Daniel Lemire's blog

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What comes first, theory or experiments?

3 thoughts on “What comes first, theory or experiments?”

  1. Steven says:

    I’m a new researcher, so I like to work on new problems, for reasons similar to those pointed out in your previous post, “Turning Your Strengths into Weaknesses.”

    I spend a lot of time looking for good problems to work on. I prefer the solution and/or the problem be not obvious. I work in network security, so there are lots of new problems to be found.

    When I find a good problem, my process is similar to Peter’s. In most cases, the theory component of my work is not major, so I get right into data collection and experiments.

  2. How does this compare to the chicken (theory) and egg (experiments) analogy?

    1. santhosh says:

      Egg is one cell so it’s first