Research methodology - What is a PhD?

Research Methodology
Interactive Art PhD
Escola das Artes da UCP
Porto, Portugal

Luís Gustavo Martins
lmartins@porto.ucp.pt

1

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2

What is a PhD?
The Lord of the Rings Allegory...

http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/phd_lotr.html
5

What is a PhD?
“Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated to PhD, or Ph.D. in
English-speaking countries, for the Latin philosophiae doctor,
meaning "teacher in the love of wisdom", is an advanced
academic degree awarded by universities. In most English-
speaking countries, the PhD is the highest degree one can
earn (although in some countries like the UK, Ireland, and
the Commonwealth nations higher doctorates are awarded).
The PhD or equivalent has become a requirement for a
career as a university professor or researcher in most ﬁelds.
The academic level of degrees known as doctorates of
philosophy varies according to the country and time period.”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhD

6

What is a PhD?
• Imagine a circle that contains all human
knowledge...

Matt Might, http://matt.might.net/, http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
7

What is a PhD?
• By the time you ﬁnish elementary school
you know a little...

8

What is a PhD?
• By the time you ﬁnish high-school you
know a bit more...

9

What is a PhD?
• With a bachelor's degree, you gain a
specialty...

10

What is a PhD?
• A master's degree deepens that specialty...

11

What is a PhD?
• Reading research papers takes you to the
edge of human knowledge...

12

What is a PhD?
• Once you're at the boundary, you focus...

13

What is a PhD?
• You push at the boundary for a few years...

14

What is a PhD?
• Until one day, the boundary gives way...

15

What is a PhD?
• And, that dent you've made is called a
Ph.D.!

16

What is a PhD?
• Of course, the world looks different to you
now...

17

What is a PhD?
• So, don't forget the bigger picture!!

18

What is a PhD?
• We (YOU!) must keep pushing!!

19

What is a PhD?
• PhD Milestones:
• qualifying exams / program acceptance

• thesis proposal

• thesis defense

• Thesis proposal is the trickiest!

• (if you apply for a FCT grant, you’ll know what I mean)

http://matt.might.net/articles/advice-for-phd-thesis-proposals/
20

What is a PhD?
• A thesis proposal is a contract!
• It must include:
• A clearly deﬁned thesis

• A speciﬁc plan for demonstrating that thesis
• Everything else in the proposal (related work, prior work, challenges)
exists to support the plausibility of the thesis and the plan.

• You will be judged by this contract later on
in your defense!

21

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?

22

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• So, where do good ideas (and so, good
thesis) come from?
• They may start as a “hunch” (aka educated guess)...

• They need time to incubate...

• They need to “colide with other hunches”...

• Collaboration!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html
23

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• A research topic can be chosen based on:
• how relevant the topic is nowadays
• the available literature
• the current state-of-the-art on the topic
• your personal interests
• your R&D/University research interests
• funding...
• ...
24

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• A thesis statement is a single sentence!

25

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• A thesis statement is a single sentence!
• active, declarative, defensible

• make it as short as possible
• ... but avoid turning it too general!
• The thesis statement answers the question:
"What did humanity learn as a consequence of this
dissertation?"
Remember, in a PhD, a novel contribution is
MANDATORY!
26

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• An example: my thesis
• “A Computational Framework for Sound
Segregation in Music Signals”
The main problem this work tries to address is the
identiﬁcation and segregation of sound events in
monaural (i.e. single-channel) real-world” polyphonic
music signals [using a computer]

27

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• “A Computational Framework for Sound Segregation in Music
Signals”
• This thesis segmented my dissertation into four
parts: related work, theory, experimentation and
application.
• Related work defends novelty.
• Theory and experimentation defend
feasibility.
• Application defends usefulness.
28

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
• “A Computational Framework for Sound
Segregation in Music Signals”
• doesn't say anything about what technical
mechanisms I used to prove sound
segregation using a computer is possible
• I developed a software framework to
support my thesis. But, those were just the
means. Sound segregation was the end.

29

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?
How interesting is my thesis?!

30

How to define your
Molecular Cell

Forum
PhD thesis?

Alon, U. (2009). How to choose a good scientific problem. Molecular cell, 35(6):726–728.
31
Figure 1. The Feasibility-Interest Diagram for Choosing a Project
Two axes for choosing scientific problems: feasibility and interest.

How to deﬁne your
PhD thesis?

Alon, U. (2009). How to choose a good scientiﬁc problem. Molecular cell, 35(6):726–728.
r Choosing a Project 32
ty and interest.

How to deﬁne your
PhD plan?
• A thesis proposal is a contract!
• The plan details the conditions of that
contract.
• If a student words the plan right and gets
it approved, her defense will go smoothly.
• If she leaves the plan vague or inspeciﬁc,
she leaves herself vulnerable to the
committee's interpretation of her plan.
http://matt.might.net/articles/advice-for-phd-thesis-proposals/ 33

How to deﬁne your
PhD plan?
• A good plan contains:
• a ﬁctional schedule
• a list of remaining milestones and anticipated dates of
completion.

• If the plan contains a claim to be validated, it needs to
explain how the student will conduct validation of that
claim.
• A good plan also contains contingencies.
• A good plan is not a sequence, but a tree.
• The leaves of the tree form a spectrum from "best possible outcome, give me a Ph.D. and a
professorship" at one end to "back to the drawing board" at the other.


How to deﬁne your
PhD plan?
• A good plan contains:
• The possibility of failure
• Real research is inherently unpredictable, and failure is
always a possibility. If failure is not possible, it must not be
research.
• The proposal needs to create the impression that failure
is unlikely.
• A good plan also provides the criteria for recognizing the
completion of a milestone
• e.g., submitted for publication, accepted for publication, survey
completed, chapter written.


How to define your
PhD plan?
In the nurturing sc
the courage and ope
Sailing into the unkno
takes courage; seein
different from expec
more rich and strange,
openness.
In summary, take y
3 Month Rule) to find a
available the one that
most interesting to
others. A good proje
skills to achieve self-e

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Figure 2. The Objective and Nurturing Schemas of Research
The nurturing schema includes ‘‘the cloud’’—a period of time in which basic assumptions break down. The ideas in this essay w
gifts in conversations and
Alon, U. (2009). How to choose a good scientific problem. Molecular cell, 35(6):726–728. learning from my mistakes
36
and again offered as a gif
at point A, which is the question, and and nothing makes sense. The researcher
are discussions with Ron

How to deﬁne your
PhD proposal?
• The remainder of a proposal exists to support the
thesis and the plan
• A survey of related work supports the
novelty of the thesis.
• a summary of prior work by the student
supports plausibility of both the thesis and the plan
• A review of the research challenges and
proposed circumvention strategies supports the
intellectual merit of the thesis.

37

How to deﬁne your
PhD proposal?
• Good proposals give the impression that between
1/3 and 2/3 of the work remains to be completed.
• Thesis proposals claiming that all of the work is already
completed will be interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as
arrogant, and trigger intense scrutiny.

• It's important to propose before all of the work is
ﬁnished.

• If it's truly all done, a student should pretend the last
third of it isn't.

38

How to deﬁne your
PhD proposal?
• A PhD proposal should be presented in
written form!
• allows you to mature your ideas and iteratively
improve the proposal

• allows you to use it as a “map” you can always
refer

• try keeping a map in memory and it’s easy to
see how quickly you can get totally lost...

39

How to deﬁne your
PhD proposal?
• A good thesis proposal document can be
structured like a proposal for FCT funding

http://alfa.fct.mctes.pt/apoios/projectos/concursos/docs/guiaoEN
http://alfa.fct.mctes.pt/apoios/projectos/concursos/2008/docs/FCT-GuiaoProjectos-22Jan09-v2_EN.pdf

40

How to define a
chronogram
• Used to list deadlines, due dates, critical paths, schedule dates for
maximum work impact...
• allows to propose a final date for work conclusion!

• Start with the big tasks ID Task Name Duration Dec '03 Jan '04 Feb '04 Mar '04 Apr '04 May '04 Jun '04 Jul '04 Aug '04 Sep '04 Oct '04 Nov '04 Dec '04

•
24 01 08 15 22 29 05 12 19 26 02 09 16 23 01 08 15 22 29 05 12 19 26 03 10 17 24 31 07 14 21 28 05 12 19 26 02 09 16 23 30 06 13 20 27 04 11 18 25 01 08 15 22 29 06 13 20
1 Phd Preliminary Activities 53 days?

problem definition
2 PhD Web Page 25.88 days?
3 Phd WebPage implementation 1 mon?
4 Upload of 1st online version 0 days 05-01
5 Marsyas / CLAM Tests and evaluation 21.88 days?
6 CLAM study and evaluation 1 mon?
7 Choice of Analysis Framework 0 days

•
16-01
8 DataBase Preliminray Tests and Evaluation 10 days?

choice of methodology
9 MySQL / Oracle Test and Evaluation 10 days?
10 Study and Evaluation of other technologies 40 days?
11 SDIF peliminar study 5 days?
12 XML preliminar study 5 days?
13 cppUnit preliminary study 5 days?

•
14 FLTK evaluation and test 5 days?
15 Doxygen study 5 days?

experiments, data gathering, observations
16 qwt study 10 days?
17 Software Development 170 days?
18 Audio Analysis Framework 120 days?
19 Beta 1 Development 2.5 mons?

•
21 PITCH2MIDI 50 days?

data analysis and interpretation
23 Speaker Identification / Recognition 3 mons?
24 Audio Segmentation and Classification 3 mons?
25 Audio FingerPrinting 3 mons?
26 VISNET activities 141 days?
27 Writting of D29 10 days?

•
28 D29 - Audio and Speech Analysis System Overview 0 days 01-04
29 Writting of D40 10 days?

report (papers, thesis, ...)
30 D40 - Review of the Work Done in Audio-Video Fusion 0 days 01-04
31 Writing of D24 10 days?
32 D24 - Functional Specification of the Query-by-Humming S 0 days 01-10
33 Publications 7 days?
34 ISMIR 2004 paper writing 7 days?

•
35 ISMIR 2004 paper submission 0 days 01-05

define the smaller tasks later on
36 AES117 paper writing 7 days?
37 AES117 paper submission 0 days 01-05
38 DAFX 2004 paper writing 7 days?
39 DAFX 2004 paper submission 0 days 01-05
40 Reports 7 days?
41 FCT/FEUP Report writting 7 days?

•
42 FCT/FEUP Report delivery 0 days 30-11

Page 1

add sub-tasks as the work progresses and as needed

41

Literature Review
• If you are still looking for a research topic, the
ﬁrst literature review efforts will naturally be
somewhat broad and erratic...
• this is normal, but should only last for a short
period of time
• after this initial research and review of
literature, the researcher should start to
narrow her research interests and focus in a
more speciﬁc topic

42

Literature Review
• TIP: look for books, papers and articles
that provide a review of the state-of-the-art
in a ﬁeld of your interest

43

Literature Review
• Allows you to:
• get acquainted with the state-of-the-art in a specific topic

• learn the main proposals from other authors working in the field
• discover who are the most influential/active researchers in the field, as
well as the most cited works
• learn about the most accepted and established approaches in the field
• learn the terminology and concepts used in the field
• find out what are the most important journals and conferences in the
field
• keep updated about the latest contributions to the field
• propose novel contributions to the field of research!

44

Literature Review
• Approaches:
• erratic reviews
• state-of-the-art reviews
• focused reviews
• follow-up reviews
• wide-band reviews
45

Literature Review
• Types of literature
• scientific
• peer-reviewed

• targeted to the expert reader

• divulgation
• targeted to a more broad audience

• usually establish connections between different fields

• technical
• technical reports and manuals focused on a specific topic

• news, interviews, opinion articles
• published in magazines, news papers

• mainly targeted to the general layman public

• (e.g. Wikipedia, Super Interessante, Exame Informática)
46

Methodology

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/strucres.php
48

Methodology
• Deductive vs Inductive thinking
Theory
Inductive
(top-down)
Tentative Hypothesis
Hypothesis

Deductive Pattern Observation
(bottom-up)
Conﬁrmation

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php 49

10 reasons to fail a PhD
1. Learn too much (fail to deﬁne a scope of research)

• requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis

• By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read
about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis.

• some students go too far with the related work search, reading so much
about their intended area of research that they never start that research.

• Advisors will lose patience with "eternal" students that aren't focused on
the goal--making a small but signiﬁcant contribution to human knowledge.
http://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/ 52

2. Get obsessed with Perfection
• Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in
the limit.

• "Good enough" is better than "perfect."

• Follow an incremental and iterative approach

• start simple, and add layers of complexity
at each iteration


3. Procrastinate
• ...


4. Go autonomous too soon/too late
• The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a
degree.

• Going autonomous before the student knows how to choose
good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions
and a grumpy advisor.

• On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act
past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start
seeing a "return" on an investment of time and hard-won grant
money.

• Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-
professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their ﬁeld.


5. Treat Ph.D. school like school or work

• Ph.D. school is neither school nor work.

• Ph.D. school is a monastic experience. And, a jealous hobby.

• Solving problems and writing up papers well enough to pass peer review demands
contemplative labor on days, nights and weekends.

• Reading through all of the related work takes biblical levels of devotion.

• Students that treat Ph.D. school like a 9-5 endeavor are the ones that take 7+ years to
ﬁnish, or end up ABD.


6. Ignore the committee
• Some Ph.D. students forget that a committee has to sign
off on their Ph.D.

• It's important for students to maintain contact with
committee members in the latter years of a Ph.D. They
need to know what a student is doing.

• It's also easy to forget advice from a committee member
since they're not an everyday presence like an advisor.

• Committee members, however, rarely forget the advice
they give.


7. Aim too low
• A PhD is supposed to be a challenge!

• Aiming low does not pursuits “perfection”...

• ...and leaves no room for uncertainty.
• And, research is always uncertain.


8. Aim too high
• A PhD is not the final undertaking. It's the start of a
scientific career.

• A Ph.D. is a small but significant contribution to
human knowledge.

• Impact is something students should aim for over a
lifetime of research.

• A PhD is mostly about the journey, not so much
about the final destination...


9. Miss the real milestones
• In practice, the real milestones are three good
publications connected by a (perhaps loosely)
unified theme.
• Once a student has two good publications, if she convinces her
committee that she can extrapolate a third, she has a thesis proposal.

• Once a student has three publications, she has defended, with
reasonable confidence, that she can repeatedly conduct research of
sufficient quality to meet the standards of peer review. If she draws a
unifying theme, she has a thesis, and if she staples her publications
together, she has a dissertation.


10. Assume a PhD as an Artistic Project
• Being an artist (even if a well recognized one) does
not necessarily make you a researcher

• Artistic creation by itself will not get you a PhD!

• It will only conﬁrm you as an artist, not as a
researcher...

• ...you still need a thesis, a plan and a
proposal, and methodically work towards
a novel contribution in your ﬁeld!

Decreto-Lei n.º 230/2009 de 14 de Setembro
61

Productivity
• Get to know the tools of your trade.

• Optimize transaction costs.
• Don't work from home.
• Eliminate temptation to waste time.

• Salvage dead time with technology.
• Get rid of your TV.
• Consolidate email accounts.
• Work from a laptop.

• Use a calendar system.
• Power-use a smartphone.
• Turn off instant messaging.

• Minimize collaboration costs.
• Use a citation/paper-management system.
• Procrastinate productively.
• Iterate toward perfection.

http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/
62

Productivity
• Extra Curricular Activities
• Not a bad thing, but get a grip...
• ...otherwise they may quickly turn into a source of procrastination!

63

Productivity
• Always remember to backup!
• your thesis dissertation, data, code, etc.
• get a system (any system that suits you)
• and live by it!!!

64

Writing a Thesis

65

Writing a Thesis

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/guideelements.php

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html#organisation 66

Writing a Thesis
• Mandatory Sections in a Thesis
1. Title Page 8. Middle Chapters
2. Copyright Waiver (1) Materials and Methods
3. Abstract (2) Theory
4. Acknowledgments (3) Results and Discussion
5. Table of Contents, List of 9. Final Chapter
Tables, List of Figures,
Glossary (1) Conclusions and Future
Work
6. Introduction
10. List of references
7. Literature Review
11. Appendices

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html#organisation 67

Writing a Thesis
• Stylistic Elements
• I. Professional Writing
• First person and sex-stereotyped forms are avoided. Material is presented in an unbiased
and unemotional (e.g., no "feelings" about things), but not necessarily uninteresting,
fashion.
• II. Parallel Construction
• Tense is kept parallel within and between sentences (as appropriate).
• III. Sentence Structure
• Sentence structure and punctuation are correct. Incomplete and run-on sentences are
avoided.
• IV. Spelling and Word Usage
• Spelling and use of words are appropriate. Words are capitalized and abbreviated
correctly.
• V. General Style.
• The document is neatly produced and reads well. The format for the document has been
correctly followed.

68

Writing a Thesis
• How to cite?
• Different citation system exist:
• APA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, footnotes,
endnotes
• http://www.library.cornell.edu/newhelp/
res_strategy/citing/apa.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Harvard_referencing

69

Writing a Thesis
• Writing Tools
• LaTeX (http://www.latex-project.org/)
• commonly used in Sciences

• separates content from form (just like HTML and CSS)

• efﬁcient, reliable, produces excellent typographic results

• uses bibtex for reference management

• steep learning curve

• free! (as in beer and as in speech)

• Lyx (http://www.lyx.org/)
• based on LaTeX, but substantially easier to use

• WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean)

• free

70

Writing a Thesis
• Writing Tools
• MS Word
• Advanced (though somewhat slugish) user interface (WYSIWYG - What You See Is
What You Get)

• Basic citation and bibliography features...

• Comercial, not free

• Apple Pages
• Does not support citation and References

• Does not support automatic Table and Figure numbering

• Commercial, free

71

Publishing a Paper
• Allows you to present you work to the
community / world
• get exposed to the critique
• get suggestions / corrections
• build a research reputation
• excellent way to exercise you for your
thesis writing and defense!

72

Publishing a Paper
• Where to publish?
• From the Literature review you should already have
identiﬁed the most important journals / conferences /
workshops /festivals / events in your ﬁeld
• Aim your submissions wisely
• exploratory / preliminary work should be aimed at
workshops, national conferences
• More mature and validated work should be
reserved for Journals or important conferences /
events

73

Publishing a Paper
• Paper Structure:
• Paper Title
• The Abstract
• The Introduction
• Related Work
• The Body
• Performance Experiments
• The Conclusions
• Future Work
• The Acknowledgements
• Citations / References
74

Publishing a Paper
• Addressing Reviews
• always try to address them as positive and constructive comments

75

How to present?
• PhD Presentation Guidelines
• Get prepared

• Identify your audience

• Rehearse your presentation out loud

• Control the time!
• At your PhD defense you’ll only have 20~30 minutes!

• Estimate no more than 1 slide/minute

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2006_10_20/
mastering_your_ph_d_giving_a_great_presentation/
76

How to present?
• PhD Presentation Guidelines
• Start by clearly and quickly presenting your “thesis”

• Cite the state-of-the-art and contextualize your work

• State your hypothesis and assumptions

• State your (expected) novel contribution(s)

• Present the challenges

• Present your approach / methodology

• Present your experiments / projects

• Analyze your results

• Present your conclusions and future work

• All in less than 30 minutes!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/fabian_hemmert_the_shape_shifting_future_of_the_mobile_phone.html

77

How to present?
• Make / keep your audience hooked!

78

How long should a PhD
take?
“No less than required, no more than necessary”
• 3 years minimum

• 4 years “maximum” (deﬁnitely, if you are a FCT grant holder)

79

How long should a PhD
take?

80

PhD Advisors
• You’ll develop a bipolar love-hate with her
• tip: she’s supposed to be your “best friend”, so she will be harsh and
obnoxious

• always assume her comments as constructive!

81

PhD Advisors
• Learn to decode you Advisor

82

PhD Advisors
• Anticipate your Advisor’s negation Field

83

PhD Advisors
• Expect to get overwhelmed every time you
meet with your Advisor

84

PhD Advisors
• Your advisor is supposed to be your
harshest critic

85

PhD Advisors
• Your advisor is supposed to be your
harshest critic and may lack a sense of
opportunity ;-)

86

PhD Advisors
• Expect your Advisor to regularly ask you
“Mission Impossible”s
• She’s just “pushing your envelope”

87

PhD Advisors
• Your advisor will make sure you iterate till
“perfection” (although she nows that’s
unattainable ;-))

88

PhD Advisors

• Final Note:
• remember, your PhD advisor is in the
same boat as you...
• but she’ll not get drown because she
already has a PhD to use as a ﬂoating
device in case you sink the boat ;-)

89

So, are you ready? ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0
90

References
• Alon, U. (2009). How to choose a good scientiﬁc problem. Molecular cell,
35(6):726–728.
• http://matt.might.net
• http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
• http://matt.might.net/articles/advice-for-phd-thesis-proposals/
• http://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/
• http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-
students-academics/
• http://www.academicproductivity.com/
• http://matt.might.net/articles/books-papers-materials-for-graduate-students/
• http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/index.php

91

Research methodology - What is a PhD?

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