[HN Gopher] How to read research paper, textbook, long text cont...
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How to read research paper, textbook, long text content?
I can read less text content easily. my way of reading it is to
make slides of all those texts and learn from the slides. But I
have issue with reading huge huge texts as you know in this case it
will require too much time when I do this. Is there way to simplify
this reading style? eg-: of sth that I want to read is this.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... It
takes me 45 minutes to read 3 paragraph and comprehend it at least.
If I go that way, you can imagine, how long it takes me to read a
research paper. Probably a week to read a research paper lol. Even
reading articles in internet is a hassle for me if they are longer.
If I just read what I need to learn it is easy as it will be few
paragraphs but if I have to learn sth else long it is pain to me as
I can't do it timely manner. Are there any udemy courses that
teach how to read textbooks for university students that you are
aware of?
Author : shivajikobardan
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-01-08 13:12 UTC (1 days ago)
| chrip wrote:
| Check out the book "How to Read a Book" I found it to be a great
| help in reading and digesting texts.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| By Mortimer Adler.
|
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-to-read-a-book-the-art-of...
|
| https://archive.org/search.php?query=how+to+read+a+book+adle...
|
| https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=adler+how+to+read+a+book&lg...
| gnicholas wrote:
| If part of your issue is maintaining concentration when reading
| 'walls of text', you might try BeeLine Reader. [1]
|
| 1: http://www.beelinereader.com
|
| I'm the founder, and happy to give an extended free trial to any
| HNers!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It takes me 45 minutes to read 3 paragraph and comprehend it at
| least.
|
| Words per minute is a poor metric for judging your reading.
| Information density per word varies greatly, and if the
| information is new to you, it will take much more time.
|
| But why judge you reading ability at all? It takes the time it
| takes. While there are ways to speed it up a bit, the inescapble
| question is, what is worth reading during our short lives?
| ashish01 wrote:
| This might be helpful - How to Read a Technical Paper -
| https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~jason/advice/how-to-read-a-paper.htm...
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I think of myself as an AI/deep learning practitioner, definitely
| not a researcher.
|
| I am always on the lookout for papers that might help with
| something I need for work. I do a quick skim of papers and when I
| identify one or two that might be very useful, then I read them
| slowly and repeatedly. For me, the trick is finding material that
| is worth a lot of study time.
| dangom wrote:
| One should understand that not all processes in life take 45
| minutes. Learning meaningful content is like going to the gym or
| playing the piano - you cannot expect to see any meaningful
| results in a day. You'll have to put in the work for a very long
| time, but you'll get better at it as you go.
|
| Analogy aside, not all text is written to be read in a 45 min
| session. Set your mind that reading and absorbing content from a
| text book can take anywhere between 3 months to 3 years. Some
| concepts may take decades to really click in your mind. Luckily,
| the content in text books is usually broken down in chapters and
| sections for you, so consider each of those a "less text"
| content, and read "less text" every day. Set a goal of
| understanding a single section or chapter per day/week. At the
| end of a year you'll have read "long text" without ever reading
| much in a single reading session.
|
| Research papers can be read in anywhere from minutes to a couple
| weeks. But if you are new to the field, you may have to read them
| over and over, and that time can extend to months until you
| understand the implications of what is written.
|
| Don't rush it.
| awild wrote:
| 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.
| michael_nielsen wrote:
| Right - if the paper is really good, it might take a few
| years to understand.
|
| Most papers can be read in < 10 seconds ("not interesting,
| next"). Most pretty good papers can be read in 5-10 minutes.
| Very good papers might take a few hours. And so on.
|
| I'm caricaturing, but only a tiny bit, this is how I read.
| And for good stuff, that I want to understand, a page an hour
| is (often) pretty typical for my first fairly thorough read.
|
| I've written two textbooks, and in both cases I thought of
| the book as the distilled outcome from reading about a dozen
| very important papers really thoroughly
| obua wrote:
| I know you don't believe in formal logic, but maybe give
| this paper a chance:
| https://obua.com/publications/philosophy-of-abstraction-
| logi...
| LaserPineapple wrote:
| Can you say more about this? What accounts for the
| difference in time spent on a pretty good vs a very good
| paper? Is it that you find the material in a very good
| paper more worthwhile, and thus are willing to expend more
| effort to understand it?
| baby wrote:
| > 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.
| spidersouris wrote:
| Before arguing for or against this statement, perhaps we
| should precise what kind of research papers we're talking
| about. We're on HN, so I know most comments of this thread
| are dealing with scientific research papers; I'm a student
| in humanities myself, so I've never taken the time to
| analyze such papers and I am thus unable to defend or
| counter OP's claim on this particular question. However,
| their comment applies quite well to humanities. Except if
| you're totally unfamiliar with the subject, reading or
| understanding a humanitarian paper whether it be about
| linguistics, literature, history or whatnot should not take
| a week. Most papers are 20-page long and one day is far
| enough to analyze them. Some may take a bit longer, let's
| say a few days, if you want to catch and extract their very
| substance, but never much more than that. Counterexamples
| are welcomed.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| As a counterexample, this [0] was a paper that I read and
| summarized for some colleagues a while back. It's fairly
| related to my area of expertise, so I didn't find it too
| bad -- maybe a couple of hours to grok it and do a write-
| up.
|
| However, among my colleagues (all very talented in their
| own unrelated areas) it generated a fair amount of
| consternation, because although they had a week to read
| it, none of them felt like they had a good grasp of it
| until after I had presented it. The key takeaways that
| had jumped out at me immediately were lost in the noise.
|
| Whether or not a week is the right time, I can definitely
| empathize with taking more than a day to evaluate a
| paper, particularly in an area not very near to your own
| as there might be a lot of missing background to fill in.
| In contrast, my PhD advisor could flip through a paper in
| 30 seconds and pick up the key points it took me an hour
| to extract. In that sense, I really think that reading
| papers is a skill that can be trained.
|
| [0]: https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2020/13109/
| pdf/LIPI...
| woopwoop wrote:
| When I was in grad school, I took over a month to go through a
| single paper [0]. I wasn't taking long breaks, I was trying to
| make headway almost every day. This wasn't procrastination or me
| being a slow reader. I don't need months to read 70 pages. I do
| need months to read 70 pages when each page has ideas that
| require filling several blackboards to understand.
|
| [0] https://annals.math.princeton.edu/2005/161-1/p10
| imedadel wrote:
| Here's what I do: I start reading from the last paragraph.
|
| I can barely get myself to read anything long, even exams!
| Somehow, starting from the last paragraph, and sometimes even the
| last sentence, and going back, makes me actually read the text.
| This also worked with research papers (conclusion -> 1st
| paragraph). Maybe give it a try?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I do this too. There's something about reading things backwards
| that more actively engages and focuses my mind.
|
| It's partly because seeing the conclusions first triggers a
| "why", that I then have to go back and discover in the previous
| explanations. Most research papers put the final conclusions in
| the abstract, but each subsequent section and paragraph also
| ends with intermediate conclusions. Read those first, then go
| backwards to find out why.
|
| It's also partly because it forces my mind to actively
| rearrange the knowledge coming into it, rather than having it
| all neatly pre-arranged by the author.
|
| Maybe other things too, but for whatever reason it helps me be
| an active, rather than passive, reader.
| pizza wrote:
| Leave your phone at home, print out the material if it's not
| already on paper, and go to a library. Also bring a notebook and
| pen for scaffolding your understanding on paper. Make sure you
| have nothing you need to do afterwards or that you block out 2x
| the amount of time you think it will take, so there is no time
| pressure or need for you to be thinking about the other tasks you
| will need to get to. When you need to take a break, take it.
|
| And if it doesn't work out that particular day, that's fine too.
| Don't beat yourself up over it or try to force it. Just re-
| attempt pretty soon, like "later in the same day" soon, or "the
| following morning" soon- the key to more steady and fluid
| accomplishments of lots of little tasks is winnowing down the
| timeframe for little feedback loops.
|
| tl;dr: you already know everything you think you need to do it :)
| psychomugs wrote:
| Research papers demand more read-throughs compared to other
| genres. My fellow grad students had their own reading styles, but
| I think my approach was fairly typical:
|
| - Review: amass several papers related to the topic, either
| through search (e.g. Google Scholar) or through a survey paper on
| the topic.
|
| - Filter: read the abstracts and decide which papers are worth
| skimming.
|
| - Skim: read the introduction, skim the figures and their
| captions, and conclusion. This step is another filter; ask
| yourself whether diving into the technical minutia is worth it.
|
| - Read: read the paper in-depth, taking notes in your manner of
| choice (which seems to be slides for OP).
|
| - Reread: read and skim the paper a few more times until you
| could summarize it to someone else. Divorce yourself from the
| paper by reading other papers, and revisit it to contextualize
| its contribution.
| jll29 wrote:
| I upvoted the parent, and I would add another important step,
| namely:
|
| - Compare: read similar papers (such as papers trying to solve
| the same problem both before and after the current paper) to
| get a sense of the whole space and range of methods tried to
| date. Also, look what later papers say about the paper under
| scrutiny.
|
| Finally, reflect on how the various papers found in the
| 'Gather' phase related to each other: do they refine each
| other, refute, supersede etc.?
| a_e_k wrote:
| That's pretty close to my approach. I'd suggest not just
| limiting yourself to just the initial set of papers amassed in
| your "Review" step, though. Feel free to add new papers to your
| queue at any time if you come across an interesting term or
| citation. It's okay for this to be a breadth-first search.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I agree on this and definitely left this out, though I do
| find this step difficult - it's a recursive loop with a fuzzy
| stopping condition that can get pretty deep.
| vriesdejelmer wrote:
| Read with a purpose, why are you reading the paper? Make sure you
| have clear questions going in, else you are just reading for the
| sake of reading and it is tedious and wasteful. If you read with
| purpose you can be much more pragmatic. Read the abstract and the
| conclusion (or last part of the discussion). Have you obtained
| the answers you were looking for? Probably not completely, so
| what are you missing? Not convinced look, at the methods! Not
| understanding things properly, read the introduction! Doubting
| the conclusion, read the whole discussion. Does this mean you
| don't have to read the whole paper, probably not.... but it will
| make you comprehend the whole thing much better and still faster,
| because, like you indicate, comprehension is the issue, rather
| than the text length.
| karaterobot wrote:
| For non-fiction, I almost never read every word in order, from
| start to finish. I think about what question I want to answer,
| and how I can get that answer quickly. The table of contents
| tells you how the book is organized, and the index shows you
| what's in it. I usually look at those first, then flip to the
| parts I want to know about and read them.
|
| For research papers, I almost always start by reading the
| abstract and the conclusion, then reading related sections to
| answer questions I have about that. I'm not editing papers, or
| checking their validity: I just want to know what they're going
| on about.
|
| Another thing is to ask whether you're reading the right
| document. For that GFS paper, I wonder if it's the right place to
| start learning about GFS. Ideally, you'd come to it with enough
| knowledge already that you don't need puzzle over every word. Are
| there introductory explanations? Youtube videos? Go over those
| first and come back later, and the paper probably won't be as
| cryptic.
|
| For fiction, the best advice I ever got from an English
| professor, which changed my relationship with books, is this: if
| you don't like it, and nobody is making you read it, then stop
| reading it. Read something you can't put down instead.
|
| In general, I think you haven't actually read something until
| you've read it twice. So, read it through once quickly, to get
| the idea, then read it again more slowly to understand it.
| internetuser103 wrote:
| 15 minutes an hour + on the loo
| fedorova wrote:
| I am a scientist and I have to read sometimes hundreds of pages
| of dense scientific literature in a given week while doing other
| things that my job requires. I also find reading long difficult
| text to be hard. However, over the years I found two things that
| allowed me to get better at it:
|
| 1. Just read A LOT. There is no way around it. If you push
| yourself to do this, eventually your mind will figure out a way.
|
| 2. Markup the text you are reading. I do this on an iPad with a
| stylus. I underline key points, circle important paragraphs, jot
| down a quick summary of lengthy thoughts.
|
| Good luck!
| Frost1x wrote:
| >1. Just read A LOT. There is no way around it. If you push
| yourself to do this, eventually your mind will figure out a
| way.
|
| Part of what slows people down reading scientific papers is
| akin to that person's absorptive capacity. When you start
| reading something, you come in with a host of prior knowledge:
| terms, phrases, principles, etc that you know and understand.
| The more of these things you have when reading relevant to the
| piece you're reading, the more quickly you can read, digest,
| critize, etc.
|
| I've read this particular GFS paper a long time ago and this is
| a domain I can read through fairly rapidly (pro tip: read the
| abstract and conclusions first to make sure it's worth your
| time to read the meat of the paper given academic incentives to
| publish anything anymore).
|
| I've worked with some medical professionals doing work on
| partial arthroplasty related techniques (adding 3D volume
| reconstructive techniques) and the paper took me _forever_ to
| get through and contribute to because like you, every paragraph
| was me looking up medical terminology and trying to incorporate
| that into my baseline knowledge. My absorptive capacity was
| very low in that context.
|
| In general, the more generalized scientific knowledge you have,
| the easier it is to pickup and read these papers quickly (if
| they've been written for a general scientific audience). If
| they're CS papers, clearly CS foundations help (theory,
| nomenclature, current and past popular trends, etc.).
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| +1
|
| It's never easy but it gets easier. Do it a lot.
| atty wrote:
| Full agree on both points. I'd also add that if the papers are
| in any true experimental science field, a baseline
| understanding of probability and statistics will be necessary
| for the reader to really understand the results. For CS or
| theory papers, generally that is less or not necessary.
| argsv wrote:
| There are books are "smooth" readings. Page-turner as they say.
| And then there are other books that one feels like one is
| wrestling with the author. An example of the first category for
| me is "The C Programming Language" it's a great read, beautiful
| writing even if you're not interested in C. An example of the
| second category is "The Power of Habit". I couldn't finish it.
| The parts that I read could have been said in a paragraph or two
| but that would have resulted in an article and not a book; no
| gain in that, is there, sometimes I wonder.
| int_10h wrote:
| What really helped me was using the Zettelkasten system, as
| described in S. Ahrens "How to Take Smart Notes". I don't follow
| it exactly as described although the principles it describes were
| eye opeining to me.
| samus wrote:
| Research papers are supposed to be read in the following order:
|
| 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. Conclusions
|
| Skipping to the end sounds counter-intuitive, but it will prevent
| you from getting lost in the nitty-gritty details of the paper.
| It makes rarely sense to read a paper front-to-back in one
| session. You have to pace yourself. Also, if you don't know the
| domain that well, you will get lost in trying to understand the
| "basics" and will have difficulties in making use of the paper's
| contents.
|
| Similar for textbooks. Usually, an effort is made to structure
| them for learners, but they can't help but end up being reference
| works that require a study plan to really be of use.
|
| Time is usually too short to try to learn everything. Thus my
| recommendation is to decide what you really want to focus on, and
| create a study plan of sorts.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. Conclusions
|
| I know this is what students are told, but I rarely manage to
| understand the topic of a paper by reading the introduction and
| conclusion. Too many buzzwords. I usually look for the "big
| picture" in the literal sense (e.g. a figure showing the
| architecture the authors have designed etc.) and, life pro tip,
| the axes of the plots ("ah, there are doing something with
| latency and number of threads") :)
| TooLazyToPlay wrote:
| IMHO, reading just to know/remember/consume research paper,
| textbook or long text content is kinda unnatural. Usually, what I
| do is find a problem that I genuinely want to solve or a question
| I want to answer, then I'll read to find any information seem
| useful. If that information can solve my problem or lead me to
| right direction, I'll remember better and feel more natural.
| N1H1L wrote:
| 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 _reading a paper_.
|
| Think of it this way - 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.
| barrenko wrote:
| Practice. And take it easy at first. I started reading them in
| the bathroom :).
| hprotagonist wrote:
| 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
| pilotneko wrote:
| +1 for How to Read a Paper by Keshav. I have been using this
| method for the entirety of my academic and industry career. Now
| that I run a Data Science team, I have all my new hires read
| this as part of onboarding.
|
| I'll just note that this pairs wonderfully with the Whitesides
| paper on Writing a Paper
| (https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/files/gmwgroup/files/895.pdf),
| which is also required reading for my team members.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| I like Kording, 2016 (doi.org/10.1101/088278) https://journal
| s.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... too, for the
| output side.
| mesaframe wrote:
| Is that an issue with willpower or concentration?
|
| I think it's the latter. I would suggest you to do some
| meditation.
|
| Throwing an arrow in the air but it might be the case that your
| mind is wandering too much when you start reading. Doing some
| concentration practice will help.
| motohagiography wrote:
| As a semi-pro writer, and on some of my longer comments, I've
| typically written something out, taken the last idea that came
| out as a result of that writing process, and pasted it to the
| top/front of the piece because that's the idea with the most
| time, effort and value I can add. Leading with that rewards the
| reader with the value up front, and then they read on for more,
| which includes my initial reaction and analogies that produced
| it.
|
| Remember that most people who write are still sounding out ideas
| when they write, so the final paragraph or final chapter of a
| monograph is where to start with most things. Then I read them in
| reverse order.
|
| If it's professionally edited, you can read the first few parts
| because the editor will have uncovered any buried ledes and
| popped them up into the front matter. In journalistic writing,
| the opinion ("context") they were trying to freight the piece
| with is at the end.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| 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 overlays over text can
| be effective for some (Literally stick coloured acetate over what
| you're reading or change the font and background colours if on a
| screen). Other than that using various [2] notetaking methods
| will help with with both reading and retaining the knowledge.
| You're kind of already doing that with the slides BUT handwritten
| notes are generally more effective than notetaking on a computer.
|
| [1]https://opendyslexic.org/ [2]https://medium.goodnotes.com/the-
| best-note-taking-methods-fo...
| OccamsRazr wrote:
| The first thing to know is your goal. Your goal could be things
| such as: to glean core concepts and methodologies, to determine
| how a paper relates to another research work (such as your own),
| to find an answer to a specific question (or determine that the
| paper does not answer that question), to be able to implement
| what is in the paper in code, or to develop the material further
| in your own research.
|
| Obviously, how you should read dense technical material will
| differ greatly depending on your goal.
|
| For instance, if you are looking only for an answer to a specific
| question, you might prefer to do a sort of DFS on the paper. Read
| the intro material to get an impression of where in the paper the
| answer _might_ lie, then go read those parts (in descending order
| of likelihood of containing the answer). A similar approach might
| work if you already know the area and are simply looking to see
| if the paper contains a particular result. Sometimes this process
| will still require some investment in understanding notation and
| terminology, but time spent doing this should be kept to a
| minimum.
|
| On the other hand, if you intend to master the material and
| develop it further, then you might take a totally different
| approach where you prepare your own set of detailed notes on the
| paper (taking care to expand, in places where your own knowledge
| is lacking, techinical terms and concepts that are used in the
| paper but not explained using secondary references). This might
| also include working out many examples or thought experiments to
| help you internalize the logic and concepts. For a significant
| paper this process will take a long time, but it will be
| worthwhile if you truely want to understand the paper
| comprehensively and be able to build on it in a substantial way.
|
| No matter your goal and approach, the point is that reading a
| paper productively is a systematic thing. Skimming technical
| papers lacksidasically is often a waste of time that doesn't
| produce value.
| tyingq wrote:
| Another comment mentions the possibility of a reading disorder.
| Since you have a pretty good measure of "45 minutes to
| read/comprehend 3 paragraphs", have you tried text-to-speech and
| seeing if you're faster that way?
|
| Or maybe reformatting the text with layout, font, font-sizes that
| work better for you?
|
| Not suggesting either solves the problem, but the small
| experiments might help identify an issue.
|
| I have also had problems understanding some research papers, but
| the example one you linked is pretty straightforward to me.
| Reading the whole paper would take me some time, but not 45
| minutes for 3 typical paragraphs. And I'm not that great at it.
| That's why I'm seconding the idea that maybe dyslexia or
| something similar is in play here.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| 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. Intellectually, I'm very passive.
| Just familiarizing myself with the terrain. Keep in mind the
| knowledge gained from the previous step.
|
| 3. Read through again, paying attention to key concepts and
| terms. Make a list of key concepts and terms. Try to understand
| and resolve the concepts and terms in relation to each other and
| the structure of the text. This is still very passive reading.
| You shouldn't be forming any opinions at this point.
|
| 4. Create your own outline of the text. If the table of contents
| is well thought out, this might be redundant. Still very passive.
| No opinions yet.
|
| 5. Go through again, summarizing all the key ideas. Still very
| passive, you're just trying to map out the text. Not forming
| opinions.
|
| 6. Rewrite the outline, now including your summaries.
|
| 7 and above. Now, if necessary, start actively critiquing. That's
| a whole different matter. And usually involves playing the author
| off other authors. You usually don't get to this part. I'll refer
| you back to "How to Read a Book."
|
| The key thing is to focus on passively understanding, rather than
| opinion formation.
| tucaz wrote:
| I second the suggestion. Never thought I would read a book so
| meta, but I did and it was worth it.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| The first and most important step is to determine if the book
| is worth your time!
|
| Most subjects have countless written material. Skimming many
| first to decide which is worth it's weight will lead to a
| better outcome. It's more motivating too when you know you've
| found a gem.
| alexkreidler wrote:
| Agreed. I highly recommend the 1940 edition. There's an online
| version from the Internet Archive here:
| https://archive.org/details/howtoreadabook1940edition/page/n...
| kurosawa wrote:
| why this edition specifically?
| wallscratch wrote:
| So as a phd student I've learned the thing about reading research
| papers is that yes, it takes ages to read your first 2-3 major
| papers in a field, but after that, you've probably picked up a
| lot of the vocabulary and basic ideas, and you'll be surprised at
| how little content many additional papers have once you're
| actually steeped in the lingo.
| baby wrote:
| The secret sauce is to read slowly and not care about where you
| are in the paper. It's the same with marathon running. If you
| keep thinking that you haven't made much progress you're quickly
| going to give up. What matters is progress. And then, out of
| nowhere, you'll have read that paper. The more you do that the
| faster you'll get.
| csa wrote:
| Note that the paper you referred to is relatively dense. It
| should take a while to fully comprehend all of the details.
|
| That said, sometimes you don't need to comprehend all of the
| details. In those cases, use reading strategies that will let you
| tease out the main points quickly. Other folks in this thread
| have pointed to some good sources, so I won't repeat them here.
|
| Best of luck!
| asdff wrote:
| This is a classic:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...
| belter wrote:
| Also found this set useful
|
| ==========
|
| How to Read a Scientific Paper Efficiently and Critically
| https://youtu.be/lXJeU2dzzWo
|
| How to Use Narrative Structure in a Scientific Paper
| https://youtu.be/XW77hpjNTvY
|
| Writing Is Thinking https://youtu.be/tX9asHdFSv4
|
| How to Write Clearly: Cohesion & Coherence
| https://youtu.be/FpOPA3GFeJg
|
| ==========
| gmw wrote:
| I found this a very useful resource when learning to read a
| research paper:
| https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...
| doubtfuluser wrote:
| While Keshav's paper was already recommended, the beginning of
| this talk by Andrew Ng is along the same ideas:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=733m6qBH-jI
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If you're in university your school probably offers student
| development classes. One or more of them should cover study
| habits.
|
| You could also consider talking to a mental health professional.
| I can't diagnose you, but a few things you mentioned make me
| wonder if you may have a mild form of one of these:
|
| * ADHD
|
| * Dyslexia
|
| * Internet Addiction
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Research papers are written for professors and others in the
| field who are deeply familiar with the topic being investigated.
| They are not written for laymen or as general introductions to a
| topic.
|
| Textbooks may be introductory in nature, or may be advanced and
| assume a lot of prerequisite knowledge.
|
| If you are trying to learn about something new, you have to start
| with the basics.
|
| If you are struggling and finding that the text makes no sense at
| all then ask yourself if you are diving too deep too fast.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| > ...But I have issue with reading huge huge texts as you know in
| this case it will require too much time when I do this. Is there
| way to simplify this reading style?
|
| I'd suggest you to start with figuring out why you need to face
| all that reading.
|
| Is it to comply with some external requirement or is it motivated
| by your own need to find the knowledge?
|
| Look at any printed material as some surrogate of a conversation.
| In fact most of books and papers are structured just for that.
| Abstracts are supposed to give an overview of context and touch
| on results. Conclusions are supposed to condense and underscore
| the findings. So reading papers is one way to learn how others
| solve(d) problems that may be similar to yours.
|
| With books it may be harder to carve your pathway according to
| interest, as often the narrative may be progressive and assuming
| some degree of prior knowledge.
|
| If you seem to blank on too many paragraphs and if you find it
| hard to paraphrase a passage, perhaps the material is too
| advanced for you at present. Mind that often papers do not show
| all intermediate details, simply mention them in passing or
| naming some stat package used. Well, take a note but treat that
| as some 'magic' box which turns to be some accepted practice. At
| the end the results should be summarized in plain language.
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