1. Be more selective on reading papers and books. The game of scientific research is a constrained optimization problem – maximize your productivity (in terms of both quality and quantity) subject to certain time constraint. This time constraint simply dictates that you need to more carefully think about how you want to spend your time. [...]
Archive for the ‘tips’ Category
Tips for my students (I)
Posted in tips on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Order from Noise (Fluctuation)
Posted in tips on January 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What is common between mind and universe? You might be surprised by the astonishingly similarity between their topology (network or neurons vs. network of galaxies) though they belong to two highly contrasting scales. If there is a grand law governing the evolution of everything including life, intelligence and cosmos, such law must be the simplest [...]
Characteristics of high-impact research in Computer Science and Engineering
Posted in tips on December 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
What kind of research has a high impact?
0. Discovery-type: Small-world/scale-free networks, Kleiberg’s Authoritative sources, self-similarity of internet traffic, emergent property of social, economic and biological systems.
If Old One creates this world by a simple rule, discovery of this rule is the holy grail of all scientists. The rule is there – just go and [...]
What I have learned from “poor-quality” PDF files?
Posted in tips on December 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
For a long time (at least a year), I was bothered by a problem with some pdf files – they appear really lousy on my computer screen. Unless I zoom to >150% under Acroread, texts in those PDF files are just terrible – primarily due to aliasing. So I even had developed a habit of [...]
