--- title: 'Richard Hamming: You and Your Research' author: kazu634 date: 2006-01-04 url: /2006/01/04/richard-hamming-you-and-your-research/ wordtwit_post_info: - 'O:8:"stdClass":13:{s:6:"manual";b:0;s:11:"tweet_times";i:1;s:5:"delay";i:0;s:7:"enabled";i:1;s:10:"separation";s:2:"60";s:7:"version";s:3:"3.7";s:14:"tweet_template";b:0;s:6:"status";i:2;s:6:"result";a:0:{}s:13:"tweet_counter";i:2;s:13:"tweet_log_ids";a:1:{i:0;i:2243;}s:9:"hash_tags";a:0:{}s:8:"accounts";a:1:{i:0;s:7:"kazu634";}}' categories: - つれづれ ---

　Richard Hamming: You and Your Researchを読んで気になった部分を書き出しています。面倒くさいから英語のまま。

So far as I know,

so
far as I know, and I’ve been told by others, much of what I say applies
to many fields. Outstanding work is characterized very much the same
way in most fields[.]

One of the characteristics

One
of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great
scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent
thoughts and had the courage to pursue them.

One of the characteristics

One
of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once
you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems,
then you can. If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going
to.

What most people think are the best working conditions

What
most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very
clearly they are not because people are often most productive when
working conditions are bad.

What appears to be a fault

What
appears to be a fault, often, by a change of viewpoint, turns out to be
one of the greatest assets you can have.

The more you know, the more you learn

The
more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can
do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity – it is very much
like compound interest.

On this matter of drive

On
this matter of drive Edison says, “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1%
inspiration.” He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid
work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady
application of effort with a little bit more work, intelligently
applied is what does it. That’s the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn’t
get you anywhere. I’ve often wondered why so many of my good friends at
Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did, didn’t have so much
to show for it. The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter.
Just hard work is not enough – it must be applied sensibly.

If you do not work on an important problem,

If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious.

If you want to do great work,

If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important problems, and you should have an idea.

there is a pretty good correlation

there
is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open
and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work
with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on
slightly the wrong thing – not much, but enough that they miss
fame.

by altering the problem, by looking at the thing differently

I
suggest that by altering the problem, by looking at the thing
differently, you can make a great deal of difference in your final
productivity because you can either do it in such a fashion that people
can indeed build on what you’ve done, or you can do it in such a
fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what
you’ve done. It isn’t just a matter of the job, it’s the way you write
the report, the way you write the paper, the whole attitude. It’s just
as easy to do a broad, general job as one very special case. And it’s
much more satisfying and rewarding!

one of the reasons is drive and commitment.

Well,
one of the reasons is drive and commitment. The people who do great
work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that
those who have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day
and go home and do other things and come back and work the next day.
They don’t have the deep commitment that is apparently necessary for
really first-class work. They turn out lots of good work, but we were
talking, remember, about first-class work. There is a difference. Good
people, very talented people, almost always turn out good work. We’re
talking about the outstanding work, the type of work that gets the
Nobel Prize and gets recognition.