
Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks - Swizec
http://swizec.com/blog/inspired-by-the-180-websites-i-will-understand-52-academic-papers-in-52-weeks/swizec/6365
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alexholehouse
And in turn, you have inspired me to do something similar. I read (to varying
degrees of attentiveness) many, many papers per week, but I never write about
them other than to take notes, write questions to the authors etc.

For the next 52 weeks, I'm gonna try to write a layman's explanation (with
some amount of appropriate background) about a paper every week. I suspect
these will center around my work, but I also suspect the act of thinking about
the kind of stuff I do in a more general sense will be a valuable learning
experience, and who knows, maybe someone else will learn something too!

~~~
juretriglav
Alex! It's awesome that you've decided to do this and you have my support! I'm
replying to you because I want to pitch you something: I'm running a free open
platform for simplified summaries of scientific papers:
[http://www.sciencegist.com](http://www.sciencegist.com)

If you decide to contribute these layman's explanations to Science Gist, I can
guarantee you will earn yourself at least one user of the day award :P

Award:
[https://twitter.com/ScienceGist/status/367559501349543936/ph...](https://twitter.com/ScienceGist/status/367559501349543936/photo/1)

On a scientist's desk:
[https://twitter.com/RobBeagrie/status/367918271095242752/pho...](https://twitter.com/RobBeagrie/status/367918271095242752/photo/1)

Good luck!

~~~
cing
I think you need a little quality control on the tags. What's with all the
"keyboard mash" tags, ie. ArxicwxQlRqh?
[http://sciencegist.com/tags](http://sciencegist.com/tags)

~~~
juretriglav
Fixed. Sorry! I had a recent bout with spammers :/ You can add a gist
anonymously if you don't like to expose yourself, but having that
functionality is quite dangerous online, for obvious reasons. I don't like
captchas, but I'll have to add them soon (for anonymous contributions) if this
continues.

~~~
genesiss
I was just reading about spambots filtering without captchas, maybe you'll
find it interesting too:
[http://nedbatchelder.com/text/stopbots.html](http://nedbatchelder.com/text/stopbots.html)

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rustynails
I read a Joel Spolksy article about invalidating bad software patents. He
mentioned it was very easy. How about invalidating 30 patents in 30 days ...
From each of us?

[http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html](http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html)

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chm
The idea is a bit preposterous. There are tons of papers the author has not
the slightest chance of understanding in under a week (considering he has to
write about it, too). Going from paleobotany to financial economics to law to
number theory in one month?

I suggest you divide your year into quarters or thirds and select a theme for
each. Spending three to four months studying papers from a certain subject
would give you a better chance at understanding, I think.

Good luck, have fun.

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natural219
Reading this article, Jennifer's, and the comments here have really inspired
me. I think I am going to join you guys. Starting today, I am going to code
for 8 hours every day for my full-time startup job. Hopefully, at the end, I
will have a much better understanding of how much total time of how much of my
life I am wasting working on other people's dreams when instead I could be
reading research papers, building websites, invalidating patents, learning and
practicing design...

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cbp
Hey I started doing the exact same thing. Only for CS. Minus the understanding
part. I think if I can grasp even 20% of it, then the time spent pays off.

~~~
petercooper
If you want to warm up, start with ACM journal articles. They're still pretty
dense but aren't quite as formal.

The problem with many CS papers is they're focused at other experts in the
same niche rather than to someone with a general knowledge of CS. ACM (and
similar journals, I suspect) articles give similar information but are aimed
at a more general audience.

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pcaveney
I like the interdisciplinary focus and the commitment to reading science at
the source. It seems many people have lost touch with science because it is
"too hard to understand," they will "feel stupid," or because science has
become a closed community behind pay walls. It would really benefit everyone
to have more scientific literacy.

I am striving for something similar with a club, the Academic Journal Club, at
my university. I hope to move much of the discussion online so others can
benefit from our learning. This is our forum
[http://ajcutk.com/forum/](http://ajcutk.com/forum/)

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justinsb
This is a wonderful idea: I particularly like the aspect of reading outside of
your primary field. It seems that many breakthroughs come from the rare person
who can take a concept from one field and apply it to a seemingly unrelated
field of which they also have knowledge through some quirk of fate. But of
course, it need not be pure chance ("the book on crop tilling was the only
book I had while I was stranded on a desert island"), it can instead be self-
enforced. Good luck!

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neur0mancer
Are you planning to reproduce the experiments in every paper too?

~~~
Swizec
I do not. While I would really like to be able to do that, the reality is that
I just can't. I mean, I have a biologist friend who regularly clones bacteria
and implements binary functions in their DNA. Not only do I not know how to
hold a pipete, I just don't have the equipment to perform experiments like
that.

The goal is to get a functional understanding of as many different topics as
possible. Enough to explain things in layman's terms, but I could not possibly
become an expert in everything.

~~~
neur0mancer
At least for some of the Machine Learning and related papers (specially old
ones), to reproduce the experiment should be relatively easy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Reproducing those would also be a big step towards understanding them better.

~~~
neur0mancer
And also a big step to catch these papers in which the results are not exactly
as good as the authors said..

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ateevchopra
You have inspired me to do something similar. Being a college student, I am
leaning new things everyday. Well we all learn new things our whole lives. I
am working on a startup website and I have decided to code one feature every 2
days. This way I will be learn a lot on web development. Plus this will help
me to make my customers HAPPY ! So its a win win.

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giardini
Which papers?

And what's the deliverable? That is, how do you measure whether or not you
"understand" a paper? The 180 websites speak for themselves. How will we know
you have succeeded?

I suggest that you be queried by an expert in each paper's field and given a
numerical score 0-100!8-))

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gatekeepr
How will you select the papers? I would suggest you to read the real
groundbreaking papers, but it would still be a difficult task to select these
from all fields of science.

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vignesh_vs_in
I'm going to push commit every single day. And write an article per week.

Is there a easy way to stick the promise and not procrastinate?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Beeminder ([https://www.beeminder.com/](https://www.beeminder.com/)) and
similar, based on "social contract". Basically, you stick to your plan or you
pay money.

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pwelch
This sounds like a really great idea! What are the go to resources for
academic papers?

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andrewcooke
you must be way smarter than me. it can take me months / years to understand
papers that are not in my field.

~~~
petercooper
I think there are different levels of understanding.

I can't speak for the original poster, but I'm an extremely pragmatic sort of
reader and will move on from material once I "feel" I have a grasp of the
concepts involved and can "see where the author(s) are coming from". Others
might not be comfortable with saying they understand a paper until they reach
a similar level of insight as the authors and perhaps even the level to
reproduce the results.

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icecreampain
When you receive help acheiving your goal from professionals will you state so
on your blog or will you, like Dewalt, avoid mentioning that not-quite-
flattering fact?

Thanks to the HN detectives some weird jumps in proficiency were found in her
code...

~~~
Swizec
Why wouldn't I? I think it's more flattering to ask for help than to splat
your head against a wall.

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bflbfl
very cool!

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gailees
meh

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gailees
meh.

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jokoon
don't forget to get enough exercise and pauses.

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juskrey
You did not get it. No kapish.

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cyberscrawler
This is all lame, building websites, reading papers. These activities are good
in their own stead but they don't help the world or achive something
spectacular. Why do people want such quick returns. I give you 2 decades, win
me a Noble prize.

~~~
Swizec
> they don't help the world or achive something spectacular

Sure they do.

What if I become really good at summarizing papers for laymen? What if I then
start a publishing house for good laymen explanations of science? What if this
then leads to the abolishment of all those stupid "Caffeine will give you
cancer lololol" articles your mum reads?

Or maybe I'll just learn a lot and use it as an advantage somewhere else.

Or it might inspire people to read more base sources to form informed opinions
about things you care about.

And I'm almost certainly not smart and persistent enough for a Nobel Prize.

~~~
juretriglav
If you do become really good at summarizing papers, you are welcome to join
our (shameless plug of a free and open source project) Science Gist
([http://www.sciencegist.com](http://www.sciencegist.com)) community. It's
early days for this project, but I believe it has a huge potential. Also,
since you're living in the same city as I am, we should get coffee/tea
sometime soon and talk science.

