 Now let us discuss the other topics of interest for research. So an important topic of interest is problem finding. How do we find problems? This is a difficult topic to discuss but it is closely linked to creativity. So creativity involves generation of ideas which is in some sense finding problems to work on. So we will discuss the following points, problem solving versus problem finding. Then some points about formulation of a problem, types and attributes of research problems. Then sources of research problems and finally some piece of advice, words of wisdom. The finding a problem is harder than solving it or doing the actual research. Those students who have been given the problem which is clearly defined by the guide will not appreciate this statement. But in case you pursue a research career beyond a PhD, you will definitely be faced with this situation because ultimately you are supposed to be on your own and at that time you will find that it may be more difficult to find problems to work on and decide the significance and usefulness of problems than to solve the problems. Then finding a problem is often more essential than its solution and finally it is as much as scholars responsibility as that of the guide to find a problem. So many times the scholars are not aware of this and they are not clearly told about this aspect that finding a problem is as much as scholars responsibility. Now another point, only a prepared mind can follow a lead opened by an observation which is too insignificant to attract the attention of a common man. So this is where the prepared mind is important. We have already given some suggestions on how we prepare our mind. So we assume that the mind is sufficiently prepared which includes sufficiently interested in doing research. So a certain minimum level of interest is required to have the ability to find a problem. However, with a somewhat lower level of interest you may be able to solve a problem that is given but to find a problem you really need to have a high level of interest in research. Students are mostly presented with well-defined problems having a single solution. They are uncomfortable with ill-defined problems. So in the beginning this process is not going to be so easy because you really don't know what to do. A just found problem is ill-defined. Its formulation as well as a well-defined problem, its formulation as a well-defined problem is an iterative process which may get completed only after a thesis writing. So this is a very realistic statement about PhD research and it is not an extreme statement that the clear formulation of the problem happens only after you write it up fully and until then it is an iterative process. So you start with some vague idea and then you work on it after working on it or during working itself you realize that there are some difficulties so you change the statement of the problem then you think you have some results which you can report you start writing up. During writing you realize there are further changes which are possible to the problem and so on. So it is an iterative process. You should not think that at some point of time the problem is well-formulated and thereafter you do research and after you complete the research you start writing. It is not this kind of clear stages. Now loosely one can say the steps in finding a problem are identify an area of interest, gather information looking for gaps and then formulate a hypothesis. These are the stages in which you go about finding a problem. Now let us look at the step of formulation of a hypothesis. We will discuss looking for gaps and literature survey these aspects later. The formulation of hypothesis happens in the following stages. There is a very general statement following which you try to resolve the ambiguities within the statement. So resolution of ambiguities it involves thinking and rephrasing. Here again you see there is a reformulation of the problem and iteration. So the arrows upward and downward show that there is an iterative process. Now at the end of this iterative process comes out a clear concise manageable statement. Let us look at an example to illustrate this point. Suppose someone is working on comparing productivity of companies in Japan and India. This is an area that one would like to pursue. So you start with the statement productivity of Japan is much higher than in India. You have some kind of a vague observation based on which you feel that you would like to establish productivity of Japan is much higher than in India and then you would like to discuss reasons for it and so on. Now this is a very vague statement. So a clearer statement is productivity of manufacturing industries was higher in Japan than in India during 1971 to 1980. So first of all the statement has been made in the past tense because when you say productivity of Japan is much higher than in India it is a very general statement which seems to be applicable for eternity. But you cannot make this kind of a statement. You do not know what will happen in future. So that is not a good statement to make. Nor can you call it as a good conclusion of your research. So first of all the statement is made in the past tense. Second a period is defined over which you are going to study the productivity. This is where the conciseness and clarity is coming. Now further clarity, what do you mean by productivity? So labor productivity of 15 selected manufacturing industries. It all depends on which industries you are comparing. So labor productivity of 15 selected manufacturing industries was higher in Japan than in India during 1971 to 1980. So now this is a sufficiently clear statement. Now one can collect statistics to see whether this hypothesis is true or not. And then one can try to interpret the observations and so on. Let us look at another example. Someone is doing a research in teaching learning processes in the area of psychology. Now this is a vague kind of observation based on experience. Statement number one, average learners are less nervous because they are average. Teachers who teach, who have taught large number of classes and large number of students find that there is a section of the class that is not nervous about anything. Seem to have cool. Whereas there are some people who are nervous. And then you try to analyze what is the reason that some people are nervous, whereas other people are not. Can we have some kind of a pattern? So then you think this is a topic that one can study. So now this is a vague statement, so you try to make it specific. The students possessing average intelligence are less nervous than others. So now you define what is meant by average student. What do you mean by an average student? The average student is a very loose statement. So now you are saying, okay, I'm going to measure the intelligence. And whoever is average in intelligence in the test that I use, whoever gets an average score, I will call him as an average student. That is the definition of an average student. So then I want to pursue this hypothesis. Students possessing average intelligence are less nervous than others. Now the next question arises, how do you measure nervousness? What do you mean by nervousness? In the beginning it's a loose observation of several facts, but when you want to make it scientific, every quantity should be measurable. So you further modify this hypothesis. Students possessing average intelligence have fewer symptoms of abnormal behavior than those having very high or very low intelligence. So now you have to measure two aspects. One is intelligence, other is the behavior. And in both these measurements you try to identify abnormal, average, these two groups. And then you try to see what is the correlation. Now again, how do you measure intelligence? So then there are several different ways of measuring intelligence. If you use one particular intelligence test, you may get one result. If you use a different intelligence test, you may get a slightly different result. So you have to be even more specific. Since not all intelligence tests measure the same aspect. So noting this fact, so you can make a more precise statement, something like this. Students at IIT Madras having an IQ score on the WBA intelligence scale, this is a specific intelligence scale, within the range of 90 to 110. So you also define who is an average on this scale. Have lower percentile ranks on the sub-scores of an MM personality inventory. It is the name of a test that tries to monitor the behavior of people. So MM personality inventory than a like group of students having a total IQ score of greater than 120. So by this method you are establishing that people who are in the region of very high intelligence tend to be nervous in the class. And those who are in the average region are less likely to be nervous. So this is the way one can study, for example in the area of psychology. So like this one can take examples in your own area of a vague statement and then you go on making very specific, statement very specific. And then you can pursue it for research. Let us look at some of the types of research problems. So broadly one can say one type of research problems are theory-building or modeling of experimental data. So you have some experimental data which people are reporting and you provide a theory or a model. The second possibility, collecting experimental data to prove or disprove a hypothesis. So some hypothesis is present. It is already there, people have made some sort of observations. We took some examples just now of some hypothesis. Now you want to establish whether this hypothesis is true or not. You can conduct experiments, you can design experiment. In the lecture on experimental skills we will see an example of how an experiment is designed to prove or disprove a hypothesis with some example. And then you can also have a category of research where you invent a new device and you want to show its utility. Now you can also talk of a process instead of a device that is also included here. Now as we have said it is very important to have a judgment on what is the likely utility of working on a problem. Supposing you have alternatives, working on this problem, that problem and so on. Now which problem should you work on? This is also a very crucial but difficult judgment. So one can broadly talk about these aspects that one can consider. First the difficulty level of a problem. A problem should not be too difficult nor should it be very easy. This is one important point, difficulty. Then usefulness or value. Now if you work on it a problem may be difficult but then it may not be useful. If you work on it and you get some result that may not be useful. So usefulness is also another thing that we should try to judge. As we have seen in creativity, the definition of creativity, usefulness is an important parameter not just newness. Then originality. What is the level of originality? Is it that many people have tried to give solutions to the problem or not many people have been able to give solutions and so on? Yes, you have a question? The one class of problem you stated was that to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Yes. So how come it adds value to, I mean as in if you prove or disprove a hypothesis, how come it adds value to the society or like. A good point. Well, therefore it depends on the extent of value you add varies with the type of problem you pursue. If some hypothesis is there which is more or less believed or accepted by many, then the kind of research that you can do in proving the hypothesis is only if you come up with a very simple technique to prove the hypothesis much more simple way than others have done. But then still its value is not that much obviously because the hypothesis is held by people and then it has been proved already. So still because there is some newness in the sense you are suggesting a new approach which is simpler, it has a value. On the other hand, if you can disprove a hypothesis, it has much more value. If you can disprove a hypothesis that is held by many, it has more value. It is suggested that you can try to look for such problems where people are likely to believe a statement and then you have a method of showing that actually that statement is not true. So one should attempt to look for such problems. In psychology that is how research is done. You take some myths. For example, people believe that if you are a genius then you should be eccentric. Genius is eccentric. This is a statement that one can examine. Now research on psychology has shown that this statement is not very generally true. Similarly, another statement. If a man is blind then it is likely that his hearing will be much better than that of other people. Now you can examine this statement and see whether this is true. You can examine whether the statement is true and you can also examine whether the enhanced hearing power is because of the blindness. See that is also an issue that you have to establish. So this is how one can pick statements or problems for research. So then comes interesting whether the problem is interesting. You see a problem may be difficult and it may be useful. There may be originality also. Is it interesting? Generally again to repeat just now what we have said if you can disprove some widely held belief then it is very very interesting. The interest level is very high. If you can resolve some contradiction which is existing then the interest level will be high. So counter intuitive conclusions if you can get out of your research then that will be very useful. Then significance. These are additional parameters. Significance or impact. A problem may be interesting. It is difficult, useful, original. What impact will it make? This is something that is difficult to judge. But then one must remember it is also a factor. Let me illustrate this point with an example. Let us take the example of people who compose music for films. Now in one of the interviews of a famous music director he was asked to name what he considers are his ten most creative compositions of ten film songs. Now it was found that of those ten only six were super hits and four of them were totally unknown. So then he was asked how much time you spent on composing these songs, how much effort you spent. Now he said surprisingly I found that there is no strong correlation between the amount of effort spent on composing a song and one's own impressions about the melody of the song and its impact on the public. So some of the songs which were super hits he had spent very less effort and he never knew that they are going to become super hits. Some which he spent lot of time composing and would have liked them to super hits were not known at all. So this is one aspect that we must remember about research that there is a factor called impact which can be unpredictable. So one should not try to assess the possible impact of one's work very early and then try to make judgments. So one has to leave that to some extent to destiny. However this is where the guide can be of help. This is where experience is of help. In fact these are the situations where the guide is really the person who can contribute a lot. So the student is spending all his time in coming up with new ideas finding problems. The guide can help in selecting a good problem for research. And finally you must consider cost or equipment or cooperation. Supposing there is a student who is not very happy working with people managing people getting work done from others. Then it may not be good for him to choose a problem which involves setting up some big apparatus and going and getting things done from the workshop from this person and that person chasing people and so on. This is one factor that you have to consider. Of course one can also modify one's personality and develop interpersonal skills. That aspect is also there. So you must work with both the things. Cost is also a very important parameter that you must try to consider. Many times research scholars are infatuated by some field and they are not aware of what is the cost that will be involved if you want to pursue this particular idea. So these are the factors also which one must consider while selecting a research problem. Now let us look at some sources of interesting research. We said that research problems should be interesting. Explanation of an anomaly. This is an interesting piece of research. Anywhere you find something anomalous which is same as saying counterintuitive. Let me give an example from say electrical engineering. Supposing you have a device whose current voltage characteristics are something like this in some situation. So what is the anomaly here? What you find is there is a region in which the current decreases when the voltage increases. This is an anomaly because normally you expect that the current will increase when you increase the voltage. So now if you find that people have not been able to explain this then this is the kind of thing that one can take up for research. This is an anomalous behavior. So like this one can see some anomalous observations in one's own field and one can pursue that for research. Solution of a contradiction. This is another way of defining or coming up with problems. Example of this. Let us say I am a chemical engineer working on plating of substrates. Now I find that if I want rapid growth of plating on the substrate I must increase the temperature of the bath. So higher and higher temperature if I use for plating then I get rapid growth. But at the same time I find that I cannot do the plating for a long time at a higher temperature because the bath disintegrates when you raise the temperature. So this is where you have a contradiction. You need higher temperature for higher growth rate but higher temperature also disintegrates the bath and therefore you are not able to do the plating for a long time. Now how can you solve this problem? So you should get thick plating by having a higher growth rate but the bath should not disintegrate. So someone came with an interesting idea. What he said is you do not heat the bath but you only heat the substrate and then you drop a heated substrate in the solution. So near the substrate the temperature will be higher but all around it the temperature is not higher so the chances of disintegration reduce. Now this is a very good idea to pursue. It may look like a simple thing but if you can show that it works it will be very effective. You have to do lot of experiments and establish what are the advantages you get. This is what is meant by a solution of a contradiction. There are many other examples that one can give. For example if you are working on a power device. Now what is the basic contradiction involved here? You want higher and higher power to be managed. But you find that as your power goes on increasing the speed at which a device can be switched goes on decreasing. So there is a tradeoff between the speed of the device and the power that it can handle. Now can you come up with a new scheme, a new device which will give you higher speed at the same power? This is something that one can think of working on. So like this you can identify in your area what are the issues or aspects where tradeoffs are involved or contradictions are involved. And then you can choose some contradiction for working on to resolving the contradiction. Then another sources of interesting research transplantation of ideas and explanations from one context to another. So this is where it helps you to have an idea of what is going on in other areas. So supposing you go to mechanical engineering department and then you listen to a seminar and you find some technique is being used there for solving some problem. And then you can think whether this technique we have never heard of in electrical engineering. Can I use that technique and solve a problem? If you do that that is an interesting piece of research. So this is nothing but similar to what we have said earlier working with analogies. Transplantation of the same idea given in a new situation is nothing but employing analogies to come up with solutions. Similarly not only if you find an interesting idea you can see an application in your area for that. You can also have a specific problem and then look for a solution for that problem by exploring other areas. So you have a specific problem in mind and you want to get its solution. You can explore other areas to see whether you can transmit some idea from other area into your area. Now let us look at some general sources of research problems. So if one is having difficulty in finding problems one can do a checklist. Have you done each of these things? And even after doing all this if you do not get a problem well then it is a difficult situation. But other mostly I have found that if you keep doing any one of all of these things you definitely have a very good chance of finding a good problem for research. So future work sections in thesis and papers. So you can read a thesis of other students in your laboratory. Nowadays many thesis are put up on the internet. You can see the PhD thesis of many other universities. So in your own area you can read the last section. Entire thesis may be difficult to read but you can always read that scope for future work section. Then interaction, constant interaction or discussion, answering doubts, teaching, explaining. Comparison of different approaches by some objective measures of efficiency or accuracy. So when you are reviewing an area you will find people have suggested different methods for doing something. But an effective comparison and a comprehensive comparison of all these methods has not been done. You can use that as a starting point. Here I am not suggesting that that itself can be researched. You do not know how the problem will develop but it is a good starting point. It is a good starting point for pursuing research. Because after all the main issue in many cases is getting started. Once you get started things start happening. The problem is with getting started. Look for harmful simplifications or arbitrary choices in a paper and then you try something different. Derivation of simple closed form solution. So you find somewhere people are using numerical techniques to get some data. Can you give a simple analytical formula for that situation? This is something one can explore. Some more sources. Identify all variables and alternatives of a situation to see which have not been explored. Study existing systems or procedures and note what they do badly at. Implement someone else's work yourself and see the many problems out there to work on. This is a very good starting point. And it is something that one can do easily. So instead of just going on reading material, doing literature survey, what you do is you take up something interesting that other person has done. And you just try to repeat yourself and see whether you get the same result. Now many times when I suggest this to students, students are not very enthusiastic. They feel what is the point in repeating what somebody else has done. Well the important thing is to get started. The important thing is to get started. Otherwise if you spend your time just reading, you won't necessarily find gaps or find problems. You should read and you should do something. So what is it that you can do even when you have not decided your problem? This is something that you can do. You do what other people have done. Combine and reorganize existing knowledge structures. Now finally some words of wisdom. A problem must spring from a researcher's mind like a plant springing from its own seed. This is the first important point. So if the student works on a problem whose seeds are in the guide's mind, then all that the student is doing is watering a plant. It is like watering a plant. A plant has already been planted and you are watering it. This is also a very satisfying experience. But still the attachment for that problem will not be as much as it will be if the seed is in your own mind. All of us know, I mean people like their own children much more than others' children. I mean it is something similar. So it is worth spending a little bit more time but let the seed of the problem be in your mind. Do not worry too much whether your problem is the best one to study. Once you go deep, any problem becomes interesting. The important thing is to get started. So any problem becomes interesting if you go deep. This is a very, very crucial point. So do not worry too much whether the problem is good. Once you have decided to work on a problem. In the beginning you may consider various options and then you arrive at a decision. But thereafter then you do not go on comparing at various points. That guy is working on this and then he is getting faster results. Now I am not getting results. So then you will constantly be in a stage of doubt. You need not do that. It is better to kill a little problem than to bruise a much larger one. This is a very important advice for particularly students who are independent minded and who are following the first statement that a problem must spring from one's own mind. So you choose a problem that you can kill totally than to choose a problem which is very big, very ambitious and which you can only bruise that is make a small dent. It is not worth it. Problem finding is an autocatalytic reaction. What is an autocatalytic reaction? It is a reaction in which once a reaction starts the products of the reaction themselves catalyze the reaction. So for example this is a commonly used method of plating in chemical engineering or chemistry. Autocatalytic plating. So here what you do is you have a substrate and in the solution you have the metal which you want to plate in the form of a salt solution. Now once somehow the metal from the solution deposits on the substrate the deposited metal itself acts like a catalyst and attracts more deposit. This is what is meant by autocatalytic. So problem finding is an autocatalytic reaction. So which means what is the important thing here is to get started. Once you get started even you get a small thing to work on. As you start working on it you will generate more and more problems and the thing will develop. So the important thing is to get started. I think the last statement is a repetition of something that we said already. Problem becomes interesting as you think deeper and deeper about it. In fact I have a practical experience of this. Around 91 to 93 I was working on something. I first tried to develop a complete process for a device which has been imported in the country for long time. So already people abroad have developed a process for it. So I was trying to develop the process because I was wondering why we are not able to develop the process in India for the same device. It is a very simple device. What is the difficulty in developing a technology, developing a process? And so when I used to discuss about it with some important people in industry and those who are doing research. This to say yeah it's good but then why didn't you select something very recent? This is something that is people already made the device and then you are working on a process for making the same device elsewhere people have done it. And then I found as I was working on it I ignored that advice because I was really attached to what I was doing. So I just heard it. It didn't bother much about it. Now among the publications that I have I found that is the problem that I have worked on which led to it more as I thought more and more deeper about it as to what is the problem. I could identify something to work on which gave me which gave my paper many citations the maximum among the citations that I have so far in various publications. So this is I have a practical experience of this particular statement that things which don't look interesting as you go deeper they will become interesting. So now let us discuss few points about literature survey. So now incidentally I want to caution when I say that any problem becomes interesting here I am not saying that you should not look for problems relevant to your age or your years that is not what I mean. But the point is if there is something that you consider interesting but others consider uninteresting it can become interesting to others also if you go deeper into it that is the point I am trying to make. Okay literature survey. Why you should you do literature survey? What to read? How much to read? How to read and note taking? We will consider these aspects of literature survey. Why do you do literature survey? It may look like I know this is a trivial thing. It is not as trivial. Let us look at some of the reasons for doing literature survey. To know sufficiently enough to identify gaps and inconsistencies. Yeah I think this everyone knows. To know the views and interest of others in a topic. Very important the third point to know and establish contact with people who may be interested in your work. This is one reason for doing literature survey. Okay so as you will realize later that having contacts with people working in your own area is very important part right of building a good research career. So when you do literature survey you may find that some people have done very good work in your area. You try to establish contact with them. So establishing contact does not mean simply sending an email and then saying you know I am also working in your area. That may not be interesting. You may find some part of that work interesting and you may have got some doubts on it. So you can establish contact by you know writing an email saying what is it that you found interesting and what is your doubt. And see whether the other person is you know interested. Even if he does not respond still he will remember you. Right provided what you have said is interesting. So this is one can establish contact through literature survey to know if others have already done what you want to do. Very important thing. Now it is for this reason and this particular reason that you need to be doing literature survey continuously throughout your research. Okay it is not something that you do in the initial phase of your PhD and then you start working on the problem. Don't bother about reading on. So it is a continuous process. Sometimes you may find that a publication will appear which seems to be doing the same thing as you are trying to do. Right so and at that time you may get depressed but this is where a guide can be of help. In fact it can be shown that if you have done some work there will definitely be some originality in it. Right something that other person has not done. It depends on your ability to see this difference and then you can try to project that particular angle of your work. Right this is an ability then one needs to identify the uniqueness in one's own work to integrate and compare various ideas on a topic and to get hints on how to tackle your problem. However you should not aim at the solution of your problem through literature survey. Okay it is good if you think on the problem on your own and try to get a solution and then try to see what methods others have used. The reason being if you read too much as we will see how much to read that is the next question. Then you may get biased and if you had earlier or you could have thought of a unique method of solving your problem because of the bias you may not pursue that. Okay that is why how much to read also is a very important point. Yeah that is coming later let us see first what to read. So journal papers, patents not many students read patents incidentally. Research reports that is reports of some project, conference proceedings and thesis. So these are called primary sources that is the new information is there in all this particular sources. Then there are other sources also such as indexing and abstracting services, review articles. Review articles are very nice to get a feel for what is going on in an area and to get the history of the problem and of course reading books. Now let us discuss the crucial topic of how much to read. Start with articles published recently and go back to about 5 years earlier. So students always have this difficulty right should I start from 1970 or should I start from 1980. The point is do not start from that end. You start from the latest first this is very important. So you choose the most recent 5 years as your period to start with. To understand some of the points there you may have to go back that is different but where do you start? Read and think alternately. Do not spend eternity on literature survey. Start doing your own thinking early. This is another important point. One has to start in a state of partial ignorance and this has an advantage that you are free from prejudice which suppresses new ways of doing things. So always if you know everything about a topic then your mind will become closed. So it is a matter of belief whether you know everything. Let me not say everything. Know a lot. Let us say know a lot. So it is good to be in a state of partial ignorance because then you are likely to come up with a new idea. Reading should continue throughout the research process. Now how to read? Now scan to get an overview. Read the title abstract conclusions and figures. I am considering a research paper as something that is in this particular steps that I have described here. I am assuming that you are reading a research paper. So you first read title abstract conclusions and then you see all the figures. Do not read the text. Highlight anything that has attracted your attention. Then read in detail. Because many times people wonder how can you read 100 papers for your research. Evidently you cannot read 100 papers word by word. That is reading like a child. A child reads letter by letter and word by word. If you see carefully how the reading ability progresses. You know a child reads you put a finger on the each letter and then it reads. Then slowly it develops the ability to read word and then you can read up to sentence. But surprisingly the reading ability does not develop very much beyond that. So we are used to reading sentence by sentence. Now that is not at all suitable for research work when you have to read a lot. You do not have to read words or you do not even have to read sentences. So one can read word by word line by line paragraph by paragraph. It is possible to read paragraph by paragraph. Chapter by chapter. And you know book by book. There is a very interesting episode. Swami Vivekananda once took a book from a library. It was fairly thick book. And he returned it back within three days. Then the librarian asked but have you read this book at all? I mean how can you return it back in three days? Then this is the statement that he is supposed to have made. That people read in different ways. Some people read line by line. Some people read chapter by chapter. It is possible to read chapter by chapter. Which obviously means you are not reading everything there. The point is to get a gist. Point is not to read every verb and every noun there. That is the important point one needs to know. And so this comes by experience and practice. So this is where I have suggested that you do an internet search to see how you can read speedily. Note taking. I have already discussed the importance of note taking. These are some practical tips about notes. The purpose of notes is to try and keep information to assist memory. Notes are memory maps. So what is the role of notes? They are basically memory maps. Branching notes with sketches, remarks, ETC may be more effective than the paragraph wise compiled material. So here what is being suggested is do not write detailed sentences and all as notes. That is not what is meant by preparing notes. It is not necessary at all. In fact you must only note ideas. And then as your notes develop, it is not a serial development of sentences starting from top. Because you have an idea. And then this idea may develop at different points of time. So that is what is suggested is you take a piece of paper and you put the idea somewhere in the center. And then as you get more ideas associated with that, you put the other ideas surrounding this idea. And then you go on developing. By arrows and so on. That is the way you should. So you must leave a lot of margin. Whenever you start preparing your notes, you always go to the center of the page and then you write a little bit. And leave a lot of margin because it is this margin that it will be used for developing. Notes are developed alongside the learning process not after the process. It is a very interesting statement. So it is not that I sit through some lecture, then I go back and in the night I write. That is like writing a diary. That is not a note. So when you are sitting and when the process is going on, you make a note of it. So evidently you are not going to write detailed sentences. It is just noting what you think is important. So in the same situation, different people may have different notes. So it is possible that one's notes may not be of use to other. Because it is a thing that you are prepared to assist your thinking. It is not necessary that other person should be able to read it. It may not be possible also. Leave liberal margins for future additions and remarks. Every new topic should start on a separate page. Notes must be updated by reading more and more. Notes taken for the same subject by different persons may differ appreciably because the subject matter understood by the note taker is integrated with the existing knowledge and then jotted down as sketchy notes. So it all depends on what the person considers interesting and useful for him or her. That one is taking note of. Now this is an important point for all research scholars. When you take notes, when you are reading a lot of papers, if you note an idea, you note at the same time the details of the publication from which you have got the idea. Many times what happens is students do not write the publication details. So you have made a lot of notes. You have read for one month, you have read a lot of papers. And you have made a lot of ideas. And then when you ask the student, hey, this is something good, where did you get it from? Then you start scratching your head. Because at that time you are not aware that at some other time later you will have to provide references. This will be doing the job all over again. When you know that finally when you write the thesis, you have to provide references or you write a paper even before writing a thesis. You will need to provide references. And I have seen practically students spending a lot of time again going through all those things to, you know, prepare the references. So with that we come to the close of problem finding and literature survey.