You Appear Smarter when you Explain Complicated Things with Simple Words rather than Simple Things with Complicated Words.

Photo: Richard Feynman explaining quantum physics

Computer-Science + Math + Physics = important discoveries

 Computer Science, and more specifically Geometry Processing uses more and more sophisticated math. It is very exciting that one can develop applications that process complicated 3D data by leveraging all the power of abstract mathematical notions. For instance, if you go to the "geometry processing" sessions in ACM SIGGRAPH, you will see exciting advances, realized using differential forms, probability measures, optimal transport theory (that I'm using), or notions from physics such as Hamiltonian systems, the quantum wave equation (that I'm trying to understand) etc...

Jargon versus Understanding - What Richard Feynman says

Now there is a problem: young students and some researchers fall in love in all these fancy terms, and often confuse "knowing the term" and "understanding the concept". Even worse: they often think they will look smarter, that they will impress the audience by citing a complicated term without explaining it too much.

How to make the difference ? Ask Richard Feynman: he was not only one of the greatest physicist, but also a fantastic teacher/explainer. See his interview with a journalist who asked him how and why magnets work:

I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition. Test it this way: You say, 'Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language. Without using the word 'energy', tell me what you know now about the dog's motion.' You cannot. So you learned nothing about science.

See also his text here.

Research "Articles" versus Research "Papers"

With internet publication systems, submitting research for peer evaluation has never been so easy, and there was in the last few years an incredible increase in the "stream" of research result processed by peer-evaluation committees (conference and journals), this is excellent news for research communities, that have became more reactive, more lively, and that avoid getting stuck in a couple of topics/ideas. Now there is also the risk that researchers devote less effort in publishing each individual result. An indicator of that is the term "paper" (instead of "article") used to quality a research publication. I see many publications, even in good journals, starting by "This paper". In a good journal, I expect to read "articles", not "papers" !

How to make the difference between a "paper" and an "article ?

• Good research articles do not use too much jargon, and start by explaining the idea in the article with simple words. What will I learn in this article ? Start answering this question with simple words;
• Sometimes you got no choice, and you need to use some complicated notions. Start with an intuitive explanation of the notion, then the formal definition;
• More importantly, when you use a notion, systematically give a reference to a good math. or physics. textbook where the notion is defined and explained. You got a responsibility: if someone needs to have a deeper understanding of the notion, he needs to be able to find the complete mathematical definition of the notion before your article when he "googles" it. Not optimum for your citation index ? OK, are you concerned by the impact of science in general or are you doing science of impact ? In the long term, if you do not seek impact, and properly document your sources, you will have more impact;
• If you use a theorem, state precisely what the theorem says, including the conditions when it is valid. Include a proof of the theorem if it fits in a paragraph or "in the margin :-)", and include a reference to a math. textbook with the full proof of the theorem;
• If the notions can be referred-to by two different terms, always use the simplest one, even if it looks less fancy, even if it sounds less "rocket science". The more your readers understand what you say, the smarter you will appear !