Resources

On course topics

Experimental design and statistics

• Experimental Design and Analysis by Howard Seltman (2009). An accessible text about setting up experiments and carrying out statistical data analysis on their results.
• SIGPLAN Empirical Evaluation Guidelines (2018).
• Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldaña. A short book on how to “code” data for systematic qualitative assessment.
  • Related: Moira Maguire and Brid Dillahunt, Doing a Thematic Analysis: A Practical, Step-by-Step Guide for Learning and Teaching Scholars (2017).

Other topics

• Risk management – Wikipedia overview article. Several of the papers we look at consider ideas from risk management as applied to the cybersecurity space.
• Cyber Public Health initiative

On doing research

Talking and writing about research

Research aims to create new knowledge, by discovery, experimentation, and analysis. Knowledge is only created if it is communicated and disseminated. Thus to be a successful researcher you need to write and talk about your research successfully so that your audience understands it.

• How to write papers and give talks that people can follow, Derek Dreyer, 2022
• How to give a technical presentation, Mike Ernst, 2022
  • See also How to write a technical paper or research paper, 2024
• How to give a great research talk, by Simon Peyton-Jones, 2016
• How to write a conference talk, by Mike Hicks, 2019

Finding and reading papers

Understanding what others have done is critical to being able to identify problems, improve how you solve problems, and communicate how your solutions relate to what has been done before. Here are a few sites that facilitate finding both published and not (yet) published academic papers. Additionally, many researchers link to their published papers off of their website.

• Google Scholar: Search tailored to academic papers. To search for a particular author, use author:"Author Name"
• arXiv (pronounced “archive”): Many researchers post preprints (not yet published papers) here.
• CiteSeer: Another site for searching for papers; in general, I find Google Scholar to offer better search capabilities, but CiteSeer also caches papers, so it is often the easiest way to find a copy of a paper.
• ACM Digital Library: Often the official location for papers published at ACM conferences. Papers are freely available when accessed from the campus network, but not necessarily otherwise. Fortunately, there are usually other sites (e.g., the authors’ websites) that have free PDFs.

General advice

There are many helpful pieces of advice out there; here are a few that ring true with me.

• Why pursue a PhD in CS? Plus other resources about applying to graduate school and doing well.
• Advice for researchers and students, advice for students (and faculty) at all stages, compiled by Michael Ernst.
• Grad tips, general advice for graduate students, from deciding whether or not to go to graduate school, to where ideas come from, to defending your dissertation and giving demos. Compiled by Saul Greenberg.
• How to do great research, a set of blog posts about many different aspects to research, finding good ideas, academia, and its relation to industry.

Above all, though, seek advice in person: from your classmates, your professors, your friends and family members… Be open to others’ advice, seek it out. Just remember that advice is not command: incorporate the advice you receive into your own unique perspective, and share it to help shape others'.

Typesetting documents

• The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
• LaTeX math symbols (useful reference)
• LaTeX template commonly used for ACM conferences (with slight modifications)