How To Do Research

This directory contains several short "essays" on aspects of the research process, including technical reading and writing. It would be nice if one could give complete instructions, with examples, on how to do research, just as we teach beginning programming languages. Unfortunately, that is not possible.

The best way to learn research is to just do it alongside someone more experienced. After that, you have seen the process from the beginning to the end, and you now have expectations on the goals and methods to be used in your next research project. The topics covered here by short essays are:

1. The Research Process paradigm, as exemplified by the Automated Barber Machine
2. Reading Research Papers
3. topic-sentences.py: A Python script to excerpt the topic sentences of the paragraphs. On reading, this allows you to quick learn an outline of the paper. On writing, this allow you to gain an external perspective, and see how other people are going to view your writing when they read it. So, instead of outlining and then writing, you can now just write, and then read this automatically generated outline to see if your "story" sounds right. If the "story" doesn't sound right, then that's a "bug" in your writing (similar to a "bug" in a computer program). So, fix the bug in your outline, by revising your writing.
4. Writing Research Papers