Advice for (Prospective) Graduate Students

A topic that is being increasingly covered in TCS blogs is that of giving advice to (prospective) graduate students and beginning researchers. (See, for instance, here, here or here.) This is a welcome development, and a very good way of using the medium for the benefit of an important component of our research community. (After all, young researchers are the future of research, aren't they?) In fact, I have no problem in admitting that I enjoy reading those blog posts or anything similar myself. I feel that I am still learning on the job every day, and that those pieces of advice remind me of things that I should keep in mind, but that I tend (consciously or unconsciously) to "forget". After all,

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. (Erica Jong)

The latest few words of advice on research for graduate students I read have been penned down by Fan Chung. She addresses mostly combinatorialists, but what she says applies equally well to (theoretical computer) scientists at large. I like the fact that she stresses the collaborative nature of the research enterprise, and that she embraces one of my favourite hobby horses, viz. the Hardy-Littlewood rule: authors are alphabetically ordered and everyone gets an equal share of credit. She adds:

The one who has worked the most has learned the most and is therefore in the best position to write more papers on the topic.

(I had never thought in these terms myself, but yes that's true.) She also writes:

If you have any bad feeling about sharing the work or the credit, don't collaborate. In mathematics, it is quite okay to do your research independently. (Unlike other areas, you are not obliged to include the person who fund your research.) If the collaboration already has started, the Hardy-Littlewood rule says that it stays a joint work even if the contribution is not of the same proportion. You have a choice of not to collaborate the next time. (If you have many ideas, one paper doesn't matter. If you don't have many ideas, then it really doesn't matter.) You might miss the opportunity for collaboration which can enhance your research and enrich your life. Such opportunity is actually not so easy to cultivate but worth all the efforts involved.

I could not agree more. I will add Fan Chung's advice to the list of links I suggest to all my students and colleagues. Maybe you'd like to do so too.

Athugasemdir

[Arnar Pálsson, 5.2.2008 kl. 11:59]

Great topic Luca

Academics, students and post docs  are often so submerged in their research and studies that they do not ponder larger issues or strategic ones like colloboration. 

Those postings you link to are examplary in that the issues are carefully deliberated and organized (must come in part with the discipline), but they have broader application. As a biologist I can relate to many of the points, as there are shared experiences of being in a research environment. Regardless of discipline we are strifing for ways to push science forward, that involves lot of nitty gritty practical details, including ways to improve the projects, further the education of graduate students and nurture collaborations.

[Luca Aceto, 7.2.2008 kl. 08:57]

Thanks Arnar. I think that blogs like this one are excellent media for sharing some of our work experiences with (prospective) students and the public at large. Scientists form some kind of tribe. Like in all tribes, our daily routine is punctuated with rituals that we learn on the job, and that are mysterious to the non-initiated. This mystery breeds a lot of misconceptions. For instance, many people believe that the working life of a scientist (or shall we say, nerd?) is a lonely one. This is far from the truth for most of us, who relish collaborative work. Science is a collective enterprise on both the small and the big scales---Newton's "Standing on the shoulders of giants" to wit.

Unfortunately, I see rather odd rules even within universities when evaluating the scientific output of academics. Rules like "a joint paper counts for 0.5 points and a singly-authored one for 1 point" do not encourage collaboration, do they? 

BTW, in case you have not done so, I recommend reading some of Carl Djerassi's "science in fiction" novels. See 

http://www.djerassi.com/. 

I have used them with some success in courses on research ethics and methodology.