Consulting & Contracting:
i need to find a job, or more specifically, i need to make money. i
would prefer to stay in the area i'm at, but i've not found any
interesting full-time employment (granted i haven't tried all that
hard).
it would be peachy if i could do something without leaving the area
(working remotely even) on a flexible schedule (while finishing
my master's degree).
i've read a few books, and i've done some consulting work before, but
i'm in no way experienced. ideally, i'd like to start out doing
completely custom work, and then transition to customizing a
shrink-wrapped product i sell. (this looks like what Uche
and co. does with Fourthought).
i know a number of folks on advo have experience, so all the obvious
questions: best way of getting clients, how do i bootstrap, what's a
good business model, and most importantly how do i make the most of
the least effort :D. i'm sure those people can also think of
questions that i want answered but which i don't know i
want answered. what's the low-down?
i'm really intent on making something fly. living on a student's
wages isn't. i figure i could get by with $2k a month or there
about, and i've got a fair amount of spare change.
any thoughts?
Research:
i think i'm seeing how the whole research thing works somewhat better.
assuming you have the tools necessary (requisite math background,
etc). the first thing you have to do is become familar with the state
of things.
The hard part is actually finding what constitutes a particular field.
Since they tend to be very large compared to the size of a problem any
one person in that field addresses. To be on the safe side, reading a
few general textbooks on the subject would be a good start. if
they're new, it may even be worthwhile to chase down references, but
perhaps it's more important to pay attention to where those references
are published and then start reading random more recent articles from
that publication (assuming it's a journal or conference that still
exists).
The only way to bootstrap the process of narrowing down the field to a
question you want to research is to iterate over a smaller and smaller
portion of the literature. hopefully one will get a sense of the
major divisions of the field from the textbooks and you can begin to
classify where research falls into those fields. Again the important
task while reading is to look at 1) What problem does the paper
attack, 2) What is the contribution of the paper, 3) Where does it lie
with respect to other approaches in the field (and what does it build
on, references, etc) , 4) What further questions or problems does it
raise?
i think also it's helpful to write these things down into summaries.
i've found i quickly forget papers i've read, and even if i recall
some higher level information from them, i can't remember which paper
i learned it from. (it's also useful if you have to eventually sit
for a comprehensive qualifier).
after doing this for awhile, you should be able to build a sort of
taxonomy of the field. at this point you can attempt to figure out
1.) what is the state of the art in the field--what are the major
approaches, 2.) what open questions or problems exist or are being
worked on in the field. 3.) what problems are open to attack, 4) (last
and not least) what do you find interesting?
i suspect you will have to narrow down things significantly to make
this tractable. and with the 3rd issue, hopefully, by reading through
the literature, one will gain some appreciation for what is possible and
worthwhile.
at this point one may finally be in a position to let one's brain
chew on the problem, throw things at the problem and see what sticks.
so this all is pretty obvious, and it's basically what Hamming and
others have said, (which i've referenced previously). but i guess you
just have to sit down, understand the mechanics, and convince yourself
of the validity of their approach.
(as an aside, i think this is also why when people outside a field
come up with an idea, but use their own vocabulary when talking about
it, are looked down upon by those in the field. it shows that the
person hasn't done certain things (which are completely within their
power) to understand where their idea fits in and whether it is
actually of interest. and if they haven't spent the time to do that,
why should you?)