 So, welcome back to beginning of this session. As I mentioned, Karmalkar of electrical engineering department of IIT Madras had given a series of lectures to our research scholars on various aspects of research. Frankly, he does not like the term introduction to research methodologies. He likes to call it introduction to research, because he says that in the minds of research scholars and also in the minds of several young teachers, there is much confusion about research itself, what is research, how it is to be done and various diamonds. So, we said that since this is the first course of which it is kind we are doing, we will name that workshop as introduction to research methodologies, but before these specific research methodologies are discussed, such as quantitative techniques, statistical mean variance and other things experiment etcetera, we would like to have your introduction to research as a series of lectures. So, 25th, 26th and 27th, he will be giving two lectures each in the morning on his eye. So, what I have done is one of the lectures, so last time when he gave lectures here, he also gave a series of lectures on different aspects of research and he gave one nutshell lecture. So, what I am going to do is I am first going to we will first view the nutshell lecture that he gave and later on we will view one of the lectures that he gave on one aspect of the research. Now, research calls for specialized skills in several areas, this particular slide shows what are the kind of skills which are necessary for research and these skills are covered in the course one by one. So, thinking is the most important thing that any research should do. So, we discuss a lot about thinking, several levels of thinking are listed there such as knowing comprehension, problem solving, critical thinking, creative thinking and so on. So, each of these aspects particularly the last three which are the most important from the point of view of researcher, these are discussed in detail. So, I will tell you what are the kind of topics which are discussed in this, then problem finding a problem for research and a related topic in literature search. So, we will discuss a few things in this one hour course which are discussed may be over a period of two or three lectures. So, proceeding further you have technical communication, oral and written communication and publishing and patenting. So, in this a common portion of the course would discuss about topics related to oral communication and written communication which are common to all and then you must give an opportunity for the research scholar to actually make a presentation and then you critically evaluate each scholar's presentation and give you a feedback like a doctor gives a prescription. So, each scholar is given a prescription of how he could improve his talk. So, each scholar typically is given 10 minutes time to present and then the scholar is given another opportunity to present and this second presentation of the scholar is given. Now, obviously you have about 200 to 250 research scholars in the institute you cannot do it at a common level this activity. So, these activities are done at the departmental level because there is a number is small and you can give time to each research scholar to make two presentations. Some of the other thing that I discussed in publishing and patenting are say what is the kind of what are the criteria which are used for human being article. So, you typically take up review forms of some well known journals and see what are the criteria on which they rate your paper. Similarly, what is the difference between a paper and a patent and so on. So, these topics are covered a little bit in detail. Then we have experimentation and modeling about which I will discuss in detail in this course here and then you have time and stress management and provisional ethics. So, research scholar undergoes lot of stress these experience of you know all research scholars and then what are the what is the origin of stress for a research scholar. I mean everybody undergoes stress that is known, but the point is for a research scholar what are the specific things which are responsible for the stress and how one can get into the stress. For example, one of the stress is in a research scholar related to the relation between the student and the guide. So, many time it is found that good research scholars face difficulties with good guides. I mean competent research scholar and competent guide you have problem. So, if people know exactly what is the origin of this problem. In fact, lot of research has known on these issues in recent years. So, these topics are actually discussed as a kind of counseling session in the time and stress management and provisional ethics please talk it. Then we also have an hours discussion it is like a group discussion. So, in which the scholars will be given some material in the beginning of the course and they will be given 2 to 3 weeks time to read up the material this is one thing that we have been using for discussion. The article however does not have to do anything with the technical engineering. The article is about research and it is actually a gist of the talk that Richard Hammack used to give in Bell Laboratories to all young entrance to Bell Laboratories. It is a very nice article it is like a story where he has discussed various aspects of research such as what is the good problem and how do you find good problem what are the traits of a good researcher. He has given case studies to illustrate how he observed some people with certain habits at the time when they joined and after 20 years what they are doing. He tried to formulate the habits and their achievements. He also covered things such as research management and what importance does presentation play in a researcher's career. According to him presentation is one of the most important skills that a research scholar has to develop and we find that that is where many research scholars are actually lacking. Let us look at the degrees. What is the purpose of the different degrees that we try to get in our career. The bachelor's degree it is general education. The master on the other hand is position of advanced knowledge. The doctorate degree is a license to teach and guide others. So strictly speaking every teacher who is teaching science or engineering or any other subjects should be a PhD holder. Now this is not what is happening in our country. There are difficulties with that. But this is exactly like driving a breaker on the road without light. Teaching without a PhD is like driving a breaker on the road without light. So what is the meaning of research. This is one of the things that is covered. There may be 30 to 40 minutes in the lecture. So go back and search until we find. That means research is an explorative activity. So we need to distinguish research from the undergraduate education which is totally course oriented. Let us see what are the points in which research education differs from undergraduate education. In research you do not get well defined problems to solve. It is your job to define the problem and as well as to solve it. This is one major difference between the undergraduate education where you write large number of examinations where you are given well defined small problems which each problem may take no more than 10 minutes to solve. And you solve a large number of these problems and aggregate of what you achieve from such examinations is given to you as a great point average. Now research is totally different. You have to solve a big problem and the problem itself is not defined at the beginning of your research. So you have to find a good problem, formulate it properly and then solve it. This is one major difference. The second difference. An undergraduate student's learning is managed by his teacher. A research scholar on the other hand is the manager of his own learning. Hence he must be an independent teacher. So what is meant here is you take an undergraduate education. I include end up education also in undergraduate when I talk about undergraduate education. You have a list of courses specified. You do have a few electives but even those are specified by the teacher. So everything is done. You have little bit of freedom clear and clear. That is what is meant by this teaching is managed by the teacher. Where actually strictly speaking it is a research scholar who must decide what area he or she wants to research in and then decide what courses he or she must take. In that sense it is managed by the research scholar. Similarly how to proceed, how to formulate the problem. A lot of this load is on the research scholar. So independent thinking as distinguished from simple intelligence. With independent thinking is very very important for a research scholar. High intelligence may not necessarily indicate capability to the independent thinking. But research scholar must be an independent teacher. Next research education blurs the distinction between a student and a mentor. There is one major difference between undergraduate education and research education. A good research scholar will join the research program. The guide is here and the scholar is here. But in the specific area of research by the time a good research scholar has completed the work. The scholar is here or he may even be there in the specific area of research. So it blurs the distinction between the guide and the scholar. This is one of the reasons for the problems, interpersonal problems between the guide and the student. Why the problems are there? This is one of the reasons. So it can be difficult for a guide sometimes to think that at the end of research it is the scholar who is being called for presentations or lectures or the guide in a specific area. So how to manage these kind of things this is very very important. Let us look at some other features of research. Research entails prominent arduous labour and needs breadth of knowledge, persistence and concentration rather than brilliance, doubt rather than overpower. So research scholar, a person must take the research only if he or she has been getting lot of doubts whenever you sit in a class. This is important. It is not sufficient if you are getting high marks. Or do you get lot of doubts? This is very important. And then do you have the persistence to follow through and then get answers to those doubts. Not just asking the teacher about the doubt and getting an answer. You have a lot of students in a class who ask a lot of questions. But they want to answer from the teacher. But in this case the answer has to be partly given by the teacher in the research and mostly by the student himself or herself. So for example, a study of geniuses by psychologists has shown. This is one example. High but not the highest intelligence combined with the greatest degree of persistence will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence. This is the conclusion of research with 301 geniuses. All research scholars can associate themselves with those. That is the excitement in research. You may not be a genius but at least you would like everyone is aiming at that. So if you want to look at geniuses then please note that it is their persistence that has made them so. Not the intelligence. It does not mean that you do not need intelligence. The point is the difference between a great person and not so great person is not in the intelligence but in the persistence. That is the point. So this applies to research also. Then why research? There are a number of reasons. What are the motives for research? There are a number of those in detail here but they are very, very important. What is the motivation with which you do research? At least the last point in the slide must be avoided which actually is the reason for taking to research in many cases. That is not having any real end and not knowing what to do. Many people take to research. This is one more reason for dissatisfaction of the diet. The student is not really motivated. So now this is the introduction about the research in what way it is different. Let us see in detail about the thinking skills. So creativity, problem solving and problem finding. So what do we discuss in the course? Generally our thinking tends to be reproducted. That is based on similar problems encountered in the past or taught to solve. This is a feature of all of our examinations even in IIT. You may have difficult problems but still mostly they are reproductive thinking. They taste only reproductive thinking. For researchers what is important? You must learn to do productive thinking that is generate as many alternative approaches as possible. It so happens that in our education we have not looked at this particular issue in that much detail as we should. That is in our teaching does it focus on covering a number of topics or does it give sufficient emphasis to discussing alternative approaches to the same topic? This is not as important if you want to generate productive idea of thinking. You want to develop productive thinking. So for example there are various levels of thinking. Lowest level is knowing or memory, then comprehension, then application of problem solving which is the level at which we pitch all our questions in IIT at least. In outside colleges other than IIT in fact examination test only knowing and in some cases comprehension. So evaluation is critical thinking which is very very important for research and creativity. So typically what is done in the course is an example is given. It is an activity given to the students. A problem is given and then they are given about 20 minutes of time. They try to solve the problem. They try to solve the problem. In very rare cases they make it a solution. This activity is meant to demonstrate these various levels of thinking. So for instance one of the problems that are found very effective to deal with this topic is you have a square piece of paper. How to divide a square piece of paper into 5 equal square? This is the problem. How do you divide a square piece of paper into 5 equal square? You are allowed to cut and paste. You can divide into more number of pieces and then you can join them and so on. Ultimately you must get 5 equal squares out of a square piece of paper. So this problem is given to the students and they are given 20 minutes of time. And then a discussion is after 20 minutes you do a discussion of how different techniques or methods are being adopted by people to solve this problem. And then after the discussion you clearly classify the various levels of thinking. And I cannot conduct the activity because if you have the activity then the impact of this discussion is more. That is how in fact the effort of this course is to introduce such activities at various points to actually help the person learn in a permanent manner. So in this case for example the gist of this problem is that it is an application of Pythagoras here. Now if a student is asked a thought about Pythagoras theorem and then you set a question in the exam saying state and true Pythagoras theorem. This is testing knowing memory because you have done the proof in the class and the same thing you are asking in the exam. On the other hand if you set a question saying that state and true Pythagoras theorem and experience significance. So what is its significance? For example one significance of Pythagoras theorem is that you can geometrically realize an irrational number square root of 5 is an irrational number. But geometrically you can realize this number. This is one thing that is Pythagoras theorem says. So what is the significance of Pythagoras theorem? So if a person understands these points then you can say he is able to comprehend Pythagoras theorem. On the other hand now supposing you set a question like this that applying Pythagoras theorem divide a square piece of paper into 5 equals square. Now this problem is an application level or problem solving type of question. Then if you do not give the hint that use Pythagoras theorem for dividing a square piece of paper into 5 equals 5. The way we frame the question when we do the activity. Then it is an even higher level question because first you do not know what is it that you must use to solve this problem. At that time the mind will try to explore various approaches. Now that is when you are doing critical thinking. It is an even higher level problem. Solving such a problem requires critical thinking. Which means examining an issue from various points of view. Then evaluating each point of view from the point of view of a reference and then deciding whether this is correct or not and abandoning it and then going to the next one. This whole process of thinking is called critical thinking. And finally coming up with such a problem to test Pythagoras theorem and its application. It is itself a very interesting thing. So coming up with such questions can be regarded as creativity. That is how using activity you can distinguish between the various levels. A resource scholar must know that he or she is operating at applications critical thinking or creativity. These are higher levels of thinking. Very often what happens is resource scholars are not aware of these aspects at all. This is actually bad because it is like an athlete. If an athlete wants to be a good right, he or she must have some knowledge of physical fitness. He or she may not have the same knowledge as her coach or you know medical doctor has. But some level of this thing, awareness and knowledge about various aspects of the body should be there. Unfortunately this similar knowledge or awareness is not there in resource scholars about thinking which he or she has to do a lot. So one of the purposes of this discussion is to make the person aware of what kind of thinking resource scholars must do. Now is there any point in doing this kind of discussion at all? Because if thinking is basically a gift, then there is not much point in discussing this topic. Except for some information. However recent research in psychology has shown as this slide shows that there is a significant element of skill in thinking. That means it can be developed by practice. It can be developed by practice, to a greater extent. For example, it was made by Robert Reisbiner has said that creativity is beyond analysis, it is a romantic illusion we must now outgrow. Another psychologist has said after research on creativity, creativity is a skill which can be developed by practice. Conscious application is needed, not the vagaries of inspiration in order to achieve creative work. So things like that. So we must appreciate that thinking is not something that is only a gift. There is an element of gift and there is an element of skill. So in our discussion we have a man developing the skill. So in fact every discussion is followed by a prescription. How do you develop this skill? Some of the prescriptions that we give will be here shortly. One aspect that we need to discuss is what is the difference between intelligence and creativity? This is one issue that is discussed in this lecture. So for instance, this point is dramatically illustrated by these two cases. The first person, Marilyn Bostomet is a lady who showed a high score of 228, the highest ever, on a particular intelligence test. But what is her achievement? What is she doing in life? She is merely a question-and-answer columnist for correct math. The same test was conducted on Richard Feynman, who is a Nobel Prize winner, and whose achievement turned out to be 122 on the same intelligence case. But he is a Nobel Prize winner and determined as the last energy. So we need to understand the difference between intelligence and creativity. So intelligence and creativity are not the same thing. Intelligence in a domain being the ability to function at a high level in that domain. Thus, a typical student in IIT with a high grade point average would typically switch into this, the kind of examination system we have. But creativity involves asking new questions and altering the domain. This is the most important thing about creativity. Do you ask new questions? And as a result of your work, has the domain changed because of your work? Has electrical engineering become any different? Any such activity, thinking activity which results in altering the domain is a creative activity. So one can be highly intelligent and rigid, non-creative or lagging in the kind of single-minded fashion that drives creativity. So what is creativity? That is what you have to try to define. Right? If you want to develop some skills, you must have at least to some level of precision in the definition. So creativity is the ability to look at the same thing as everyone else and think something different. So in the course what we do is, you take some examples of this and illustrate how this definition applies in certain creative workforce. For example, you must appreciate the fact that creativity is not limited to any art, any specific type of science or engineering or art. It is a very general phenomenon. Here is an example of a creative piece. Description of attitudes is the help of roses and flowers. Now everybody has seen roses and everybody has seen flowers. Now somebody has thought, can you use just these two words and distinguish between several attitudes that become a flower. Optimistic attitudes means everything is full of roses. Specific attitudes, everything is full of flowers. Realistic. Well, think you have roses and you have flowers. Doesn't really matter whether it is roses or flowers. You make roses for you and roses for me. Selfish, roses for me and flowers for you. Statistic, flowers for you and your blood form. And divine, roses for you and your flowers for me. So now you can see. In fact, I found this particular piece in an ATM. But it is a very nice illustration of creativity. It is looking at the same thing as everyone else but think something different. That is what creativity is all about. So let us look at some methods by which you can develop creativity. So here are few descriptions. Looking at the world in terms of analogy. This is one major method of creative thinking. Many new discoveries are done using analogical thinking. Another method is to learn about different ways to solve a problem. Here is the quotation which I like very much. Which all the scholars must remember. If you have 10 hours for chopping a tree, spend 5 hours sharpening the axe. If your thinking is not sharp, right, you try to solve a big problem, the end result will not be significant. The scholars do not understand how to spend their time even if they have it. The point is the time should be spent in sharpening the thinking. And these are some of the ways of sharpening your thinking. If you spend time in the first one, one and half years, two years in, just sharpening the thinking. It is not necessary to solve a research problem. The problem you can solve in two years time. It does not take much time to solve a problem. You will appreciate. If your thinking is sharp, right, you can cut a problem very quickly and originally. But if your thinking is not sharp, then however long you take, it is like chopping a tree. You have a blunt axe. Any number of times you hit, you will make, you will not make much effort in it. So there is, therefore, there is a strong reason for developing your thinking and following some of these perceptions. For example, analogies. You take an example somewhere. This topic is discussed in detail in the course. Analogies. Solar system and atomic structure. The discovery of the atomic structure is an excellent example of discovery by analogies. So scientists saw that in outer space, you have planets revolving around the sun. If that can be the model to describe what do you see in outer world, why cannot such a model apply also in the case of the micro-world. In fact, that is how the idea of the electron revolving around him clears the origination. It is exactly analogies. The atomic structure is solar system. There are many other examples. For example, Brownian motion of the particles and electrons in a crystal. How do the electrons move in a crystal? How do they move like those particles in air? Which is the Brownian motion. We have a large number of such analogies. So these analogies are discussed to drive home this point. Different ways of calculating pipe. There is no example. This is the kind of thing that in fact, this is what we must read. There is a book which is titled Hundred Different Proofs of Pythagoras here. Now, we never find such things prescribed in a course for reading. This is what is the kind of reading that a resource program must do to sharpen the thing. Different ways of doing the same thing. Here, in the course, we discuss an example of pipe. Three different ways of calculating pipe. So you can have a geometrical approach of calculating pipe. That is the first point on the slide. You can have a series, infinite series approach of calculating pipe. You can have a statistical approach of calculating pipe. That is the response field experiment. I will not even to discuss though. It is very interesting to see how there are so many different approaches of calculating pipe. The point here is not a calculation of pipe, but the different approaches of doing the same thing. That is why, in fact, one of the persons well known, Aurobindo, who is philosopher Advilas, who had interest in education studies about education. Education is not about learning diverse subjects, but about learning diverse ways to the same subject. So in fact, as teachers also see whether we are trying to follow this victim in our own teaching. Do we discuss at least a few ideas in different ways? Then the topic of problem solving is discussed in great detail. So various strategies of problem solving are there. The first important thing about a problem is to represent it. One of the various ways you can represent a problem. Then logical thinking is the method of problem solving problem. So this logical thinking is discussed in detail. Then dividing into two. So these strategies are discussed with some case studies. For example, technique of representation. So you have changing the statement of the problem or reformulation, symbolic representation, representation in the form of table list or matrix, representation in the form of graph, tree, wind iron and other diagram. So you take two or three examples of each type and discuss in detail. For example, let us look at this reformulation which is a very powerful method of problem solving problems. Every research scholar has to go on formulating and reformulating his or her problem so that it becomes solvable. In fact, the statement of the problem when you write your thesis may not be the same as the statement then you start this one has to do. So here is a very simple but very interesting example. One of the companies in Japan wanted to increase the productivity so they thought they could involve the workers in their company in getting some good suggestions. So they gave this question to all the workers tell us how can you become more productive and said that if you have any suggestions you please drop them in a drop off. So they found very few suggestions and they didn't know why the workers are not responding. So one of the persons in the management he did a silent investigation and found the workers are not responding because therefore this is a tactic of the management to extract more work from the workers. So you involve them and try to get some suggestions and then you make them work more. So best thing is not to participate in it. Then one person in the management hit upon a very interesting idea he just changed the question he said let us ask them how can you make your job easier. This is the practical thing that has been done. And now as they expected they had hundreds of suggestions from workers because everybody wants to make the job easy. Point is that the company is not going to reduce the time of work. You are going to work for the same time and if your job is made easier indirectly you are asking the same thing how can you become more productive in a given time and they actually implemented some of these suggestions and the productivity of the company did go up. So how a problem can be restated for solution. Supposing you have done an experiment and collected a large amount of data you must organize in a table of form. I have very rarely seen a research scholar reporting to you large amount of reading in a nice table of compact form. Now what is the importance of representation in a table of form. If you want to discern any pattern in the data it is very easy. Also note that there are different types of tables available to represent the data. For example in this table what is shown here is the result of adjacent testing of a certain metal on a substrate. So you have one substrate one variable associated with the substrate here that is p plus p n or n plus and then another variable associated with the substrate is the area of the substrate. You have three variables 0.3 values of the area 0.5 centimeter square 1 centimeter square and 2 centimeter square for each condition of the substrate and each area you do two experiments experiment one and experiment two and then take the reading and now we deliberate this data and out of this data you want to discern some pattern how the adjacent changes to the substrate condition and area. Now the same data if it is cast in a slightly different form in this table where one variable doping is running vertically and the other variable area is running horizontally then the pattern is much more easy to consider. So things such as this are the point that are discussed in this particular problem solving session in the course. The same thing if you represent in a graphical form it is even more powerful. The same data is represented here in a graphical form you see here that the x axis is conditions on the substrate the y axis is the adhesion and the values corresponding to three different areas are adjacent values here plotted against the condition of the substrate and the two values obtained in repetitions of the experiment are plotted one above the other. So from this data in fact you can see that for certain conditions of the substrate the dispersion between two readings is very very large to repetitions of the same experiment whereas for some other conditions readings are very repetitive. So the amount of information that is contained in the graph how the adhesion varies with area for example in these two cases here the adhesion seems to be decreasing steadily as in this area whereas for other conditions in the substrate you cannot design any sustain. Like this are very nicely brought out in a graph. So in fact a student a research scholar must always try to see if any data he or she has can you plot it in some form of graph of the other. This point is dramatically brought out by the next problem. Supposing the problem is that two classes are going on side by side you have to approximate the same number of students and the same level of students you want to decide as an observer objective observer standing outside in which class the teaching learning process is going on better is the problem suppose. Now some of the ways of solving this problem what you do is you plot activities going on in a class on a graph. So here for instance all the activities are plotted on the y axis student action, student question student response, teacher question teacher response, teacher talk using chalkboard using charts and so on. All activities are on the y axis and as a function of time what is happening is plotted. There is a particular arrangement that is used for this activity. Activities of the teacher are close to the base line that is the time because the teacher is always active in the class. So that really doesn't need so much. The teacher has to use the chalkboard teacher has to talk. The important thing point that really show whether learning is going on is things such as whether teacher is asking question are the students responding are the students asking question. So for instance if students are asking question definitely it shows a much higher level of involvement in the teaching learning process than in a class where students are not asking question. So whatever is rare but which shows better quality of teaching learning process is plotted further away from the base line. That is the way all these activities are arranged. And now supposing you plot a graph for the two class rooms the graph will look something like this. So here for instance for certain amount of time the teacher is talking and then teacher has asked a question student is responding then the teacher has started using the chalkboard student has asked a question the teacher is talking and so on. Now you compare the graphs for the two class rooms whichever graph whichever class room has a higher frequency and higher amplitude of the graph that class room is better in terms of the teaching learning process. Why because a higher frequency means different activities are taking place. On the other hand a higher amplitude means student involvement is much better in the class. So the point this is the illustration of a creative method of representing the data in a graphical form so as to compare two different situations. So graph is a very powerful method of solving problems. So in fact teachers one of the things that students can do for instance you find a new book textbook or any other book that has come to library you can always pick up and just look at all the figures and see what are the kind of graphs which are there. This is one exercise that a student can do. To read a book just see all the figures. You might find something very interesting. In fact if a different area of engineering some figures or graphs are known by the people who have proposed. I know that in lately engineering competition you have what is called as with charge. This is a graph of a certain data about microwave behavior of certain component. And that is used essentially in design of microwave circuits. So as I think you can see how graphs play role in solving problems. Then problem finding. In this you discuss topics such as what are the different problem solving versus problem finding. How to formulate a problem. How to decide whether a problem is worth pursuing for research. What are the attributes of research problem. Then how do you get good problems to work on social processes problems. It is said that finding a problem is called a responsibility of the guide. The problem must spring from a researcher's mind like a plant springing from its own seed. Very often however what happens is the research scholar is watering the plant watering the seed that is shown by the guide. Or most of our research is in that mode. It is the guide who finds the problem and then gives it to the scholar. And the scholar is watering it and developing it. But if the problem itself develops in the researcher's mind there is nothing like it. That is what should be the aim of research. Now what are the attributes of research problem. I am discussing topics in very very clear. I am not giving too much of a but these are the kind of issues that are necessary for a research. So there are several attributes of a research problem such as difficulty usefulness, originality is the problem interesting. That means does it deny commonly head assumption. The significance or impact of the problem that the problem is likely to have if you solve it. And then cost assessment and cooperation etc. These are the issues which a research scholar must assess when he or she wants to decide whether a particular thing should be pursued for research. This is the survey. For example we discussed things such as why literature survey, what is if that you must read, how much to read from the problem students have. How much to read and how to start. So do you start from 1970 or do you start from 1990. Whereas what the research scholar should do is he or she must start from 2006 backwards. That is the way of reading. To start with the most recent papers in an area if you want to know what is the status of the work. So things like this which are very practical issues but which many research scholars are not aware when they start research. How to read? How to read a paper? If you have to read 100 papers during your research it is not the same as reading a textbook. Reading a research paper is very different. So in fact there are few guidelines which if a research scholar follows the reading will become less than school. You don't read word by word. No research paper is read word by word. That is the way we might have a reading textbook but not research paper. Research papers have to be read line by line on paragraph by paragraph. Or figure by figure. That is the way you can quickly scan and so on. So in fact some practical guidelines on how to read a paper and how to take notes. Note taking also is very very important for research scholars. Let me discuss a few things on experimental and modeling skills. What are the type of things that one can discuss? Scientific method because I know an experiment. The need for precision type of errors and documentation. For example let us look at the scientific method. All of us we use the word that you want to be scientific in your thinking and so on often. But what are the essential elements of scientific thinking? So what is non-scientific thinking and what is scientific thinking? There is covered in detail. For instance intuition or common sense is a non-scientific thinking. In what way scientific thinking is different? Scientific results can be counter-intuitive. That is a very important thing about scientific method you must understand. So what is it? There is a method that can lead to counter-intuitive results. So basically a scientific method involves the following steps. Observation, hypothesis, verification The two key things in scientific method is the hypothesis and the experiment. So hypothesis is a product of intuition. But hypothesis alone cannot constitute a completely scientific thing. Verification of the hypothesis is very very important. So while a lot of creativity and imagination is involved in formulating a hypothesis an equal amount of intellectual effort should go on in designing an experiment to verify the hypothesis. Let me illustrate this with a simple example of the scientific method how it can lead to counter-intuitive results. In the vet, obesity is a problem. 50% people are obese. So a lot of research is going on in trying to find out why the obesity is there and how it can be controlled. So a very interesting experiment that is reported widely in this connection is a simple following experiment. In this experiment what was done is was that they took a sample of about 200 people 100 of these were obese and 100 of these had average weight. They divided this group of 200 people into two groups of 100 each. Each group of 100 consisted of 50 obese people and 50 average weighty. So group 1 of 100 students had 100 people and another group of 100 people. Now group 1, so both groups are identical in terms of the distribution both have obese as well as average weighty. So group 1 they gave one sandwich to eat for each of the members of group 1 and they said if you feel that one sandwich is not enough for you you can always go to the room which is about 100 meters from the particular room in which they were given sandwiches and you can fetch an additional sandwich one or two sandwiches as you want they are all kept there. They did the same thing with group 2 except that group 2 they gave 3 sandwiches to eat and they said no if you are not interested in eating please don't eat you don't have to eat all the sandwiches you eat as much as you want if you want more you can always go to the room and get. So one of the sandwiches eaten by the average weight people in group 1 was 2 sandwiches which means on average every average weight person went to the room which was 100 meters away fetched a sandwich and ate whereas the obese people on average weight on average ate no more than one sandwich they never went to the room and fetched anything Now what was that with the observation of group 2 all the obese weight people ate all the sandwiches whereas the average weight people ate on average only 2 sandwiches they didn't eat the third one ok now this experiment showed very conclusively that obese weight people are stimulated to eat more because of external factor this is the most important conclusion that comes from here that the obese weight people are stimulated to eat more because of external factor in fact their eating habits are governed by external factors not by internal factors such as hunger so there is a lack of control on this particular thing so external stimulation plays a very significant role on the average weight people on the other hand there is an internal control right if they want more they will take more but if they don't need they will not eat more on the other hand the obese weight person availability of food will make them eat more so one of the reasons for the availability of food right so now this experiment is very important because it gives some future some further leads as to what you must investigate in an obese weight person what is the cause of obese now the effect of this experiment is somewhat counteracted because people normally think that obese weight people eat more because they feel more hungry so they feel that the cause of obese is internal to the person but that is not true so you can this particular example illustrates how the fact you feel that the hunger is cause for obesity is your hypothesis now you have to test the hypothesis now this is an experiment which can test whether really the internal factor is cause for obesity or external factor so how to design an experiment this is a very simple experiment but very elegant experiment to prove or disprove the hypothesis right so that is how in any scientific study design of an experiment is itself a creative job ok apart from the creativity involved in hypothesis how to hypothesize from observation so hypothesis is an imaginary to preconception or inspired guess about some particularly interesting aspect of the world every discovery begins as a hypothesis ok so creativity is then a hypothesis in scientific method creativity is also there in the experiment which is the act undertaken to verify a hypothesis so in fact then that is how you lay the groundwork for the experimental skills why experimental skills are important now we also discuss little bit on theories and laws right to appreciate where exactly is the creativity in the theory so here I would just state that what is the theory it is a set of a statement explaining one or more laws the next part of the sentence is very important usually including one indirect concept needed to explain the relationship a theory is a set of statements explaining more or more laws usually including one indirect concept needed to explain the relationship this indirect concept is the creative contribution of the person who is proposing a theory a simple example you take and if here right idea is given try to explain what how why is there course of attraction or repulsion between charge so what is the indirect concept that is used the lines of force the lines of force using the lines of force right you can explain how north and south force they attract or you can introduce the concept of a magnetic field you can introduce the concept of an electric field and so on these are indirect concepts which are introduced to understand the force of attraction or repulsion so like this one should identify whenever one is reading about theories which is the indirect concept that is being used to explain the relationship and therefore in your own research also if you say that you are proposing a theory or you are doing a new model what you must emphasize in your paper is what is that indirect concept that you are introducing or developing understanding of the relationship right so if you have all this understanding then the way you write a paper it will be very very different from the way an average paper is written ok the same work is being reported with a much deeper understanding of all the issues now I will discuss for a few minutes the communication skills the two important dimensions of communication understanding and agreement and effectiveness and efficiency ok the first important thing is that the speaker the communicator must speak in a way in which the audience understand ok so now you have four possibilities that is you can have understanding or misunderstanding and you can have agreement time and misunderstanding so all possible combinations so correct understanding but misunderstanding but very often what happens is there is a misunderstanding and therefore an agreement or a disagreement right this is the bad part of communication normally our agreement or disagreement is not based on understanding right it can be based on misunderstanding now that is not one must avoid so how can one communicate so that there is a misunderstanding on the part of audience it does not matter whether it is agreement or disagreement right misunderstanding should not be so now how to achieve this so we have to discuss some email sent by one of our scholar ok sir my floor wants a letter about the completion of my thesis written by you now it is not clear whether the thesis was written by me or whether the letter has to be written by you in fact it clearly shows that probably the thesis has been written by me otherwise it will not be understood correct this is ineffective communication now what is the problem here it is not okay this is the arrangement of the words this is the most common reason for ineptive communication how the words have to be arranged so we take couple examples and you give assignment you correct for example an assignment is that you correct this statement so that it makes sense right what is stated there let us take example of inefficient communication in fact research has shown that the first time a research scholar writes the paper it can be reduced to almost one third of the length by an experienced communicator how now examples are there here we normally tend to use too many words to describe a word a single word a considerable amount of actually the whole phrase can be replaced by it will be much the given data we usually use the word data there is no need to say the given data in the event that which means if all that you may receive deposit is precipitated every precipitate is a deposit so you do not have to use deposited precipitate right this is precipitate another example the nature of oil's work is always of a provocative line what you want to say is there is a lot of scope for reducing the length of your sentences and making the communication much more efficient okay so some assignments are given you give a paragraph of inefficient communication and then you try to the exercise involves not increasing the number of words using the same number of words but you must rewrite the same paragraph which makes better sense let us take oral communication and I just want to discuss a few points which normally escape the attention of many even good communicators okay which I think if you know in advance you can improve your communication tremendously this is the result of research see in oral communication what is it that makes impact very interestingly the normal aspects of the speaker make 55% impact on the audience this is something which is very counterintuitive normal aspects of the speaker make 55% impact on the audience this includes gesture and facial expression then 38% of the impact is dependent on vocal aspects which include pause stress interaction and the quality of voice and the words which are chosen by the speaker only make 7% impact okay this is a very interesting statistic so if you want to develop communication what it means is first you must bother about non-verbal aspect of body language first you must feel relaxed when you are communicating this is the first important thing for learning to communicate it is not the language then next important thing you must bother about is do you give proper pauses and do you vary the length of the sentences and so on and of course is your stress appropriate many times you have difficulty in communication because your accent is not understood by the audience in fact I have personal experience of all these aspects myself I went to teach in American University I taught a subject which I have been teaching in IIT earlier and I have got high rating from students I was surprised that in a few first few hours the students which consisted of people from very places such as Chinese then people from Middle East and so on I found all of them stating themselves to you know understand what exactly I was thinking I was surprised so after the second class I just asked them are you following what I am saying they said yeah kind of they followed what is the difficulty you have I think I am using grammatically correct English any problem with that they said yeah but your accent is very difficult to follow this is very very important your accent is very difficult to follow then I realized how much important accent is for instance as an Indian we would say R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H is research whereas if you are speaking America you must probably say research that is what is important you must prolong the initial part of the word and shorten the next part small things such as this are very very important for the audience so supposing we find that we are not making an impact on the audience then we need to analyze our communication from this point of only then we will appreciate many times it happens that we have strong accents which originate from our own mother tongue and that is not responsible for the difficulty in communication not our language even body language may be alright but this accent is such that people are not able to follow so things such as this are stressed in the common portion of the course from communication so another important thing attention span of the audience research shows that 20 minutes is the span on average that is my most of the thoughts in conferences and so on are scheduled for 20 minutes span however all our classes are 50 minutes to 1 hour now how do you hold the attention of students for 50 minutes to 1 hour and that too for 40 lectures so therefore it was for some special skills on the part of the teacher so research shows that the attention span can be increased by adding variety to the talk such as interaction, diagrams, audio visual, bass of speech, pitch of voice length of sentences, pauses, repetition gesturing with hands and humor so all these are important things even a research scholar can use all these methods to improve the communication so this is very very important if you are going to make a 20 minute presentation in the conference if you make a 20 minute presentation effectively believe it the entire audience listens to you in 20 minutes you know you can get into the mind of so many people the research scholar does not understand the significance of oral communication okay if you are an effective oral communicator in a conference you can in 20 minutes time you can be known to such a wide audience okay so we give them some prescription on how to improve their writing and oral skills so for instance one prescription is read the editorial of newspaper Dave is for improving the language read the editorial of the newspaper this is for improving oral communication okay so Dave will take the editorial and read it aloud it does not matter whether people are around you you do not have to read it to somebody okay once one student said sir the prescription is good but it is difficult to follow because if I am alone in my room and reading it aloud my neighbour would think I am mad like what is this guy doing then I pointed out that actually supposing you are practicing music you are doing practice you are practicing vocal music what do you do it is not just for people to be around you just sing on your own it does not look mad so what is wrong if you want to improve your communication you do the same thing so similarly writing regularly and so on these are some prescriptions this is one of the very hilarious passages which we normally give which we give to the students to re-write now I will focus on the management skills where is the time management in research you must say go and destroy the second law right but if we arrange our schedule so as to set aside time for thinking and experimenting we put our this as a way of discovering something so the time management in research actually involves when you are trying to find a problem or develop a hypothesis you must spend 24 hours on your job 24 hours you must spend on this right however now the next part working out a new idea once you have hit upon an idea working out a new idea requires much routine work and to this part of investigation we can apply efficiency method which means really the management of time in terms of arranging your activities and so on that part can be applied to the routine aspects of research which are very very important which can be more than 50% right for example doing a large number of experiments collecting data and so on you can list a large number of activities which is what we do in this lecture and many of these things for that you can apply the time management principle but for discovering a new idea it is very difficult to say what is the how you will manage your time the point is you have to think all the time until you get a new idea you have to think all the time so that is a few points about time management stress management what is the origin of stress one of the origins of stress I have studied relationship between student and the like there is one of the major one of the reasons for stress in many research courses second most important reason for stress is persistence and ability to manage boredom and frustration are crucial for research work what happens is in research you have to concentrate on one idea for a very very long time this is the singular reason for stress in research course so monotony and repetitiveness are concentrating on the same idea for an extended period of time so one must learn how to do this and reduce the stress you cannot eliminate it but how can you reduce it you can concentrate for a long time and yet how can you be less stressful so some prescriptions for that are given so another origin of stress is dealing with criticism rejection of papers and so on and also this is a very interesting observation that many research scholars have made the statement is I work alone in a lab full of people all research students all working alone there are many people working in a laboratory but there is no technical discussion among them they will do they will even play games together they might occasionally go out for a coffee but they never discuss their problems technical problems this is one of the reasons in fact which guys can try to see how they can manage this particular situation better how the few research scholars working in the laboratory can interact in relation to the research because this is also one of the reasons for stress people feel lonely all the time in the search even though they may be together then headache, functional headache research like all those things in life is never smooth sailing in fact that is the origin of analytical conduct when things are not going smoothly you tend to take shortcuts so for example, plagiarism so you lift ideas and you don't fight with friends now what all constitutes plagiarism that is discussed in the one lecture on functionalism then ready to go workers, authorship and acknowledgement many times the students have this problem that how the order of the authors is to be decided in an article how it is decided and when you are eligible for authorship and when your work is only eligible for acknowledgement at the end of a manuscript so these are the issues that person must understand these are discussed in professional ethics so we will conclude our discussion of the course during research the feelings of exploration excitement, challenge, involvement and passion are frequent and one gets an enormous feeling of achievement on the award of research degree and one of the reasons why people should take research it is a really exhilarating experience and challenging to go through depression and elevation and all that research makes you an independent and organized thinker a good communicator and stress fine manager if you are really taking to research the way you should then you are definitely a much improved personality at the end of the period finally, important point education is not about learning diverse subjects this is the point that the scholar must understand about education