Saturday 14 April 2018

Where are the research "YESSS" moments?

Hi everyone,

One more month of project and one less to finish the PhD. What a stress!

Currently finishing the final piece of research work to start the worst nightmare of every PhD, writing :) Well, I already started ...let's be honest...otherwise I would be in trouble (and maybe I 'm already in trouble)...
This must be a thing of age, but 3 years sure go fast.

Well, I am still preparing to go to one of my last conferences (yes, crazy to still consider conferences, but these are progressively more important) and a couple of "extra things".

Today I'll spend some time to talk about one of the lessons I learned during all this time working with statistics and probabilistic models (or maybe this comment extends to research in general) .
This week I was thinking... this thing of the "getting up the chair and screaming YES!!!" moment must be a myth... Why?

Mainly because a real contribution comes from many almost YES moments :) its just that these years made me learn that it is not recommended to "celebrate" too soon heheh
You see the most brilliant minds in history saying that hard-work is almost everything and for sure they know it.

People are amazing identifying patterns, and that's what you spend most of your time doing in research (theoretical or experimental, even though that theoretical is a bit different).
Particularly in statistics, where there is this randomness associated, one can never celebrate too soon if something you're working on effectively "works".
Statistics is a bit tricky in this, because you can never be too confident that you have some pattern or "working" thing to in the end realize that you were just super"lucky". Having then to deal with the after-unhappiness and -disappointment ...

This is why I have the feeling that people from statistics can never get up the chair in the middle of the office and scream "YESSS!" in this moment of "heat" (at least not because of work).
You really need to be extra careful before doing any celebration... test all the things ...many times... and many times again.... and many times again... confirm the statistics... etc etc
This of course applies to all the research, whether you're in the lab, or trying to represent some physical phenomena with maths.

Nevertheless, with this feeling of "never-eureka" coming, comes preserverance and "earth-footing"  which is of major importance to at least complete a PhD.
 
Well, not that was expecting to have it in first place... But it is funny. Movies are always better. Even more, progressively I feel that I understand less of what I am working. People say it is normal....

See you (this time don't know when I will have the strength to come here write)
Rui
 

Sunday 11 February 2018

Trainning Week Trinity and University College Dublin


Hi everyone,

Quite the cold out there, no?! And what do we do? Write a blog post!

Naan that's not true, otherwise, with such a weather here I would post almost every day :)

So, we had recently the trainning week here. Very focused on business and more soft skills, such as project management or even how to manage an interview.

I am not a capitalist by nature but I have to say that business can be quite interesting and challenging.
When you're used to numbers and to analyse very difficult things as most of the things you deal with when doing a PhD in engineering you may tend to depreciate how hard it is to succeed at business. Truth is that it is really hard.

You need to have an additional set of skills (for good and bad). Lot's of people only use the good ones, lots both and lots only the bad ones. Even if you do not have any interest in business itself, the activity remains quite interesting from the psychlogical point of view.

The thing is that  this is a field that I do not know yet well. I read a lot about people ( all these major nd minor new entrepeneurs), and see many things but I didn't gather enough independent tought to be able to conjecture about it.
The training week was interesting because of that. Basically, I am still chewing my opinion on business and how to deal with it. Will I keep chewing my whole life? Thats the question.

Regarding work, same as always. Finishing a PhD in 3 years is quite demanding. You can see that by the lack of activity here. I feel that I cannot wrap my mind over anything else than the PhD for now. Still 6~7 months to go. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :) lets see if it is a good light or a train to run over me hahah

Well, working on finishing research now...to start writing (or compiling) ASAP. Stressfull.

And the random ending notice of this blog is, please travel as much as you can. This is something that is coming a lot now in new generations. And why? Go out there find it ;) Ill talk about it in my next post. 

See you soon,
Rui