Mathemagenic

The way I do my PhD research in unconventional and complicated. Not because I designed it that way. It just came to be. I had done some conscious choices, but most what I have today is a result of taking chances of opportunities and being passionate about my work (and my passions take me into things I would avoid if I would be good enough to make conscious research choices).

I wonder if writing this now will complicate my life in the future. I know that often working on scientific publication is constructing a view on research where actions, findings and arguments are logically connected to be defendable, while the real process is full of uncertainties, taking opportunities and building on serendipitous connections (something similar to what Dave Snowden calls retrospective coherence). So I wonder if writing this now would bite me back when I present retrospectively coherent view on my research in my dissertation.

Anyway, the jinni is out of the bottle. My blog already documents many of my methodological sins, so I’d rather go ahead and confess :)

Continued in:

• Notes on my PhD methodology: reflexive ethnography
• Notes on my PhD methodology: weblog studies

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/04/13.html#a1546; comments are here.

• Methodology chapter: blogging practices
• Stellingen
• Paper on the Microsoft study is online

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