From a personal experience & convo this week, I rediscovered that my approach to understanding papers is coming up with my interpretation of the paper.
If you agree, the excuse for not participating in group reading sessions is that you are a lonely wolf 😂.
Think about it. In a well-directed group reading session, you will chew at least one paper. But the bottom line is to digest it by contrasting it with N particular interpretations. Thus, the best case consists of discussing N+1 interpretations.
Wait, why +1? Do you invoke God or a deity in your group readings? 🧝🏽♀️🪄⚗️
The additional interpretation is the paper itself. It's science; we are welcome to challenge whatever evidence 😉.
There was an interesting tweets exchange among computer vision researchers. IMHO, that discussion exemplifies a particular instance of the claim presented above. Namely,
consuming a paper or any theory is not enough for deep understanding if we don't interpret it in our terms
As such, I believe that reading & reciting a paper is a sterile endeavor for doing research. It's a KPI, and I encourage all to track it. Especially students. Yet, developing research entails:
-
challenging assumptions
-
connecting dots
-
extending something onto a new context
Can we do any of those without our interpretation of a body of work?