PhD Archives – Joni Salminen

The “onion problem” in PhD students’ writing

Published by Joni on August 7, 2026

The “onion problem” in PhD students’ writing: this means adding more and more stuff to your papers. By “stuff”, I mean concepts, theories, methods—-basically, more words on paper, more points to criticize. Dr. Ilkka said it well: the more you write, the more you expose possible weak points to the reviewers. Every sentence becomes under scrutiny, so the more sentences…

Four Reason Why Having AI Write Your Emails Is Not a Good Idea (for Students)

Published by Joni on July 29, 2026

Sometimes, my students reply to my emails with messages that appear AI-generated. This has always annoyed me, but only lately I’ve been able to articulate why. Here are the reasons why using AI to do your correspondence with your supervisor is not a good idea. So, these are the reasons why to avoid using AI when emailing your supervisor. It…

How to Comment on Co-authors’ Research Papers?

Published by Joni on November 23, 2025

(A message to my students, sharing publicly because it can help others understand what commenting actually is about …. it’s often done wrong.) I realized I didn’t instruct you properly on how to “edit and comment” papers. I want to fix my mistake. When we talk about “edit and comment”, we don’t mean proof-reading. Proof-reading is the least important part.…

What is an expert evaluator in research?

Published by Joni on August 11, 2025

Let’s start from evaluation. When have a computer that does something, we want to see if it does it well. So, this (“seeing if it does well”) is called evaluation. Evaluation is at the core of pretty much every computational technique, such as algorithm, model, system, device, etc. We want these things to work and improve people’s lives. And that…

Four advantages human educators have in comparison to AI

Published by Joni on August 7, 2025

MIRH: Motivate, Inspire, Relay personal experiences, Hold accountable >> four advantages human educators have in comparison to AI MOTIVATE: People still rely on other people to be motivated. Except if a person has strong intrinsic motivation, then they don’t need to be motivated. But many students need to be motivated and the generic “Hello, I am your friendly AI assistant…

Learn chess as a PhD student

Published by Joni on August 5, 2025

Been playing chess recently. Chess is oddly similar to research. Thinking and writing require steps similar to moving pieces on board, with eventually the paper you’re writing being the board. Concepts and sentences are the pieces. You need to move them into the correct order (position) on the board. And there is a similar goal of making the opponent (reviewer)…

Factors that affect evaluation complexity

Published by Joni on July 23, 2025

evaluation complexity increases when: *task is more subjective*you have more coders*you have more categories*you have more data to code chance-adjusted agreement (as opposed to percentage agreement) metrics typically aim to consider these factors in their calculation (though there’s no easy way to quantify “subjectivity” except after the calculation; a low score can be of indicative of the subjective nature of…

The Dance of Dynamics

Published by Joni on July 21, 2025

Research involves some interesting “back and forth” dynamics. Two of them are: 1. “Zoom in, zoom out” dance 2. Expand, simplify The first one deals with how to write paragraphs. For example: “There is little research on the effects of persona modality on users’ attention” (<= zoom out sentence = talks about the big picture). “However, of those studies that…

“AI didn’t replace thinking—it demanded more of it”

Published by Joni on July 21, 2025

A quote from a panel discussion I participated recently:“AI didn’t replace thinking—it demanded more of it.” It is indeed our solemn duty, now more than ever, to ensure that the future generations get educated in thinking, whether logical, critical, or hypothetical. I don’t believe in the “calculator hypothesis” (=you don’t need to count because we have calculators; same way you…

How to cope with failure?

How to cope with failure?

Published by Joni on July 20, 2025

Failing is painful in academia. Rejection hurts, mentally and almost physically. And you get plenty of it. You get it MUCH MORE than success. So, it’s very tough. We need to learn to cope with failing to survive. Here’s a simple formula: Recharge … regroup … retry 1. Recharge = rest enough, take some time off from the screen, eat,…

Tag: PhD