Stephen Casper (https://stephencasper.com/) was giving advice today in how to upskill in research, and suggested doing a “deep dive”.
Deep dive: read 40-50 papers in a specific research area you’re interested in going into (e.g. adversarial examples in deep NNs). Take notes on each paper. You’ll then have comparable knowledge to people working in the area, after which you do a synthesis project at the end where you write something up (could be lit review, could be more original than that).
He said he’d trade any class he’d ever taken for one of these deep dives, and they’re worth doing even if it takes like 4 months.
(How to independent study)
Stephen Casper (https://stephencasper.com/) was giving advice today in how to upskill in research, and suggested doing a “deep dive”.
Deep dive: read 40-50 papers in a specific research area you’re interested in going into (e.g. adversarial examples in deep NNs). Take notes on each paper. You’ll then have comparable knowledge to people working in the area, after which you do a synthesis project at the end where you write something up (could be lit review, could be more original than that).
He said he’d trade any class he’d ever taken for one of these deep dives, and they’re worth doing even if it takes like 4 months.
This sounds like a great idea and aligns with my growing belief that classes are, more often than not, far from the best way to learn.