Making it easy to see why the technical details matter
Helping you see where it’s OK to skim
Some summaries are just BAD
They sometimes to a terrible job of getting the main point across
They can be boring, insulting, or confusing
They give you a false impression of what’s in the article, making you skip it when you’d actually have gotten a lot out of reading it
They can trick you into misinterpreting the article
The author is not the best person to write the summary. They don’t have a clear sense of what’s confusing to the average reader. Plus, their priority is often on being thorough and getting credit for the idea, not on being a clear and effective communicator.
The best person to write the summary is someone who cares about the topic, but only recently de-confused themselves about the paper. They can exploit their recent confusion to take the next reader from confusion to understanding more quickly. Hopefully, they share the same background knowledge as their intended reader, and ideally they’d run their summary by the author to make sure it’s accurate.
Someday soon, we might have the technology to write custom summaries of papers depending on exactly what you want to know about it. For now, it’s a useful skill for a human.
Summaries can speed your reading along by
Avoiding common misunderstandings
Making it easy to see why the technical details matter
Helping you see where it’s OK to skim
Some summaries are just BAD
They sometimes to a terrible job of getting the main point across
They can be boring, insulting, or confusing
They give you a false impression of what’s in the article, making you skip it when you’d actually have gotten a lot out of reading it
They can trick you into misinterpreting the article
The author is not the best person to write the summary. They don’t have a clear sense of what’s confusing to the average reader. Plus, their priority is often on being thorough and getting credit for the idea, not on being a clear and effective communicator.
The best person to write the summary is someone who cares about the topic, but only recently de-confused themselves about the paper. They can exploit their recent confusion to take the next reader from confusion to understanding more quickly. Hopefully, they share the same background knowledge as their intended reader, and ideally they’d run their summary by the author to make sure it’s accurate.
Someday soon, we might have the technology to write custom summaries of papers depending on exactly what you want to know about it. For now, it’s a useful skill for a human.