What is research?

Frode Eika Sandnes

Research history - first….

• In 1738 the Danish researcher Jørgensen invents the wheel

…then, later in 1739 the Swedish researcher Olssson reports that…• ”The effectiveness of the wheel first

proposed by Jørgensen (1738) is greatly improved by adding one side to the wheel as shown in Fig. 1.”

Fig.1: A cart with four-sided wheels for optimal speed.

Then, in 1740 the Finish researcher Koikonnen discovers..• ”Our experiments shows that adding yet a

side to the four-sided wheel proposed by Olsson (1739) results in a remarkable performance improvement (see Fig. 1)”

Fig.1: A cart with five-sided wheels for better speed.

Finally, in 1741 the Norwegian researcher Normann finds…

• ”By means of mathematical analysis we find that the wheel first introduced by Jørgensen (1738), later optimised by the likes of Olsson (1739) and Koikonnen (1740) can be greatly improved. We find that the comfort and speed increases towards the maximum as the number of sides on the wheels tends towards infinity….”

The optimal solution

)(lim sideswheelCirclesides

The classic research process

• Observation of phenomenon• Establish a hypothesis• Design strategy to prove or reject hypothesis• Conduct experiment• Analyse result and draw conclusion• Report findings• Start from the top

What is high quality research? (Salkind, 2003)

• Is based on the work of others (not plagiarism)• Can be replicated• Is generalisable to other settings• Is based on some logical rational and tied to theory• Is doable!!• Generates new questions or is cyclical in nature• Is incremental• Is an apolitical activity that should be undertaken

for the betterment of society

Reporting results

• Various forums– Journals– Dissertations and theses– Conferences, workshops and symposiums.– Technical reports and notes– Books– Web notes

Quality assurance

• Peer-review process (all scientific journals, most conferences and some books)– Done by experts in the same field.– Find and correct mistakes in manuscript.– Generate feedback based on own experience

• Citation index (selected scientific journals)– Databases tracking which papers citing other papers. A

high citation count indicates that the work is good.

• Affects research funding and ranking of researchers.

Structure of a research paper (recognisable pattern)

• Title, authors (order)• Abstract, summarise paper• Introduction, present the problem• Background, relate to other research• Method, present experimental setup• Results• Discussions• Conclusions• Acknowledgements• References

Experimental evaluation

• Sysadmin data collected– Sample 1: 2, 4, 1, 3, 0, 2, 4, 3, 1

– Sample 2: 6, 9, 7, 8, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9

• Are these samples different (hypothesis)?– Use statistical methods to show this.

• T-tests for two groups

• ANOVA tests for more than two groups.

– Good practice – but sadly often omitted in computer science.

That’s it for now…

• Good research guides– Ruszkiewicz, J, Walker, J. R., Pemberton, M.

A., ”Bookmarks – Aguide to research and writing, 2/e”, Pearson, 2003.

– Neil J. Salkind, Exploring Research, 5th edition international edition, Pearson Education, 2003.