how to read academic papers
DESCRIPTION
Reading academic papers is one of the most important parts of scientific research. However, junior graduate students may spend a lot of time learning how to read papers efficiently and effectively. In this talk, I will discuss some basic issues and introduce useful websites/tools/tips for paper reading.TRANSCRIPT
How to Read Academic Papers?
Jia-Bin [email protected]
http://jbhuang0604.blogspot.com/
January, 2011Taiwan
What this talk is about?Efficient and effective paper readingUseful websites, tools, tips you should knowA common sense talk
Paper reading and paper writing
"What’s the most resilient parasite?""An Idea.""A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An ideacan transform the world and rewrite all the rules."
Papers communicate ideasReading :: Writing = Extraction :: Inception
If You don’t read papers...
Outline
1 Deciding What to Read
2 Make the Best Use of Academic Resources
3 Reading for Breadth and Reading for Depth
4 Summary, Review, and Creative Thinking
Outline
1 Deciding What to Read
2 Make the Best Use of Academic Resources
3 Reading for Breadth and Reading for Depth
4 Summary, Review, and Creative Thinking
Deciding what to read
Why?Information explosion → too many papersOnly very few of them are helpful for your own research
Deciding what to read
How?Evaluate papers by their credibilitySelect papers by their relevance
Evaluate papers by credibility
How?Venue reputation (journal impact factor, conference ranking)Authors (who, affiliation, order, geneolgy)Completeness (reproducibility)
Select papers by relevance
The key questionWhy you want to read this paper? (What do you expect fromreading this paper?)
Select papers by relevance
Reasons to read papersGet to know a new problemDescribe current researchUnderstand a well-known algorithmFollow conventional experiment setupReplicate/extend the resultsLearn how to write
Get to know a new problem
Questions to askWhy is this problem important/hard?What is the problem setting? (input, output)Search : keywords + tutorial/lecture/course/video/introduction/wiki
Otherwise...
Describe current research
How?Find key papers and researchers in that areaSearch : keywords + survey/review/introduction
Understand a well-known algorithm
How?No need to read confusing technical papersSearch : keywords + tutorial/introduction/wiki
Follow conventional experiment setup
How?Each field has its own conventional experiment setup.
PSNR/Bit-Rate → image/signal compressionPrecision and recall/ROC curve → pattern recognition algorithmsConfusing/matching matrix → supervised/unsupervised learning
Search : keywords +experiment/setting/parameter/evaluation/quantitative/qualitative
Examples
PSNR-Bitrate ROC curve
Accuracy-Training size Confusion matrix
Replicate/extend the results
How?Papers may provide useful data (or state-of-the-art performance)and serve as building blocks in your researchSearch : keywords + suvery/review/benchmark/qualitative/study
Learn how to write
ResourcesThe Science of Scientific Writing by George Gopen, Judith SwanNotes on writing by Fredo DurandWriting Research Papers by Aaron HertzmanAdvice on Research and Writing at CMUHow to Get Rejected by Fabrice Neyret
Outline
1 Deciding What to Read
2 Make the Best Use of Academic Resources
3 Reading for Breadth and Reading for Depth
4 Summary, Review, and Creative Thinking
Make the best use of academic resources
Why?Well, I am a lazy graduate student...
Make the best use of academic resources
How?Seek other forms of research productStay updated
Seek other forms of research product
Publication may not be the only product of a research work.
What else?
Abstract Supplemental material
Presentation Demo video
Author webpage Project page
Code Dataset
Stay updated
How?Websites (research blog/preprint sites/author personal page)Mailing list subscription
Blog: a new research platform
ExamplesWhat’s new by Terence Tao, see also his google buzzGodel’s Lost Letter and P=NP by Dick LiptonMachine learning (Theory) by John LangfordNuit Blanche - compressive sensing newsScienceBlogs
Preprint: get access to the most up-to-date papers
ExamplesarXiv.org: e-prints in physics, mathematics, computer science,quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statisticsSciweavers: academic bookmarking networkResource for Computer Graphics/Vision by Ke-Sen HuangAuthor personal page
Mailing list subscription
ExamplesImageworld: announce worldwide events and academic vacanciesMIT CSAIL SeminarUC Berkely computer vision mailing list
Outline
1 Deciding What to Read
2 Make the Best Use of Academic Resources
3 Reading for Breadth and Reading for Depth
4 Summary, Review, and Creative Thinking
Reading for breadth
Build a frameworkWhat did they do? (by skimming abstract, introduction, headings,graphics, definitions, conclusions and bibliography)Decide whether to go on
Reading for breadth
Order mattersExtract the high-level idea first, then the details
Reading for depth
Challenge what you readHow did they do it?How can I apply their approach to my work?
Reading for depth
Scientific skepticismExamine the (implicit) assumptionsExamine the methodsExamine the statisticsExamine the conclusions
Examine the (implicit) assumptions
Questions to askDo their results rely on any assumptions about trends orenvironments?Are these assumptions reasonable?
Examine the methods
Questions to askDid they measure what they claim?Can they explain what they observed?Did they have adequate controls?Were tests carried out in a standard way?
Examine the statistics
Questions to askWere appropriate statistical tests applied properly?Did they do proper error analysis?Are the results statistically significant?
Examine the conclusions
Questions to askDo the conclusions follow logically from the observations?What other explanations are there for the observed effects?What other conclusions or correlations are there in the data thatthey did not point out?
Outline
1 Deciding What to Read
2 Make the Best Use of Academic Resources
3 Reading for Breadth and Reading for Depth
4 Summary, Review, and Creative Thinking
After reading the paper...
How?React to what you readCreative thinking
React to what you read
Taking NotesHighlight major pointsReact to the points in the paperConstruct your own exampleSummarize what you read
React to what you read
Analogy: Gram-Schmidt process
Papers :: Reading = Vectors :: Orthogonalization
Extract the “innovation" of the paper.
Creative thinking
ResourcesHow to come up with new research ideas by Jia-Bin HuangHow to invent? Raskar idea hexagon by Ramesh Raskar
Creative thinking
Five ways to come up with new ideasSeek different dimensionCombine two or more topicsRe-think the research directionsUse powerful tools, find suitable problemsAdd an appropriate adjective
One example - Content-aware image resizing[Avidan and Shamir SIGGRAPH 2007]
IdeaResize (reduce/expand) images while preserving the imagecontent.The dimension: space
Video retargeting[Shamir et al. SIGGRAPH 2008]
IdeaExtend dimensions from 2D image to 3D video: image resizing →video resizingThe dimension: space
Nonchronological video synopsis and indexing[Pritch et al. PAMI 2008]
IdeaResizing (reduce) the temporal dimension.The dimension: time
Data-driven enhancement of facial attractiveness[Leyvand et al. SIGGRAPH 2008]
IdeaReshape the face to enhance attractivenessThe dimensions: distances between facial feature points
Parametric reshaping of human bodies in images[Zhou et al. SIGGRAPH 2010]
IdeaReshape the human bodies in imageThe dimensions: human shape
Multi-operator media retargeting[Rubinstein et al. SIGGRAPH 2009]
IdeaCombine seam carving with cropping and scaling to producebetter results
Regenerative morphing[Shechtman et al. CVPR 2010]
IdeaCombine two different problem: image morphing + image resizing
A Comparative Study of Image Retargeting[Rubinstein et al. SIGGRAPH 2010]
IdeaProvide the comprehensive perceptual study and analysis ofimage retargeting
PatchMatch[Barnes et al. SIGGRAPH 2009]
IdeaAdd constraint into the resizing processAdjective: Constrained
Motion-aware video resizing[Wang et al. SIGGRAPH 2010] [Wang et al. SIGGRAPH Asia 2010]
IdeaExploit motion information for better video resizing qualityAdjective: Motion-aware
References
Paper readingHow to read a paper by S. KeshaHow to Read a Scientific Paper by John W. Little and Roy ParkerEfficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology byMichael J. HansonHow to read a research paper by Michael Mitzenmacher
ToolsPublish or Perish (a program that analyzes academic citations)Mendeley (Academic reference management software)VideoLectures.NET (Free on-demand educational video lectures)
For more complete materials and explanations, please visit my blogRedefining Open Mind: http://jbhuang0604.blogspot.com/