Advice for first-year Ph.D. students (video)

I gave a guest lecture in our department's Intro. to Ph.D. seminar class that all new Ph.D. students take during their first semester on campus. I focused on advice that's most relevant to first-year students rather than general Ph.D. life advice.

Here is a series of short videos extracted from that lecture. The editing is rough since I had to cut out a lot of impromptu discussions to make the videos crisp. Enjoy!

(full YouTube playlist)

Part 1: The One-Dimensional Model of Research

Part 2: The N-Dimensional Model of Research

Intermission: My Main Tip for Productive Meetings with Your Research Advisor

Part 3: Twelve Sticky Notes

Back when I was a Ph.D. student, my advisor kept on giving me the same tips over and over again, so I condensed them into twelve sticky notes that I pasted onto my office computer monitor:

I stared at those tips every day while I was working, and now I'd like to share them with you ...

• Tip 1. Start simple
• Tip 2. Look at raw data
• Tip 3. Be concrete
• Tip 4. Incremental results

• Tip 5. Find something interesting
• Tip 6. Push hard on clean signals
• Tip 7. Actionable
• Tip 8. Comparative advantage is key

• Tip 9. Find solid levers to pull
• Tip 10. Document successes and failures
• Tip 11. Inspect outliers
• Tip 12. Eliminate sources of bias