Hey Everyone!
It's been a pretty long time since I've last posted, and in the time between I've submitted my official methods proposal. Right now, we're critiquing out proposals with others. Although we haven't gotten to my proposal yet, I still think it's important for me to analyze my own methods and determine the weakest parts of it to discuss with my group later.
So here it goes...
Personally (I don't think it's that much of a secret though), I think the weakest part of my proposal is my explanation of technical equations and terms that come up in my paper. I've been working on it a lot, and my explanations have come a long way, but I definitely have a lot of work to do in making sure every term and formula is explained correctly to the reader. If not, I could risk confusing my reader, and in turn, undermine the significance of my results and discussion section. I think I particularly need to do a better job of explaining how I derive the equations that I plan to use in my research and what their implications are in terms of the data. In general, because the formula's deal with more abstract statistical methods, I've been trying to describe them through more concrete examples. There's still a lot more work to do, though. Discussing my methods with my group will be really helpful in explaining the equations, so I'm not too worried about this weakness. I just need to keep on drilling at the problem.
Walking hand in hand with my confusing explanations is my method section's second weakness: length. My section is far over the word limit, and I need to cut it down. The big problem is that I need more words to explain most of the technical terms in my paper. Ultimately, I think the problem with the section is that I reiterate too many terms from the literature review. Deleting some of my re-explanations will be crucial to keeping my paper under the word limit, but I need more guidance on what exactly is explained well initially, and what needs more explaining. I'll be sure to discuss this with my group in a few days, but I am definitely be open to any other suggestions on things I could cut out or ways to reduce my word count in my paper.
Other than that, I think my methods section is pretty solid (I guess we'll really see in three days).
No it's time to do some real research! (424)
Akash
It's been a pretty long time since I've last posted, and in the time between I've submitted my official methods proposal. Right now, we're critiquing out proposals with others. Although we haven't gotten to my proposal yet, I still think it's important for me to analyze my own methods and determine the weakest parts of it to discuss with my group later.
So here it goes...
Personally (I don't think it's that much of a secret though), I think the weakest part of my proposal is my explanation of technical equations and terms that come up in my paper. I've been working on it a lot, and my explanations have come a long way, but I definitely have a lot of work to do in making sure every term and formula is explained correctly to the reader. If not, I could risk confusing my reader, and in turn, undermine the significance of my results and discussion section. I think I particularly need to do a better job of explaining how I derive the equations that I plan to use in my research and what their implications are in terms of the data. In general, because the formula's deal with more abstract statistical methods, I've been trying to describe them through more concrete examples. There's still a lot more work to do, though. Discussing my methods with my group will be really helpful in explaining the equations, so I'm not too worried about this weakness. I just need to keep on drilling at the problem.
Walking hand in hand with my confusing explanations is my method section's second weakness: length. My section is far over the word limit, and I need to cut it down. The big problem is that I need more words to explain most of the technical terms in my paper. Ultimately, I think the problem with the section is that I reiterate too many terms from the literature review. Deleting some of my re-explanations will be crucial to keeping my paper under the word limit, but I need more guidance on what exactly is explained well initially, and what needs more explaining. I'll be sure to discuss this with my group in a few days, but I am definitely be open to any other suggestions on things I could cut out or ways to reduce my word count in my paper.
Other than that, I think my methods section is pretty solid (I guess we'll really see in three days).
No it's time to do some real research! (424)
Akash
Hi Akash!
ReplyDeleteI think that it’s great that you have identified a part of your methods section that is vital to the success of your paper. Ultimately, no matter what groundbreaking research we may conduct, it is the way that we communicate our findings and significance to an audience that determines the success of our research projects. Getting over the hurdle of making your research paper easy to understand may be a tough endeavor, but is wholly a worthwhile one. I think that, in order for you to get more insight into whether your paper is readable, you should frequently have people read your paper who have no idea what you are researching. That way, you can get a fresh set of eyes, and therefore a fresh mind, to give you feedback on the way you present your information.
I also think that by explaining the various research techniques in layman’s terms will in turn reduce your word count. Even though I haven’t read your whole methods section, one problem that I found in my paper was that in my attempt to make the integration of the complex philosophical ideas clear to my reader, I was unnecessarily repeating myself. If you can find a way to explain things once to your reader, that might cut out a lot of unnecessary repetition. Regarding the content that you believe is hard for the reader to understand, does this happen in the body of your paper (when you justify your actual method) or near the end (when you are explaining what you will be doing with the data)? Depending on the placement, you could spend more words in the Results section of your paper going into full detail on the various technical equations, etc.
I wish you good luck in your “real research!”
(300)
Hey Akash! I haven't read your methods section, but I read parts of your literature review and a blog post a while ago where you explicitly explain what question you're trying to answer by looking at valuation methods. I DO think that you're biggest weakness is making the paper a little more readable, but that seems to entail manageable changes in your paper. By that I mean you have your methods fleshed out but you just need to find a simpler way to say them. You could talk to people about it in the class or at school of friends or really anything about how to make it more understandable. Maybe sit down with them and explain it, have them ask questions, clarify, and take notes on how they simplify it so that they can understand it better. I definitely think that it's good to include a lot of examples too, but make sure the examples are easily understood. I don't know if it's possible, but try to make some of them not about finance so that parallels can be drawn to other situations? I'm also going to agree with Rema and say that sometimes you do repeat things and you get very wordy sometimes so just try to be mindful of that, and you should be golden.
ReplyDeleteSimplifying it seems like your only problem, and that's a really good place to be!