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Is this question acceptable?: is this an appropriate question for MO?

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    • CommentAuthorvagabond
    • CommentTimeOct 29th 2010 edited
     
    I will use this opportunity to seek your opinion about what you would have done if you were in the following situation. Of course we are all different individual and with different motivation and personality. But its nice to know about the possible course of action which are available to one and taken by people who are professional mathematicians and their reasons behind it.

    So, here is a likely scenario and I would appreciate if anyone cares to respond what they would have done in such a scenario ? and their reasons behind it and the pros-and cons.

    As a lot depend on context I will give here some detail

    You are a young PhD/Post Doctoral student, you have been working on a problem in a field say X and you have made some progress and have at least 1 reasonably good result and a few minor ones. Your main motivation is to working on a particular conjecture ( which will complement the 1 nice result, and you believe its true cause then the world would be so much more beautiful). You by now have figured out the problem is related to some problems in a different subject area which you had never ever thought of venturing into. The more you think the more you get convinced. Now you figure out there are related development in the other subject the results are recent and you believe not main stream though judging from your perspective you believe it should be very influential. In fact you are at a loss that these results are so recent and the previous progress been rudimentary.

    Now of course you decide to work on a long term project and get deeper into the subject and make yourself familiarize with it. So far so good.

    Now you try to work on some toy problems and see if the results you have got and the new connections are helpful. You get more and more into unexpected / unfamiliar territory and you find yet another connection in that field which will help you to solve the toy problem. In fact in a paper some of the pages pop up where the exact set of structures you have been dealing with pop up, you follow some of it and then the authors conclude certain things which goes beyond you. To be honest you realise that if you ask the author of that paper probably he can solve it easily. Of course if you could make sense of it you would have used it and refer to it. The other option is to write to the author, asking him or in MO ? Should one give all the details ? not doing so to the author of the paper seems unethical ... or is it ? Sharing your results... its a little difficult to part with ...you do not know the other person personally. The results and leads are things which you have worked on for a few years... and you do not have the expertise to figure out what level of difficulty is involved in the particular computation / part of the proof which is of my immediate importance.... it may be quite standard. Besides all you are asking is to explain certain things done in his paper.

    One factor which is influencing you is you do want to pursue the pet conjecture and work on it at your own pace rather than getting into a rat race.

    I have thought about looking for a collaborator who has expertise in the other field. How does one go about such a thing? Should I ask the author of the paper ? Should I ask in MO ? What level of motivation and background one should provide here ?

    PS is this a question fit to be posted in MO itself ?
  2.  

    This is not an appropriate question for meta. The appropriate question is "is this an appropriate question for MO?"

    • CommentAuthorvagabond
    • CommentTimeOct 29th 2010
     
    @Qiaochu Yuan

    That's what I wanted ask "is this an appropriate question for MO?" . Have I posted it in the wrong place/ category ? Then where should I ask this ?
    • CommentAuthorvagabond
    • CommentTimeOct 29th 2010
     
    @Qiaochu Yuan Took some time for me to figure out what you were trying to suggest ( my fault am slow).

    I have made the changes as you recommended.

    Thank You.
  5.  

    Your original post makes it seem like you are asking two questions, Q and "is Q appropriate for MO?" (which is given as a postscript). If you only meant to ask "is Q appropriate for MO?" then you should make this clearer.

    • CommentAuthorEmerton
    • CommentTimeOct 29th 2010
     

    Dear Vagabond,

    First, I think that this is an appropriate question for MO, although I may be in a minority. (I am less concerned about appropriateness than many other participants on the site.)

    Regarding your actual question, can you find someone (perhaps someone at the same career stage as you) with whom you can discuss the results you are trying to understand? There are probably lots of other people besides the author of the paper who could explain them to you, and asking younger people may be easier for you. (For example, if you do decide to enter into a collaboration, it may be more pleasant to collaborate with a peer rather than with a much more senior colleague.) Also, you are not obliged to share your results. Whether you want to or or not is up to you; while it may make it easier to find someone to explain the results to you if you share your motivation, it is quite understandable that you don't want to share your partial results.

  7.  
    IMO your question isn't really appropriate for MO. It's the kind of conversation you should be having with your advisor, and MO shouldn't be seen as an advisor-replacement. MO is meant to be largely about mathematics questions, and your question is much more of a personal issue to do with the details of grad school than anything mathematical.
    • CommentAuthorpeterwshor
    • CommentTimeOct 30th 2010 edited
     

    @Ryan: Just because in an ideal world, a student should be asking a question of his advisor rather than of MO doesn't mean that we should disallow the question. This is not an ideal world, and there are some advisors of whom students would feel uncomfortable asking such a question, or they wouldn't trust his answer. So that's not a reason to call it a bad MO question.

    I do feel this may indeed not be a useful MO question, because it may be impossible to answer without the details, and it would be inadvisable to give very many details in a public forum.

    As for my opinion, I think it would be ethical to tell the author that you're working on a related problem in another field (without giving further details), and ask him for further explanations of his results.

    • CommentAuthorvagabond
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2010
     
    @peterwshor Thank you for your reply.

    Actually I wanted to know what all options are available before I talk to my advisor. I am not so much bothered about what would be ideal solution in my particular case : most often people draw moral based on the outcome, which I do not think is the right thing to do.

    What I really want to know is this, at one hand I guess there are a few problems which we all want to solve for ourselves. Its the same thing as not wanting to know the solution from a fellow student or take a hint even though its much easier to submit an assignment that way. But that virtue may not always remain a virtue. Sometime the progress and even satisfaction is much more when you work in a group., if you are compatible.

    So, I am interested to know, how do people decide when and what to collaborate. How do people decide with whom to collaborate ?

    Another thing am not sure of is, at present I go and talk/bounce out my ideas with any one who is interested to listen. When you start collaborating is it ok to talk to other people about what you are working on ?
    I have seen many mathematician collaborate with many coauthors on related problems, how does it work out ?
  10.  
    By-and-large there's no simple answer. People choose to talk about their work when they're ready, and choose not to when they're not. Sometimes people have so many ideas they'll never have a chance to work out, so they talk about them hoping other people will pick them up. Some people are protective of some of their ideas -- sometimes you want to work out the details yourself and it's so well-developed you feel many reasonably-prepared mathematician could finish your ideas off with little additional work.

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