Effective Papers

This may sound like a cliche your dad used to tell, but after many years of going through new areas, ventures, and careers, I find this to be the most underrated career advice. This is the number one advice I would like my kids to internalize as they grow up. This is the most important idea I would like every one undertaking a new venture to know.  If you think you are not good enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are not enjoying something, you start to hate it.  I gave examples of this several times before. Let's suffice with this one : In graduate school, I had read "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" from Steven Levy and enjoyed it a lot. (I still keep the dog eared paper copy with affection.) So, I should have read Steven Levy's Crypto book a long time ago. But for some reason, I didn't...even though I was aware of the book. I guess that was due to a stupid quirk of mine; I had some aversion to the security/cryptography res...

Like many of you I watched The Queen's Gambit and loved it. The settings of scenery and decors in 1960s were mesmerizing.   And like many of you, this rekindled the interest for chess in me. Growing up, I didn't play chess much, but my younger brother got into it as a middle school student. He bought books detailing chess games and studied them. He got a city-wide championship and such. I didn't get much into it, because I guess I didn't think of it as a serious enterprise and didn't want to expend too much energy into it.  I had this Android chess app on my phone, and I started playing with that instead of my downtime Sudoku playing . In this chess app, it is very easy to undo moves, and try other moves. I play against the machine, and yes undoing is cheating, but I use it a lot to explore different scenarios at critical points in the game. I have been very surprised about how much this accelerated my chess learning. I was able to make progress through several har...

Wow! I had written more than 30 advice posts over the last decade.  When I was writing them, I was hoping to first help myself. You see, I understand a concept well only after I think about it in depth, distill it to a small set of principles, and connect it with my existing knowledge-base. Writing helps me achieve this, so I write on things I want to understand better. These advice can also help you by showing you what to expect as you take on new projects. You can get a head start and avoid costly mistakes by learning from someone who had traveled down that road.  I selected 21 posts, and categorized them as Research, Writing, and Career. Enjoy! Research Learn by doing, realize we are all stupid, and just ask   Publish--not perish, work hard, and understand the philosophy of research   Endure the twisty journey to taste the joy of figuring things out Sequence it, write it down, find the right perspective, and persevere   Use writing to generate your best ideas...

Pasha joined our family when he was barely 2 months old. Shortly after that the Covid-19 quarantine started, and we have spent our lives 24/7 with Pasha. Pasha adopted our family on Thursday night. We follow his command now. pic.twitter.com/JnFrPC50ug — Murat Demirbas (@muratdemirbas) March 10, 2020 We are all big fans of Pasha, but I particularly admire him as I am in awe of his approach to life. I fired my life-coach and decided to follow Pasha's teachings instead. Here are the things I learned from Pasha. Play hard, rest easy Pasha has a lot of energy in the mornings. He bounces off the walls, climbs to our curtains, and playfully harasses our wrists and ankles. If we try to snuggle with him in the morning, he runs away, to continue his parkour route around the house. At 11am, he crashes. He sleeps where he deems fit. If it is sunny, he finds a sunny spot in front of a window. But he also doesn't mind sleeping on the carpet in a busy room, oblivious of the feet traffic in t...

I had previously given advice about how to find your advisor . But I realize I haven't talked about the advisor-mentee relationship directly before. The advisor is the window through which the student gets to perceive research and academia from. Advisors imprint the students with their approach to research, taste in research problems, perspective on solutions. Advisors also act as role models to the students in a more general sense. I see that the advisor's qualities often live on the student for a long time --at least through the assistant professorship period. For example, if the advisor is kind and generous to students, the mentee is nice to students, etc. This is a big responsibility for the advisors, and they should be aware of their roles in their interactions with their mentees. The advisor's main job is to ask questions and guide strategically where and when it matters. Acting as the leader, the advisor should provide purpose, give direction, and occasionally motiva...