5 ms·

I'm thinking about doing research in areas like ML, AI, Mathematics. However, I like your idea about writing software rather than publishing papers, the impact

I'm thinking about doing research in areas like ML, AI, Mathematics. However, I like your idea about writing software rather than publishing papers, the impact would be visible clearly! Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

seanwilson 7y ago
What made you ask about writing papers I mean? To look good on your resume? To land a job in that field? Depending on your goals, a blog post or a youtube video might be a better use of time for example.
- itsmefaz 7y ago
  1. To develop expertise 2. To create evidence of learning 3. To create credibility as an expertise both inside/outside the field 4. To monetise expertise through consulting and other works 5. To be able to write books 6. If possible to discover and invent something that would be worth millions This is how I'm thinking? Maybe you can help me straightened my thought process a bit!
  - impendia 7y ago
    You mentioned mathematics. I am a math professor. Thinking about the most successful researchers I know, here is the list of major reasons they do it: 1. Because they love their subject area, and are excited about doing this work for its own sake. That's the entire list. If you're competing with that (and you mentioned top conferences, so rest assured you would be), then ulterior motives are only going to take you so far. Research consists of bashing a brick with your head for two years, and then being excited when it finally moves half an inch. I love research, and I do recommend it, but I have to think that there are easier ways to achieve your stated goals.
  - he11ow 7y ago
    You can do all of this without a PhD. I'd go a step further and say that a PhD is probably orthogonal to most if not all of these goals: 1. With PhD you drill deep into a niche. By the time you're done, if a dozen people in the world care about your work, that's a success. Sure, you become an expert in this super-tiny niche, but the real world hardly swoons. 2. If you want to show your work so that other people read it, academic papers is not the way to go. So much so that the trend today is to encourage researchers to write easy-to-read blog posts that explain their work. 3. Expertise comes from solving problems, and that's not really what academia is about. You've mentioned ML, which is white hot right now but might not be in ten years' time. Most academic ML work competes on marginally improving on the same datasets, which rarely matter to real-world applications. If anything, what there is not nearly enough of is building quality data sets for new tasks. This is something anyone who trains themselves with decent statistics can get into. 4. Again, experts who monetise are experts that solve real-world problems. I don't know of successful consultant who are successful BECAUSE they have a PhD. 5. Writing books is a skill in its own right. I have a friend who's done a PhD and slaved on a book out of her thesis. She's very proud of it and all, but the volume we're talking here is a few dozens, bought by academic libraries. Is that your goal? 6. I feel the only people who invent something that ends up being valuable are those who apply their wits to real pain points. Most times, it's not the lone academic that launches a successful startup, it's the clever academic along with the sharp business buddy, and some seed funding. And even then, you still have to do all the legwork of any new business. A PhD, with its 4 years of being buried in the library, is hardly training for that sort of work. I think university is brilliant and curiosity is brilliant, and going out into the world and applying what you know to problems that you see can be incredibly rewarding. It's just that all this stuff doesn't necessitate a PhD.

seanwilson 7y ago

What made you ask about writing papers I mean? To look good on your resume? To land a job in that field? Depending on your goals, a blog post or a youtube video might be a better use of time for example.

itsmefaz 7y ago
1. To develop expertise 2. To create evidence of learning 3. To create credibility as an expertise both inside/outside the field 4. To monetise expertise through consulting and other works 5. To be able to write books 6. If possible to discover and invent something that would be worth millions This is how I'm thinking? Maybe you can help me straightened my thought process a bit!
- impendia 7y ago
  You mentioned mathematics. I am a math professor. Thinking about the most successful researchers I know, here is the list of major reasons they do it: 1. Because they love their subject area, and are excited about doing this work for its own sake. That's the entire list. If you're competing with that (and you mentioned top conferences, so rest assured you would be), then ulterior motives are only going to take you so far. Research consists of bashing a brick with your head for two years, and then being excited when it finally moves half an inch. I love research, and I do recommend it, but I have to think that there are easier ways to achieve your stated goals.
- he11ow 7y ago
  You can do all of this without a PhD. I'd go a step further and say that a PhD is probably orthogonal to most if not all of these goals: 1. With PhD you drill deep into a niche. By the time you're done, if a dozen people in the world care about your work, that's a success. Sure, you become an expert in this super-tiny niche, but the real world hardly swoons. 2. If you want to show your work so that other people read it, academic papers is not the way to go. So much so that the trend today is to encourage researchers to write easy-to-read blog posts that explain their work. 3. Expertise comes from solving problems, and that's not really what academia is about. You've mentioned ML, which is white hot right now but might not be in ten years' time. Most academic ML work competes on marginally improving on the same datasets, which rarely matter to real-world applications. If anything, what there is not nearly enough of is building quality data sets for new tasks. This is something anyone who trains themselves with decent statistics can get into. 4. Again, experts who monetise are experts that solve real-world problems. I don't know of successful consultant who are successful BECAUSE they have a PhD. 5. Writing books is a skill in its own right. I have a friend who's done a PhD and slaved on a book out of her thesis. She's very proud of it and all, but the volume we're talking here is a few dozens, bought by academic libraries. Is that your goal? 6. I feel the only people who invent something that ends up being valuable are those who apply their wits to real pain points. Most times, it's not the lone academic that launches a successful startup, it's the clever academic along with the sharp business buddy, and some seed funding. And even then, you still have to do all the legwork of any new business. A PhD, with its 4 years of being buried in the library, is hardly training for that sort of work. I think university is brilliant and curiosity is brilliant, and going out into the world and applying what you know to problems that you see can be incredibly rewarding. It's just that all this stuff doesn't necessitate a PhD.