4 ms·
Alas, I have reached exactly the same conclusion over the years. You need to strike the right balance between not obfuscating too much such that the reader rag
by tpoacher 4y ago
Alas, I have reached exactly the same conclusion over the years.
You need to strike the right balance between not obfuscating too much such that the reader ragequits in frustration, versus obfuscating things just enough so that the reader has to put a bit of "work" before the insight hits home, lest they fail to appreciate how much effort getting to that insight took in the first place, and dismiss it for a trivial one.
- dataflow 4y agoDo you feel like papers should have separate derivations & proofs of correctness? The second one requiring correctness (intuition being secondary), and the first one being intuitive (rigor being secondary).
- tpoacher 4y agoI never implied that the obfuscation comes from having to present the maths. Clarity and rigour are orthogonal concepts. In fact, the reverse is often the case: make the derivations comprehensive and easy enough to follow, and the reader will feel it was an obvious result. The argument here is that occasionally you should jump from A to C, skipping B (in the paper, not in your own work!), such that the reader will have to work that extra step to reach C from A, to make them appreciate more that the insight "A leads to C" was not a trivial one (and thus "not novel").