Research Tools Quotes

We have entered an era where the kinds of data and analyses that people run have gotten incredibly complicated. So you have researchers using sophisticated software programs that they probably don't understand but are generally accepted and everyone [in the field] uses.

Statistics is the grammar of science.

In science it is not enough to think of an important problem on which to work. It is also necessary to know the means which could be used to investigate the problem.

All the modern devices we have enable us to investigate things and have enabled us to do better.

Talking to liberals is much more fun now that we have Lexis-Nexis.

[Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.

I perceive Sci-Hub as a practical side of my research.

I used Evernote almost exclusively for researching 'The 4-Hour Body.' I was able to eliminate all of the perpetually open tabs and multiple bookmarking services. It's also all automatically backed up to Evernote, which gives me peace of mind.

Science is to be much commended for the ingenuity, the patience, and the persistency it displays in the invention of instruments wherewith to ferret out the secrets of nature.

I always like to have an atlas just so that I can find things out. It's always good to have an almanac; those sort of things.

Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds.

[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

The Internet is merely a new means of communication, that's all it is. It serves the purpose of getting information, which it is fantastic at. I mean, I live by the Internet in terms of research and it's incredible - there's nothing that you can't find out about. It's not stopped me going to bookshops but I must say that I don't go into as many because any book I want.

Some people hate the very name of statistics, but I find them full of beauty and interest. Whenever they are not brutalized, but delicately handled by the higher methods, and are warily interpreted, their power of dealing with complicated phenomena is extraordinary. They are the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.

I use the Net for a lot of things besides e-mailing. I involve myself in chats with people as part of my research for characters.

Possession of a program with unique analytic capabilities puts a scientist in as much of a priveleged position to make new discoveries as the possession of a powerful telescope.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

Just as our roads and bridges are overdue for investment, so is the infrastructure for scientific research; that is, the body of scientific thought and the tools for searching through it.

I basically did all the library research for this book on Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time.

A well-run, well-stocked library with access to great books as well as the Internet is essential.

I frequently have scenes that take place in places I've never been or characters who have professions that I know nothing about that I've got to research. But that's what Google is for.

What people actually refer to as research is really just Googling. I already have a complicated relationship with research. It used to be going to the library and looking up archival photos, etc.

Scientists need the infrastructure for scientific search to aid their research, and they need it to offer relevancy and ways to separate the wheat from the chaff - the useful from the noise - via AI-enabled algorithms. With AI, such an infrastructure would be able to identify the exact study a scientist needs from the tens of thousands on a topic.

I buy tons of magazines. They're a big part of how I research characters. And I keep them around and go back to them years later. I just have stacks.

I am a member of the London Library, and on almost every single job I do, there is some benefit to be had in going there and pulling two or three books off the shelves.