Last summer, I was tasked with writing a report about the research I completed and submitting it to my supervisor by the end of the summer. I, of course, had never done this kind of writing before, so I learned several lessons. The hard way. The learning process was super painful, but it did come in handy when I had to write two other research reports in my classes last fall.

Over the last month and a half or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that I actually don’t know how to read, which is definitely a jarring realization to be having after over 18 years of formal education. Okay, maybe I’m being a little bit cheeky here. I am not literally claiming to be illiterate or even functionally illiterate, and it would be stupid of me to do so, since clearly I am writing this blog post and have written many other blog posts where I reviewed books.

A while ago, someone in a Discord server I’m in asked how much of the math behind a system you need to know to implement it. I thought it was an interesting question, and I felt qualified to answer it, so I ended up writing quite a lengthy response. It just occurred to me that it might also be useful to other people, so I thought I would clean it up a little bit and archive it here.

I just finished a blog post where I discuss things I’ve recently learned about how to read research papers. I almost included this as a point in that post, but I think it’s important enough to warrant its own article. Here’s the idea: you absolutely should not be reading the sections of a research paper in order. It took me a while to learn this one – I can’t remember if I first read this advice somewhere, if someone told it to me, or if I reverse-engineered it from advice I got about how to write papers.

Last summer, I spent a good chunk of my time doing an undergraduate research project during which I worked on a project largely by myself, under the supervision of a math professor. I then took a graduate level course in a related area this fall, where I investigated the theoretical underpinning behind my summer project. I had no idea what I was doing or what I had gotten myself into. As a result, I learned a lot, and tried to keep note of the various things I had learned.