Tutorial: Reading

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  Why reading is important.

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  Challenges for amateur readers.

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  General logic flows.

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  An example.

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  Tip #1: What-why-how.

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  Tip #2: Top-down.

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  Tip #3: Problem-driven.

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  Understand the examples.

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  Another example.

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  Critical thinking: questions while reading.

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  Beyond reading: ideas.

Why reading is important

• Find interesting problems.
• Know the literature.
• Learn methodologies.

Challenges for amateur readers

• Lack of background fundamentals.
• Dive too deep into details.
• Lose focus.
• - Too many papers.
• - Treat all materials as equally important.
• Lack of critical thinking.

Tip #1: What-why-how

Follow the logic flow, and go directly to the target part.

Tip #2: Top-down

• Overview -> Details

Most papers are written following the ``Overview-details policy. One can skip details and grasp the skeleton of the paper.

• Claims -> Reasons

First claim, then reasons. If you have doubts about a claim, usually, you can continue to the following explanation. If a claim is intuitive and reasonable, you may stip the explanations.

Tip #3: Problem-driven

A good paper is organized with intuitive problems. It is a journey of solving problems, instead of introducing endless points.

• Motivation: Why the problem is important and challenging
• Aim/Goal: What is the paper's main goal and the rough idea to address the challenges.
• Solutions: Details to implement the proposed idea.

Understand the examples

If a detailed example is used in the paper, try to fully understand that example. That would save a lot of time understanding the soul of the paper.

Critical thinking: questions while reading

• Is the problem really important and necessary?
• Do the challenges/assumptions hold? Why existing works cannot handle it.
• Are the problems really solved by the proposal.
• Do the reasons presented explain the observation/problem statment.