How much actual time do you spend when you read a paper deeply?
I am currently reading the Minimum Entropy Production Principle paper, dedicating some time to it every day. I am about 3 hours deep now, and only half finished. I am not going as far as to follow all the derivations in detail, only taking the time to put the arguments in the context of what I already know. I expect it will take more than one reading to internalize.
Sometimes I worry this is so slow I am spending my time poorly, but I haven’t any idea how it goes for more serious people, so I thought I would ask.
It varies a lot between papers (in my experience) and between fields (I imagine), but several hours for a deep reading doesn’t seem out of line. To take an anecdote, I was recently re-reading a paper (of comparable length, though in economics) that I’m planning to present as a guest of a mathematics reading group, and I probably spent 4 hours on the re-read, before starting on my slides and presumably re-re-reading a bunch more.
Grazing over several days (and/or multiple separate readings) is also my usual practice for a close read, fwiw.
Definitely depends on the field. For experimental papers in the field I’m already in, it only takes like half an hour, and then following up on the references for things I need to know the context for takes an additional 0.5-2 hours. For theory papers 1-4 hours is more typical.
For me ‘deeply’ involves coding. I must have read dozens of papers carefully and then failed to implement the technique first time due to either my misunderstanding something, or finding something in the paper to be unclear, wrong or omitted! Or you realise that the technique works well but would scale horribly / can’t be extended etc. That could take several days—so that treatment is reserved for special selections.
How much actual time do you spend when you read a paper deeply?
I am currently reading the Minimum Entropy Production Principle paper, dedicating some time to it every day. I am about 3 hours deep now, and only half finished. I am not going as far as to follow all the derivations in detail, only taking the time to put the arguments in the context of what I already know. I expect it will take more than one reading to internalize.
Sometimes I worry this is so slow I am spending my time poorly, but I haven’t any idea how it goes for more serious people, so I thought I would ask.
It varies a lot between papers (in my experience) and between fields (I imagine), but several hours for a deep reading doesn’t seem out of line. To take an anecdote, I was recently re-reading a paper (of comparable length, though in economics) that I’m planning to present as a guest of a mathematics reading group, and I probably spent 4 hours on the re-read, before starting on my slides and presumably re-re-reading a bunch more.
Grazing over several days (and/or multiple separate readings) is also my usual practice for a close read, fwiw.
Definitely depends on the field. For experimental papers in the field I’m already in, it only takes like half an hour, and then following up on the references for things I need to know the context for takes an additional 0.5-2 hours. For theory papers 1-4 hours is more typical.
For me ‘deeply’ involves coding. I must have read dozens of papers carefully and then failed to implement the technique first time due to either my misunderstanding something, or finding something in the paper to be unclear, wrong or omitted! Or you realise that the technique works well but would scale horribly / can’t be extended etc. That could take several days—so that treatment is reserved for special selections.