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CMPT 880/890 Choosing a research topic

CMPT 880/890 Choosing a research topic. Outline. What is a research topic Coming up with ideas How to evaluate ideas for topics. What is a research topic?. The specific question / problem that you are going to answer / solve in your project

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CMPT 880/890 Choosing a research topic

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  1. CMPT 880/890Choosing a research topic

  2. Outline • What is a research topic • Coming up with ideas • How to evaluate ideas for topics

  3. What is a research topic? • The specific question / problem that you are going to answer / solve in your project • “It is unknown which type of link preview most accurately represents the linked page” • More specific than the general problem • “It is difficult to determine the destination page of a vague web link” • Much more specific than the overall area • “Improving navigation on the web”

  4. Problem statements • You must be able to state your problem as a problem! • “People currently have difficulty doing X” • “It is unknown whether X is true” • “Web servers currently cannot determine X” • Compare with: • “To improve the throughput of a notification server” • “My interests are in robot motion algorithms” • “Context sensitivity can help systems make decisions”

  5. Problem-based research • What’s the problem? • Who cares about the problem and why? • What’s the solution? • How do you show that the solution is a good one?

  6. Ideas for research problems • Keep a research notebook • Read previous work • Explain prior work to others • Build things • Do small research projects • Use your own experience • Look (carefully) at ‘hot areas’

  7. Habits and best practices • Reserve uninterrupted time to think • Write ideas down • Don’t thrash • Think in terms of problems / solutions / evaluations

  8. Evaluating research ideas • Once you have a research idea, how do you know whether it’s any good? • Is it in fact a research problem? • Do we already know the solution? • What is the science underlying the problem? • Does anyone care about the problem? • (Money, Happiness, Safety, etc.)

  9. Evaluating research ideas • Do you have any idea how to solve it? • Do you understand the mechanism underlying the problem? • Will you know when you have solved it? • When will you stop? • How many cases; how much better? • Can the solution be evaluated? • Testable hypotheses • “My system develops creative expression in children” • What measures would you use?

  10. Evaluating research ideas • The importance of the problem • “The more important the problem, the more important your results will be” • What does ‘important’ mean? • “More important” usually also means “harder”

  11. Evaluating research ideas • Risky versus safe research • Incremental contribution or revolutionary idea? • Which should you do?

  12. Scoping and scaling • Your first formulation of a research problem will probably be too broad • How to narrow it? • List the things that would have to be done in order to solve the problem • When you don’t know how you would do one of the steps, you may have a new research problem

  13. Playing it safe • “We don’t know which of these three is best” vs. “I bet that new technique X is best”

  14. Tell me your problems

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