - don't try to "understand" yet

- read it as if it were of interest to you - you'll pick up a few things you didn't when skimming, but more importantly you'll become pretty familiar with the writing style employed, the author's/authors' voice, and be able to "guess" where they're going next (because you skimmed it already (right?), and actually do have an inkling of where it's going)

- convert it into something you want to impart to someone else - all learning is self-learning (https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/dsps/article/2...), and you don't really understand something until you can teach it to someone else

A bonus tip:

- read lots of similar[ish] types of materials to get the best understanding you can (or, at least, up to what you actually want to have)

Practice doesn't make perfect. But, if you plan it, it can make you proficient :)

Re: How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?

#89

Post by barrenko »

free-malloc wrote: post #70
barrenko wrote: post #21

Practice. And take it easy at first. I started reading them in the bathroom :).

This. Every academic field has its own language, culture, and body of knowledge it regards as "fundamental." To go from reading English to reading a CS paper involves learning these. And this takes a metric fuck ton of practice. There is no royal road. IMO, you should probably start with easier material until you strengthen these muscles. Some examples of friendly CS texts that comes to mind are Programming Pearls, t…

The McCarthy paper on Lisps is also interesting and reasonably easy to follow (I'm not even a CS student).

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html

Full title is - Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine.

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