Category: Wanderings

Academic writing v/s popular writing

Akshat Rathi5 Comments

When scientists write journal articles their main purpose is to inform the readers about the new discovery or invention that they have made. But that is not all, to be able to communicate their results they often weave a ‘story’. Journal articles consist of not just data and its interpretation but also a ‘narrative’.

General structure of a journal article:

  • Introduction: Brief background, limitations of current state of the art
  • Discussion of how the authors dealt with the problem
  • Results of their work and discussion of why they think things worked or why things were better in their research
  • Conclusion: short description of what was achieved and raise challenges for the future

Essentially, an academic paper is a lot of facts tied together in a coherent narrative. The purpose of such narrative being not to entertain the readers but to inform them effectively.

In comparison, popular non-fiction books are also a lot of facts tied together in a coherent narrative but the narrative is meant to be entertaining and compelling. The writer develops his theory by drawing on examples that the reader can either relate to or feel wowed on reading. There is a structure to the book but it is never as rigid as the structure of an academic article. The books are written in active voice as against the passive voice used in academic writing. The illustrations used are carefully chosen such that they can appeal to a large audience.

The result of such differences in the two types of writing is that non-fiction books seem to hold on to your attention for a longer time (without you feeling exhausted) than academic papers seem to achieve. In the process of informing the reader in a succinct and yet coherent manner, academics end up condensing many ideas in fewer words and causing too much information to flow in a reader’s mind.

The one idea per paragraph rule doesn’t exist in academic writing. Actually, I am surprised at how irrelevant does the idea of paragraphs seem to some academics. Many a times authors seem to create paragraphs for no good reason and also not create paragraphs when actually they should have.

There are many lessons that academic writing can take from good non-fiction authors. And similarly, there are many lessons that academic publishers can learn from book publishers but I am not here to share those ideas. Instead, today I want to talk about how can you improve your effectiveness at reading technical documents.

Note taking: Because academic papers are essentially so ‘fact-heavy’, it is a good idea to note down the important facts as you read through a paper. This essentially means that you are sifting through the facts and choosing the important ones. And even without taking notes, in your mind you are doing that sifting. Note taking only helps you further by helping you unload the brain from sifting and also remembering.

Pausing: When I am reading many papers at a time or reading about a subject in which I have to refer to many sources, I tend to take many breaks. These breaks are more a necessity than just for fun. They are necessary because I tend to feel overwhelmed by the amount of data I am taking in. The breaks aren’t like a tea break but more like short pauses. In those short pauses, I stop reading and review what I have read till now in my head (or using my notes if necessary). I try to understand if I have a coherent idea in my head yet and if not, then I try to understand what is lacking.

Ideas: More often than not, while reading an academic paper, I come across some ideas related to the subject matter that I am reading. Most of those ideas may be useless but I have found that if I note them down, irrespective of their quality, it helps me understand things faster. Note taking becomes even more important.

I think this happens because those ideas may be born out of my incomplete understanding of what I am reading. It might be that I missed out on an important factor that has caused me to think about something new. Putting those ideas on paper and then getting back to them after I have finished reading helps me understand what I was missing.

And of course, there are those rare times when the ideas are actually useful! So even if there is very little chance of coming up with a brilliant idea, it is worth noting all of them down.

Hopefully, these three points might make the whole process of reading a lot of academic papers a lot more easier than it is now and in the meantime, there is no harm in dreaming about that time when all academics will write papers like good non-fiction authors do!

Time well spent removing the creases

Akshat Rathi2 Comments

All of us spend a certain number of hours per week at work. Some of us work only the required number of hours because those are the office hours for which they get paid. Some of us work extra hours because they care about what they do and want to do more of it. Some of us remain in the office for the required number of hours but work much less because the work does not interest them. Whatever the reason, work forms a big chunk of our lives and whether we like it or not it affects us in many ways.

Of the many things that work affects in our lives, the one thing it affects the most is our state of mind. If you have a good day at work, you come home satisfied and in a happy state of mind. You relish the dinner, spend quality time with your family (or housemates), enjoy that hobby and go to sleep in a happy mood. Exactly the opposite happens when you have a bad day at work. You eat what you can, you have a fight with someone, you skip the gym and you go to sleep in a frustrated state.

One such thing about work that I care a lot about and something that ends up affecting my mood at the end of the day is my productivity at work. At the end of the day I mentally review what did I end up doing in the day. I also compare how much time should a certain activity have taken (or how much time did I assign for it) to how much did it actually take. More often than not the activity takes more time and puts me in a slightly bad mood. Before you jump to conclusions, let me tell you that I am well aware that the reason could be optimism bias. But it could also be because of something that I realised while ironing clothes today. Let me explain.

The process of ironing clothes involves much more than you actually putting down the hot iron on the piece of cloth and moving it up and down. First you need to set up the ironing board, you plug the iron in, you get your pile of clothes and then, most importantly, you spend time removing the creases on the piece of the cloth laid out on the board. You run your hand over the surface to make sure that you don’t end up ironing on a crease. Some times you even sprinkle a few drops of water so that the cloth softens enough to give you a crisp result. And finally, you put down the hot iron down the cloth and do the ‘real work’.

Even if we take into consideration that we have to do so many things to iron clothes, we often forget to take into account the time spent in removing the creases. It’s that activity which we need to do just before the ‘real work’ that we so easily forget. But without smoothening those creases we cannot effectively iron clothes.

Similarly, in our daily lives at work, even if we take into account the time we need to spend to ready other things for doing the ‘real work’, we often miss out on taking into account the time spent in preparing our mind to do a certain work. If we are not in the right mental state to do something we won’t be able to do it. Often we need to clear our thoughts and focus on the task at hand or we need to stop thinking about what we just finished and then start the new activity. Sometimes we start doing the work without being in the right mental state but very soon we realise that we aren’t really doing the work properly and then spend the time bringing ourselves in the right state to do the job.

You need to remove those creases from your own thoughts to be able to do the work properly. And as it happens we disregard that it is important to do so and in the process never take in to account the real time that it will take to do the work.

I would go to the extent of saying that even those mini-breaks you take on facebook or twitter or when you go for that cup of tea is time you spend preparing (or emptying or refreshing) your mind to do the next job after the break. Of course, the mini-breaks can easily be termed as distraction but only if you don’t care enough about productivity. 🙂

Image from here.

Another human folly has made me think about how I look

Akshat Rathi4 Comments
I wondered, "Why do I need to look good? Why?"

I used to think that how I look or what I wear should not matter. The only thing that should matter is what I stand for: my work, my words and my nature. And yet, time and again as a kid, I was told that I should care too look decent. I was made to make my hair properly and tuck my shirt in neatly. When I rebelled, I was given reasons like the cliche, your first impression is your last impression. With no powers over my parents, I obeyed.

I finally have the right reasons to want to dress well and look presentable. Not that I looked like a mess ever before but now I have a reason to really care about how I look. If any parents are reading this post and have kids who won’t do something without a good reason then you should be happy because in this post you will find that good reason for your kids to want to dress properly.

The reason comes from another human folly discussed in the book Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational forces by Ori & Rom Brafman, called Value Attribution. To explain it, the best methods is through an example from the book:

On a January morning Joshua Bell, one of the the finest violinists alive, wearing a baseball cap nonchalantly took out his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin and started playing on a subway station in Washington DC.

Bell’s performance started with Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, one of the most challenging pieces ever composed for the instrument. Over the next 43 minutes there was no thunderous applause, no cameras flashing and actually no one seemed to care.

Of the 1097 people who walked by, hardly anyone stopped. One man listened for a few minutes, a couple of kids stared, and one woman, who happened to recognise the violinist gaped in disbelief.

This was no surprise to the people conducting a study of which Joshua Bell was part of. Think about it for a moment. Bell looked like an average street performer even though he didn’t sound like one. Without realising it, the commuters attributed the value they perceived to the quality of the performance. As they passed Bell, instead of hearing an outstanding concert, they heard street music.

Value attribution, after all, acts as a quick mental shortcut to determine what’s worthy of our attention.

This human folly creeps up on us all the time. Here’s another neat example, a bank sent out a flyer about an offer to it’s male customers. 50% flyers were accompanied with a really pretty female model and 50% were accompanied by a not so pretty version of the same model. What were the results? The men who got the pretty version of the model were twice as likely to sign up for the offer as the others.

Of course, no one is claiming that if you only look good and don’t act good that you will make a better impression. Instead, all factors remaining constant, looking good might make a better impression on the other person.

The adage about first impressions holds true after all. And yes, we all learn about it through experience but had someone told me this story, I may have been convinced earlier.