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. It doesn’t matter which one came first, really – my point is that I only found this out in a roundabout way through googling and trial and error and harassing people with questions.