General Research

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Contents

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Research Strategies

  • Work on some hard task. Find out what the real problems are. Figure out what the abstract/general problem is. Develop appropriate computer science to solve the general problem.
  • Talk to people and find out what frustrates them.
  • Study people to see where they lose productivity.
  • Look at research in a hot area. Look for missing parts, or problems with the current approaches. Be careful to talk to those people at conferences to make sure they aren't working on your idea already.
  • Avoid associating yourself with a buzzword area. Avoid fields that are heavily worked over. Avoid subjects in which others have a large lead on you.
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Doing Research

  1. What is the problem?
  2. Is it interesting and relevant? Why should I care?
  3. What is your approach (your "neat idea")? How is your approach novel? Is it feasible? Can you provide an illustrative example?
  4. What claims do you make?
  5. What work did you do?
  6. What are the data?
  7. How does your approach compare to the previous state of the practice?
  8. What other research has influenced your work?
  9. How does it scale? Is it generalizable?
  10. How will you know when it's time to stop?
  11. What aren't you doing?
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Writing Good Papers and Presentations

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Version Control

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Makefiles

Dr. Coppit has prepared a very easy to use makefile for code, as well as one for latex documents.

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Miscellaneous

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