Reading a Scientific Paper: Pause. Google every other word. Start again.

Module 2 has definitely been the steepest learning curve yet. When 20.109 req’s said we had to have taken 6.00, I didn’t really understand what we’d do with a programming background. And then they unleashed R. When I check and recheck the instructions for how to program something, I really wish I’d paid more attention to and retained more 6.00. I still have the monsters of this module - the journal presentation and the research article - to come.


With regards to the journal presentation, I selected my paper by reading the abstracts of papers whose titles sounded cool. What I really should’ve have done, though, was taken a peek at the length of the paper I chose: a whopping 40 pages. Thankfully, I had time over spring break to get through it (it literally took me a whole day to read and begin to process). I think the toughest part of reading this paper was remembering what the point of the whole article was - by page 25 and on supplemental figure 5.12 (hehe like 5.12 but not) my head was spinning and I forgot what the original hypothesis was. But, I got through it (I think) and am really excited about the presentation :)


As soon as the journal presentation is over, I’m spending all of my time on this 14 page research article. Wish me luck!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

scroll for the haiku

End of semester thoughts

Blog Post #2