research Archives – Joni Salminen

Concerns of Complexity as a Competitive Factor in CHI Conference

Published by Joni on September 23, 2024

CHI research has become more complex (but not more insightful). The reason? Complexity is a competitive factor: it helps separate your paper from others. Lengthy papers with more substudies and details are more likely to do better than short but insightful work that might have more relevance for HCI theory and/or practice. Reviewers are instructed to pay attention to HCI…

The illusion of similarity (in academic research papers)

Published by Joni on August 30, 2024

The illusion of similarity: two papers (A and B) look the same.They have the same structure.They have the same number of words.Both use fluent, nearly flawless English.Both reference the same number of papers.They have the same number of tables and figures. For a layperson, both these papers look the same. Yet, one of them is the worst horsesh*t you’ve ever…

List of Research Superpowers (Especially Useful for PhD Students)

Published by Joni on August 22, 2024

Observed myself citing various “superpowers” to my PhD students in occasional emails. So, thought of writing these down (the list might get updated). Currently, I can think of eleven research superpowers [updated: November 11, 2024]. Here they are, in no particular order. 1. SPECIFICITY Be specific. Applies pretty much to any form of communication: Being specific is one #researchsuperpower (but…

Three ways of justifying/arguing for research choices

Published by Joni on August 14, 2024

Three ways of justifying/arguing for research choices (e.g., hyperparameter values, thresholds, sample sizes):

About Forms of Contribution in Research

Published by Joni on August 14, 2024

(This post is especially for more junior researchers) Some forms of contributions in academic research: You can have multiple contributions in one paper, though often a paper focuses on one type of contribution (it’s hard enough to argue for one!). Even if you wouldn’t make multiple types of contributions in one paper, it helps to think if there is also…

Introduction to Quantitative Persona Research (Read These to Get a Foundational Understanding of Data-Driven Persona Research)

Published by Joni on October 11, 2023

Here’s a reading list I recommend to “newcomers” in quantitative persona research (e.g., Master’s students, PhD students) (see bolded parts for explanations for why you should read each paper). The list contains ten papers and is organized in themes. NOTE: There are *many more* impactful and important data-driven persona papers. Why I only included papers from our team in this…

Algorithms that describe a researcher’s mind

Published by Joni on July 14, 2020

Algorithms that describe a researcher’s mind: (a) Work on the paper “closest to publication”. => downside: can reduce the willingness to solve difficult problems because they are farther from publication (b) Always switch to more interesting topic, when you see one. => downside: you’ll never get anything published (but upside can be that you learn a lot about different topics,…

Tips on Data Imputation From Machine Learning Experts

Published by Joni on August 11, 2018

Missing values are a critical issue in statistics and machine learning (which is “advanced statistics”). Data imputation deals with ways to fill those missing values. Andriy Burkov made this statement a few days ago [1]: “The best way to fill a missing value of an attribute is to build a classifier (if the attribute is binary) or a regressor (if…

Startups! Are you using a ‘mean’ or an ‘outlier’ as a reference point?

Startups! Are you using a ‘mean’ or an ‘outlier’ as a reference point?

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction This post is about startup thinking. In my dissertation about startup dilemmas [1], I argued that startups can exhibit what I call as ‘reference point bias’. My evidence was emerging from the failure narratives of startup founders, where they reported having experienced this condition. The reference point bias is a false analogy where the founder compares their startup with…

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