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LrsResearchProject

LrsReflectionsProject

LrsWritingPresentationProject

LrsResearchPresentations

2007-04-25

Problem Follwo system: how I would build a research agenda

• Kevin Chang
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/probfollowsys-kcchang.ppt

Big idea - you should have a 5 year plan/vision. You should have a goal, a philosophy, and an agenda

• the biggest challenge is finding the right problem.
• What question should my gropu be answering?

• system software research is irrelevant
  • rob pike
  • bell labs
  • Lucent Technologies.

• Toto, We're not in kansas anymore
  • Mike Carey

• metrics are off
  • # of publications
  • # of citations
• goal then becomes to optimize publications
  • but publications are just an end to communicating our ideas.

• put presentation materials with posting of the paper, encourages others to talk about your work.

• how to do systems work
  • system - identify a system that is useful and novel
  • insight - spike a v0.1 to see promisses and issues
  • problem - abstract the challenging problems
  • publication - solve the problems. publish
  • product - build the system. Deploy.

• Have an exit strategy for your work. Get real world impact.

• ask yoruself why you do researhc
• set the right metrix of success-- you define it
• aim high and aim right-- the rest will come naturally.

2007-04-13

http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/ResearchHowTo1.pdf

• Question for PHDs- do you feel like something is missing if you are not active in research?
• if so, what drives you to research?
  • impact-based (me)
  • quantity-based
  • processed based
    • solving problems

• what kind of research style?
  • salesman
    • I have an idea to see. What's the martek segment where if can make the most impact?
  • consultant
    • Focus on problem P from company X. How do I solve P?
  • matchmaker
    • idea A in field X is relly good math to problem B in field Y. Apply A to B.
  • journalist
    • what is hot today? Let's do it!
    • BAD

• Good slide about salesmanship versus consultant
  • are finding problems challenging?
  • are finding solutions challenging?

• What makes you thrive? Freedom or constraints?
  • easier to get lots with freedom
  • constrains are more challenging to work with

• Fake Claivoyance
  • look at what major funing angencies are goign to fund (www.fedbizopps.gov)
  • DARPA BAAs
  • gives you 2 years of lead time.
  • national academy of science.

ieee spectrum otehr hihg level publications

• Fake creativity
  • be a matchmaker
  • distill common assumptions
  • web servers as capactiors

• fake productivity
  • have collaborators
  • help N otheres with their papers, they will reciprocate
  • get more co-authorship

• brush up on your college math

• find green pastures
  • break fundamental assumptions

• get ahead of the curve
  • searhc for changes that entail paradigm shifts
    • moore's law? Implications?
  • be aware of disruptive technology
    • wimax, cognitive radio
  • be aware for fundamental theoretical breakthroughs?
    • network coding?

• have a non-collaborative track

• get a feel for the community
  • papers are not enough
  • must go to conferences
  • must talk to people about your work and theirs

• do not be a follower
  • do not invest time entering an already hot area

• don't invest all your time in one thing. Diversify!

2007-04-06

How to Learn to Write

• Ralph Johnson
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/LearningToWrite.ppt

• Becoming a good researcher takes time and practice.
• This talk is on techniques you can use and habits to form so you'll eventually become a good writer.

• How to be good at anything
  • practice
  • get feedback
  • get coaching
  • watch others
  • reflect
  • experiment
  • read books

• Writing is hard
  • different writing styles
  • dont know audience
    • doctors prefer using passive voice.
  • hard to get feedback
    • hope that you get bad feedback. That way you can improve.
  • ideas are difficult and unformed

• How to Learn hoe to write
  • make a schedule that ensures you will constantly practice writing
  • make sure you get feedback
  • study good examples of withing
  • read what other have to say about writing.

• practice
  • make a schedule that ensures you will constantly practice writin
    • work 2 hours per day on writing your thesis
    • have a blog, spend 5 hours a week on it
    • have a journal, spend an hour a day with it.
  • always have a current writing project
  • every so often, ecaluate yor schedule

Feedback

• from target audience
  • network
  • make a mailing list of interested people
    • This is a good idea, we should set this up with the other first year students.
• from colleagues
  • trade papers with students
    • workshops are a part of this, this is also a good idea.
  • never submit a paper that has not been reviewed by your friends
• from a coach

• dont need to worry about getting your ideas stolen!!
• you should be worried that people will ignore you. DON'T LET THAT HAPPEN!
• most papers get ignored. 25% only have 2 citations

Study Good exmples

• study the literatiure and collect best papers
• look at all the papers in a conference/journal for five years
• join a reading group
• give feedback on other's papers
  • review papers for friends
  • revies papers for people working in the same area
  • review papers for conferences and journals

Read about writing

• "style: towards clarity and grace" by Joseph William
• "bugs in writing: guide to debugging your prose" by Lyn Dupre

Johnson is good at figuring out what people are saying and why they are saying it.

2007-03-14

• Computer science Community of practice
• Tanya L Crenshaw
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Crenshaw_COP_03_2007.PDF

• Phd. attrition rates are high.
• skills you learn in phd are a subset of what you need in order to succeed as a faculty

• keep a look out for Mary Beth Wade and Grreg Lambeth.
• EOL 585, college teaching and academic careers
• CTEN - College Teaching Effectiveness Network
  • http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/CollegeTeachingEffectivenessNetwork/

Name the research topcis of tehee prople at UIUC, not in your area

• fo to the FE an d meet someone new.
• help with the prospecitive students visit
• ask a fist year our to dinner with you research group
• have a conversation with a distinguished faculty about your area.

---

• Jim Frost
• CORE method by Jim Killingsworth
• iterative refinement of papers.
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Core_Method_Writing.doc
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Basic_Prose_Style_and_Mechanics.htm

• define the question your research seeks to anser
• witre a core docment
• review and revise
• perform the research project.
• review your research dinings
• werite secon core docuement.
• develop graphics
• give oral briefinf
• review an drevise
• write full draft.
• rview and resie
• edit
• deliver

Summarize things on one page. That way you can get early and quick feedback. Gives you the abiltiy to talk about your topic quickly.

Can you justify your work in 30 seconds?

write one sentence on each question in the shaw paper.

Identify who is doing what before you begin.

Know what the journal is accepting. use the analogy of joining a ocnversation, you always listen before you chime in.

---

The following model is adapeted from the core method developed by Jimmie Killingsworth in this book Information in Action . The model is designed to increase the writer's efficency by offering multiple points for review and revision. This keeps the writer from straying too far from thiwr purpose as well as the needs fo their audience. The Core Method is particularly effective for handling large writing projects. I have adapted it to fit the proces of writing Software Engineering Research Papers.

Writing should begin before research begins

1. Define the questions your research sees to answer (derived from Mary Shaw)
2. Answer all the questions on NewProjectChecklist with one sentence answers
3. Prepare a 30 second defense of your project.
4. Write a Core document summarizing your answers to the questions in step 2
5. Review and revise
6. Create your hypothesis.
7. write how each of your experiements will answer ResearchFindingsChecklist? .
8. plan figures for the data so you know what to collect
9. Perform research+collect data.
10. Goto step 5 if your findings surprise you. KEEP DETAILED NOTES OF THIS
11. Review your research findings: Answer questions on ResearchFindingsChecklist? with one line answers.
12. Write seconds (post research) core document
    • Summarize your answers to ResearchFindingsChecklist?
    • Identify who is producing the document (for collaborations)
    • Write towards your intended audience
    • Write a 1-2 page document that answers the above
13. give oral presentation on work
14. review and revise
15. Write full draft
16. make changes on the global view of the project, reorganization edit.
17. make sentence level changes to the document
18. publish!

Tips to improve as a writer:

• What erros an I prone to?
  • spelling?
  • skip words when I read?
• TIP: read article backwards, sentence by sentence
  • forces you to decide if each sentence can stand on it's own merit.
• TIP: make outlines from existing good papers.
• Shouw we formally outline our papers before writing them? Yes!
• Read papers similar to what you are writing
• outlines -> headings
  • use lists where appropriate
• answer different kinds of questions in each section.
• Produce documents that people can use

2007-03-09

having fun in research

• Yuanuan Zhou
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/YYFunInResearch.ppt

selecting fun research areas

• match your research interests
• common mistakes
  • limit yourself only within your comfortable zone
  • match your interest passion
  • don't limit yourself to a comfortable zone.
  • consider only the ultimate researhc goal but ignore
    • research reality
    • research methodology
  • consider only job opportunities
  • follow the trend -- hot areas

be adventurous in your research

• goal is to fine out the unknown
• propose new (maybe weird) solutinos
• junp into area unkown to you
• do this, an you won't get bored.

• do you advocate breath versus depth
  • don't switch around, but don't be scared to switch
• how do you get started in a new area very quickly?
  • work on a project.
• best approach, own a project or small groups?
  • first one or two years?
    • try out various areas
    • learn the student
    • see their passion/strengths
    • student learns how to resesarch
    • meet with the student and suggest a bigger program.

technology vesus problem driven research

• opinion: identifying problem is more important tha finding the solutions.
• define your problem extent carefully. Not too big, not to small.

GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN A FIELD

Defining the solution

• make the problem concrete
  • start with particulars, then generalize.
  • start with assumptions, then remove them.
• know what makes the problem hard
  • "why couldn't we just..."
  • saying why is the most important factor.
• identiy th stardard of success
  • how will you know when you are done?
  • how to distinguish a good solution from a less good solution?

She setup a study group with her students?! Awesome!

• Feasibility analysis
  • find out the potential in a quick way. Prototype for a month.
  • know what your best case and expected results.
  • helps set a plan for the project.
• talk with otehr people
• divide and conqueor
  • make concrete progress every week.
• be proud of your ideas!

I need better direction from my professor. I need to find someone very very smart (like her.)

work party -- throw a party if everyone is working together for a deadline.

eight ways to destroy the fun of team research

• fight for credits/author order
• not supportive
• over defensive
• command each other
• no communication
• blame each other
• passive waiting for tasks
• never compromise

writing is fun (?!)

• writing helps you refine ideas
  • writing should be done in papalled with design, impementationa nd experiments
• writing helps you comunicates ideas
  • in most cases, you'll find that your advisor has totally different views fo the project.
• wrte your implementation before you start, then put things that come up during the implementation in your implementation so you don't forget.
• write your results section before you collect results. Use empty figures. This way, you know what to collect.

add fun analogies in your talk.

• explain things in an easy way. show your insight.

if you arenot haingi fun in resesarch now, ask yourself

• are you werking on an area tha tyou feel passionate?
• are you working on a fun problem?
• are you dOing it alone?
• have you seen any promsing results?
• do you see th impact of your research?

	enjoy	don't enjoy
tenure	+++	+
no tenure	+	---

2007-03-02

How do i start building a research career? ( for Ph.D. students.)

• indranil gupta
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Indy.pdf

Quality is just as important as quantity

• don't write your paper in isolation.
• work with lots of faculty
• talk to older grad students
• talk to people in lots of areas
• don't try to publish in top conferences with out help.
• don't be ambitious without support and help
• collaborate with people

• find one thing that you like to work on
• then diversify
• over time, find your niche
• dont stagnate

which conferences do I submit to

• good but reasonable ones.
• don't submit just for kicks.
• ask you advisor.

peer to peer areas

• childhood: 2-3 years
• adolescent: 3-4 years
• middle: 10 years
• old: forever.

diversify

• no rules
• work with other faculty members
• perhpas outside your area, but not too outside
• prepare to diversify in yoru fourth year
• CS evolves so fast! Prepare to change.

go work in a research lab!

• conferences vesus resesach labs
• get good letter writers.
• make sure you'll be doing publishible work
• "Can i publish without any references to your company?"

%DRAWING{indygraph}%

lifetime of a phd student.

• solve these problems yourself
• identrify problems in it.
• understand it yourself
• pcik an arbitrary area

2007-02-28

Get ready for a presentation on our writing. READ MARY SHAW'S PAPER!

Address the expectations of your audience. Every slide introduces expectations. Address those expectations.

• table gives you the big picture, but it's too busy
• going research area by research area gives you a path, but misses the picture.

If you don't immediately demonstrate that you know the state of the art, then no one will pay attention to you. Talk about a wild success, then address it's limitations.

Make a clear (bold) substantiable claim.

2007-02-21

Miscellaneous

• Ralph Johnson on 2007-04-06. Need to read tha software engineering paper on how to write papers.
• Lui Sha would like us to attribute how the talks that we've seen are improving our lectures/research projects.

Evaluation chart

• project idea
• dependent theory
• how well explored is the topic.
• difficulty
  • for community
  • for you
• research versus development
• impact - hihg medium low
• prerequisites - dependencies amongst your categories.

Things to think about

• human resources
• focus focus focus.
• reserach impact vs. necessity for project development.
• is it state of the art?

• 2-3 slides
• 15 minutes
• one slide on how you've improved.

2007-02-09

• Who: Klara Nahrstedt
• what: Oral communications
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Klara-02-07.pdf

• simplify
• repeat main idea
• Meharbian: communication theorist
  • Body language: 55%
  • tone of voice: 38%
  • Actual words: 7%
• think about your audience.

• breathe from your diaphram.
• tell your host you need 15 minutes to center yourself.
• practice (4-5 times)
• memorize yoru first and last few sentences.
• divert your nervous energy to helpful gestures and movements.
• dont walk back and forth
• don't fumble
• don't speak too nervously.
• visualize success.

• Opening:
  • should grab the audience's attention
  • dramatic, emitional humorous, rhetorical
• good
  • startling question
  • challenging statement
  • appropriate shrot quotation or illustration
  • a surprising generalization
  • an exhibit -- object article picture
• bad
  • no apologies.
  • stale remoark
  • statement of objective
  • unrelated joke
  • self introduction

• closing
  • accent speech objectives
  • leave with something to remember.
  • closing is the whip cracker, the clincher the result getter.
• good
  • call of appeal for definite action
  • appropriate short quotation of illustration
• bad
  • commonpace statement
  • apology
  • trite remarks
  • solicitation of questions. (!!)

Presentation strategyes

• deductive
  • used to present good news, routine statements
  • present main idea
  • give supporting detail
  • recap
• Inductive
  • used to present bad news
  • hint towards main idea
  • details of main idea
  • recap
• OIBCC - basif formula
  • opening, grab attention
  • introduction
  • body - bulk of presnetation
  • concludtion - summarize
  • close.
• PREPY
  • for persuasive talks.
  • point of view
  • reasons
  • examples/evidence
  • point of view restated
  • "You" oriented - urge audience to take action.

• Adults absorb
  • 10% of what they read,
  • 20% of what they hear
  • 30% of what they read and hear
  • 50% of what they hear and see
  • 90% of what they do

introduce next visual before it is displayed.

• 14 lines per visual
• title every slide
• simple readable labels
  • class: 20-25pt
  • lecture hall: 30-32-pt
• readable from the rear
• no more than 3-5 points.

• consistant visuals
• use colors appropriately
  • Never use RED for your main text
  • green to highlight
  • red to highlight problem areas
  • Blue and Black most readable.

• eye contact is important
  • distrust created if not maintainted.
• facial expression
  • must match your message.
• gestures
  • weight
  • shape
  • direction
  • importance
  • comparison
  • contrast

• volume should be varied in strength and intensity
• err on the side of loud
• convey life color, melody.
  • down, up, stress
  • don't vary too much.
• speak about 120-160 words a minute
• important to pause.

conference presentations

• 15-20 min presentations
• no more than 4-5 points
• audence expects only highlights
• should include
  • statement of research problem (grabber)
  • reserach methodology
  • review of results
  • conclusions
  • future applications
• end goals
  • review research
  • stimulate thought

technical briefings

• provides pertinent facts in such a way that the audience can grasp them freely
• purpose must e statend in a single sentence.
• don't waste people's time.

non technical audience

• goal: unravel mysteries for audience.
• how you present information is more important than content.
• begin by capturing attention and interest
• speaker must relate topic to audience interest.
• short crisp sentences with active verbs
• make heavy use of exampes, analogies metaphres comparisongs
• avoid jargon

team presentation

• presentation msut be unified.

Hierachichal talks -- organize based on a tree. If you run out of time, you can prune the tree. Be sure to have good transition slides so you can still transition effectively.

2007-02-09

• Feb 26: Klar
• Mar 2: Indy
• Mar 9: YY
• mar 30: Jiawei
• apr 4: Kevin
• apr 13: ---

• %ATTACHURL*/L2_07.pdf

How to identify good topics

• Revise presentations on trends and challenges, present them in 5 min
• list and then characterze the different features and attributes of the chalenges
• analyse the nature of each challenge.
• estimate the impacts and the nature of difficulties

Useful heuristing: build a system description table (???)

Look deeper into the challenges

• what can be solved by current technology?
• what needs to be invented?
• what is the estimated effort?
• what is the key factor that makes a result significant?
• Separate research problem from research problem

Estimate the impacts

• what are the chategories of restach and their' risks/impacts
  • new directions, unificatoin/integration/ broa applicability, imcremetal improvements

Look ahead into the future

• what are teh new and exciting aplication scenarios that established tehcnologies stop working
• what will the future technology enable
• what is impossible, and what can be formulated into a similar and solvable problem
  • understand the true nature of constraints and

Separate the hard constranits form the soft ones.

• Expand into a Family of Solutions
  • a group of solutions where eachmember is compleneted and reinforced with each other.
    • what are their intrinsic chatacteristics?
    • what are their strength and linitations
• layout an elegant architecture
  • use strengths of members.

2007-02-07

http://ademus05.livejournal.com/120978.html

• P.R. Kumar
• What: On conducting research
• http://black.csl.uiuc.edu/~prkumar
• http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Kumar-Lecture.pdf

• how do I deal with the expectations of constant publication?

• advice: get theoretical depth FIRST (purpose of quals)
  • graph theory - with Doug West
  • combinatorics - good theorist
  • analysis 540
  • prob theory -

• read clasic originals: more ideas than compactified presentations in textbooks, exposes
• Blackwells' origial papers in dynamic programming
• shannons' or inginal papers on imformation theory

• need to learn how to assimilate a field all by yourself.

• finding the problem is 90% of the problem
• what is reh field really about? Find the issues? What is the bottleneck, what is solvable, what is known/unknown, why?

• need to be highly motovated to do research

• conferences tell you what is unknown, books tell you what is known.

• only consider an academic job if research doesn't stress you out.
  • roughly produce one phd thesis a year.
  • if it's not a good fit for you, you will suffer.
  • be honest with yourself
  • be willing to spend all you time on research for the next eight years.

• finding the right problems is the most difficult part
  • inventors are people that can see problems that other people can't
  • work with people who have problems

• Quality of papers most important
  • You will alwasy be remembered because of your best work.

• I need to be sitting in on more advanced courses, because they are more like discussions on what is not known.

• you mentioned that now that you are a ful professor, you have much more taste in papers than you did when beginning your graduate career.
  • is that healthy or desirable?
  • Would better taste in knowing what to read be more helpful fro beginning students?
  • if so, what are some of the components of that taste.
• it depends, put the short answer is to mix things up. Don't get so picky that you price yourself out. Goldbach conjecture, Einstien and unified theory, etc.

• READ John Von Neumann, the Mathematician.

2007-02-02

Technical communication:

• center frame of reference is not yourself, but the audience.
  • figure out the message, limit time spent per message.
  • know the mentality of the reviewers.

Important research changes the direction of the area.

2007-01-31

• use examples to illustrate open research problems.

2007-01-26

State of the Union: state of current research efforts in parallel computing.

• find the problems of significant in your field.

by the end - submit constructive criticisms. Summarrize and email to lrs@uiuc.eud

-- papers must appeal to the general audience -- good genreal purpose algorithms exist for load balancing -- ask aaron from omre information. -- special prupose hardware for floating point operations -- if you don't have time to explain something, skip it.

2007-01-24

Look at the NSF page, see what the calls for proposals are.

Lui Shaw wses cognitive dissodence to creat effect and impact.

Cone of Learning (Edgar Dale)

After 2 weeks, we tend to reemember

Passive learing

• 10% of what we read
• 20 % of what we hear
• 30% of what we see
• blah blah blah

Active learing is better.

• saying something -- 70% remember

Seminal works: Bloom and Edgar Dale

• Gifts -- I'm good at holding complex systems in my head and analyzing them. I'm good at math, I can synthesize new ideas. I'm good at software because I can understand large blocks of code and understanding it's stucture.
• interests -- inventing. I am interested in creating ideas and artifacts that make the worlda better place to live.
• societal needs - ???

put old technology in a new situation and show that established theories don't hold any longer. Take things out of their domain, look for new ways to combine things.

• new directions
  • challenging long held beliefe and poneering a new path
• broad applicability
  • for the further development of the theory
  • for soving paractical problems
• unification / integration
  • proving a unifying structure or theory and give deeper understanding to seemingly diversified approaches
• advancement along an established line of inquiries

learn what mekse a classic paper

• state of research prior to the classic paper
• the impacts made by the classic paper
• compare the classic paper with good papers

Examples:

• On the cirteria to be used in decomposing ssytems into nodules David L Parnas CACM, Vol 15, No 12, Dec 1972
• Public Key cryptography, R L Rivest, 1979

understanding is an act that builds a bridge between what yoru audience already kno to what they need to know

people remember more in embarrassing situations

and ideal presentation is one that is informative, interesting, and insightful.

2007-01-17

https://agora.cs.uiuc.edu/display/cs598lrs/Home

• by 2007-01-19
  • say a few words about yourself
  • wht is your goal in research
  • what do you expedt from this class
  • summarize it an email it ot the proessor a lrs@uiuc.edu, so that he can structure this class best to serve your interest.
  • if you are registered for the course, place your self-introduction on the course website

• by 2007-01-26
  • read all about cyber-physical systems (nsf workshops)

things that he likes: we're going to be the first, we're going ot be fantastic, and people are going to follow us.

Identify key people in a field, place your research against theirs. Better than reading all papers.

Pick a few conferences that are in yoru field, then go to them again and again.

http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/Research.pdf

2007-01-19

John Von Neumann -- The mathematician, 1957

Big idea: show the limitations in well-established science and overcome them.

• Quest for fundamental understandng
  • pure basic research (Bohr)
• Consideration of use
  • Pure applied research (Edison)
• both
  • use-inspired basic research (Pasteur)

http://wiki.rblake.net/pub/Rob/ClassCs598LearningResearch/L1_Intro_07.pdf