3 ms·

(edit - tldr: go buy the textbook.) I don't understand your complaint. Papers are written by researchers to each other. The 'correctness' and 'proofs' are the

(edit - tldr: go buy the textbook.) I don't understand your complaint. Papers are written by researchers to each other. The 'correctness' and 'proofs' are the point of the paper. The standard is the simplest possible explanation that includes the justification for all claims made. You are asking researchers to write another, different, article for you. Maybe they would be better spending their time on more research and leave the popular writing to others who might be better at it. If you are asking for some explanation that lies in between the extremes of original paper and a popular article, you are in luck: this is what textbooks do. The supersmart ideas usually spread out before the textbook gets written - grad students bring them along as they go into industry, etc. Most - almost all in fact - papers are pretty boring by themselves. The ordinary case is that papers gradually build and refine ideas for a few years until we look back and say 'wow, we made some improvements on a decade ago. Cool. Now, pushing on....' This idea: "revolutionary papers present ideas simply and are overlooked, often because of the misguided notion that 'simple to understand' equates to a 'trivial insight'" is popular in the imagination but I don't think it happens very often. More common is when a great new idea is expressed wonderfully simply and people skilled in the art read it and say 'holy shit that's neat'. For example Einstein in 1905 was a near-nobody that presented powerful ideas very simply and his papers were not passed over.

nartz 12y ago
1. Many papers are never put into textbooks (or if they are, its much later) 2. A ton of research papers are extremely dense, while the actual 'newness' could be explained with a simpler definition and a really good diagram or code. 3. Without making too blanket of a statement, often, formal proofs are much more useful after one understands the intuition. Inotherwords, I'd like to see a format that stresses expressing the 'new idea' simply. Proving that the new idea is supported by mathematics is definitely important (as you point out - its the 'meat'), but I believe understanding it follows intuition in many cases.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  Most papers don't deserve to be in textbooks, as they are of very minor interest by themselves. Textbooks distill the fundamental bits. I agree with your other points, and many authors do work hard to give an intuitive description. Intuitive, that is, to a reader skilled in the art. But don't think that just because you don't understand a paper that means it is overly complicated or obtuse. It might be perfectly compact and straightforward if you are familiar with the field and its conventions and notation. And this is the most efficient way to communicate. Of course, some researchers just suck at writing. A few might even be trying to sound fancy and make things sound complicated or high-falutin'. Grad students start out with this tendency, but we try to beat it out of them ASAP. Some are never redeemed. But I like to think my group produces readable papers.
- dagw 12y ago
  Proving that the new idea is supported by mathematics is definitely important No, it is all that matters. Having a neat and intuitive understanding of a new idea that is wrong has at best no value and at worst is actively harmful.

nartz 12y ago

1. Many papers are never put into textbooks (or if they are, its much later) 2. A ton of research papers are extremely dense, while the actual 'newness' could be explained with a simpler definition and a really good diagram or code. 3. Without making too blanket of a statement, often, formal proofs are much more useful after one understands the intuition. Inotherwords, I'd like to see a format that stresses expressing the 'new idea' simply. Proving that the new idea is supported by mathematics is definitely important (as you point out - its the 'meat'), but I believe understanding it follows intuition in many cases.

robotresearcher 12y ago
Most papers don't deserve to be in textbooks, as they are of very minor interest by themselves. Textbooks distill the fundamental bits. I agree with your other points, and many authors do work hard to give an intuitive description. Intuitive, that is, to a reader skilled in the art. But don't think that just because you don't understand a paper that means it is overly complicated or obtuse. It might be perfectly compact and straightforward if you are familiar with the field and its conventions and notation. And this is the most efficient way to communicate. Of course, some researchers just suck at writing. A few might even be trying to sound fancy and make things sound complicated or high-falutin'. Grad students start out with this tendency, but we try to beat it out of them ASAP. Some are never redeemed. But I like to think my group produces readable papers.
dagw 12y ago
Proving that the new idea is supported by mathematics is definitely important No, it is all that matters. Having a neat and intuitive understanding of a new idea that is wrong has at best no value and at worst is actively harmful.