, 1 min read
Dynamic langages like Python or Ruby are considerably easier than static languages like Java and C++. John is asking us why: How do you account for the huge increases in productivity that dynamic language advocates say they experience. My answer is duck typing. It is powerful because formal and…
, 2 min read
As a kid, you are told that scientists follow the scientific method. They come up with an hypothesis, and they try to falsify it. You also learn about engineers who solve practical problems using science. Later, you learn about induction and deduction. Some researchers collect evidence and derive…
, 2 min read
A colleague of mine, Sébastien Paquet, wrote his Computer Science Ph.D. thesis on the benefits of social software for scientists. Sébastien determined through self-experimentation that using social software could improve substantially your network as a scientist. After years as a blogger, I can…
, 1 min read
Universities, research centers and grant agencies often make the implicit assumption that research productivity depends on the innate abilities of a few key individuals. These people are research heroes. By putting these people in charge and giving them all resources, research productivity is thus…
, 1 min read
I love gardening. I love research. These activities are analogous: Gardening Research Biodiversity minimizes the impact of diseases and pests. A multidisciplinary or broad research program is more resilient against systemic failures. Plants grow according to their own rythms. You can rush…
, 1 min read
Life is multidimensional. Research papers should be multidimensional too! We should ask several interesting questions. We should give several nuanced answers. We should expect more from the reviewers and the readers! Yet, in Computer Science, research papers are expected to tell the following…
, 1 min read
Good communication is part of our jobs as researchers. And communicating well, in 2009, means having an effective web presence. When I read someone’s paper, and I like it, I want to know who the person is. Sometimes it is merely to find out if they produced more similar work, or else, it can be…
, 1 min read
I want to know when a new research paper… is similar to one of my papers; cites one of my papers; is relevant to my current research. Why can’t I have this already? Why do I have to manually go to Google Scholar to monitor what my peers are doing? But Google Scholar always fall short because…
, 2 min read
Sylvie Noël submits to us the following fallacy—which appears in the editorial of a peer-reviewed journal. The editor-in-chief makes the following observation: (…) only a small fraction of the top 100 papers ranked by the number of citations (17 of 100) were published by single…
, 1 min read
According to a recent study, students do better if they skip class and listen to the podcasts. The article has been discussed in the New Scientist and the New York Times, but here is a direct quote: Results indicated that students in the podcast condition who took notes while listening to the…
, 1 min read
Research is an industry. Unlike other industries, it is often almost entirely bound to government funding. Because research takes a long time to bear fruit, people (not equipment) should be the primary concern of decision makers. Specifically, the government is responsible for keeping the research…
, 1 min read
This article summarizes the results of the current funding cuts in research. It almost feels like Bush moved up North. Dozens of millions are being cut. My previous employer, the National Research Council—Canada’s largest research organization—was cut as well. Fortunately, our wise…
, 1 min read
Many years ago, I read the following piece of wisdom: If you had only one year left to live, what would you do differently? What are you waiting for to make these changes, now? Let me propose a variant for researchers: If you could only write one more research paper, what would you write? Why…
, 1 min read
Sometimes you decide that you need a specific theoretical result. For example, you may need a closed form formula for a given quantity. Yet, you barely know how to begin. Maybe, you end up looping: you keep on revisiting the same ideas, again and again. You don’t seem to make any progress at…
, 1 min read
I decided to copy Daniel Tunkelang’s idea and maintain a list of some people who read my blog. This is not meant to be an ego-boosting or name-dropping project. My goal is to prove that blogging is a serious business. Blogging is part of my day job! Indeed, this list proves that professional…
, 1 min read
Like most dads who have professional careers, I have little time for games. Nevertheless, I spend some time playing war games. Here are some I like: Civilization: Call to Power was one of my favorites. I still play to Master of Orion II even though the game is nearly 15 years old. The Age of…
, 1 min read
While pure theory is wasteful, bringing applied research to academia is equally wasteful! Applied research seeks to produce applied results. These results are good or bad depending on their real-world application. But in academia, success is defined by peer review. Peers do not test real-world…
, 1 min read
Honesty is charisma. Whenever you are honest, even if you are controversial, many people will respond positively to you.
, 1 min read
Satpalparmar got bad grades from an unknown university. He wants to become a researcher. And he asks me for advice. I got good grades and a Ph.D. from one of the best universities in Canada, so who am I to give advice to people like Satpalparmar? Nevertheless, here it is. You do not need a Ph.D. to…
, 1 min read
A bitmap is an efficient array of boolean values. They are commonly used in bitmap indexes. The Java language has a bitmap class: BitSet. Unfortunately, the Java BitSet class will not scale to large sparse bitmaps—the Sun implementation does not use compression. I published a new free…