Ask HN: How to blog things I've learnt in graduate school?

Regarding 2: Speak with your professors about that. If they already publish a lot of that material on their sites, you can at least link to it. Ask if they'll let you include it directly (images, quotes) and so on.

You're asking the wrong question. The how is easy: build a blog (trivial) and write down the things you've learned. Maybe add some pictures, diagrams, or code.

You really are wondering why you should blog. There's nothing wrong with sounding academic. In fact, being able to teach others is perhaps the best way to solidify your own understanding. At any point you use jargon, define the term! If something seems confusing or esoteric to others (via comments), answer the comments and use that to generate ideas for follow-up posts.

Can you talk about this stuff legally? Legally yes+, you're not plagiarizing any existing works since this is your own original writing. Better, you want to know what's in your school's code of conduct. It's probably not a good idea to list answers to homework problems (unless they are from a book and the book has the answers in the back). But it's good to explain the concepts as well as how you might go about solving it or thinking about it.

+ = I say this not as a lawyer, and I am not giving you legal advice

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

For your second question, it's a matter of plagiarism. So you'll want to avoid outright copy/pasting the homework and material into your blog. However, you can state similar types of questions and provide an analysis on your answer and the steps / thought process you took to reach it.

For example, if you were taking Calculus and were asked to solve for the derivative of 2x^5 in your homework, you can instead show how to solve 7x^3 which provides the same knowledge.

1) Just write. You'll find your own voice. I'd worry less about whether you sound academic or not and more about whether you sound like yourself.

2) Don't write theory, write applied principles. I wouldn't share anything that was put together by one of your professors - that is their work. But if you apply their lessons to something in your own work/life, you absolutely can tell us about it, and outline the academic principles involved as you go.

The entire point of academia is to spread knowledge.

You can write about anything you learn. You can quote whomever you please. Reproducing small relevant quotes and commenting on them and explaining them is the most Fair Use thing in existence.

Don't copy whole pages of texts; always give proper attribution.

There is good advice here already, but here's another one: dive deep (or as deep as you have time for) in the existing control systems blogosphere, and try to fill the void/niche you see is lacking. Maybe there are techniques no-one is talking about (in an informal manner), maybe there are trade-secrets that are only mentioned amongst professionals but rarely in textbooks or in papers that you could share, or maybe you have a unique insight or intuition about concepts in the field.

Don't be afraid (in fact, I'd encourage it) to break away from the conventional way of explaining things in the area. Control theory is an area I think could gain a whole lot from contrarian pedagogs. (This is also a good test of your own understanding. If you're able to explain things you think you understand without using the conventional language and canonical examples, that's a good test that you've grokked it deeply.)

The best way to make a meaningful contribution is in response to what already exists, in a way that either contributes more information to the whole, or simplifies some piece high up the hill of research dept[1].

[1] https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/

I would highly recommend posting on somewhere like codementor. They provide the platform but publish your work under creative commons so you remain the owner.

I blogged for years, mainly for solidifying my own knowledge on some topics, but it was always rewarding when someone dropped a comment saying my post had helped them.

Since I started publishing on codementor, so many more people find my posts.

Re your specific questions:

1. Aim for technical walkthroughs that assume limited/no prior knowledge. Find a small project that uses the theory, and then show step by step how to build it, explaining each step in as much detail as possible. This will fill gaps in your own knowledge and help others who will be missing context that you assume is general knowledge.

2. As others have said, I wouldn't recommend copy/pasting anything, but I doubt any academic is going to come after you for plagiarising/popularising their work if you adapt and reference appropriately.

When I was in grad school I made these to explain concepts from traffic theory:

http://setosa.io/blog/2014/09/02/gridlock/ http://setosa.io/bus/

These were major efforts and I don't recommend building out anything similar while pursuing a master's. But control theory does lend itself to simulation well, so I would use jupyter notebooks to present little annotated simulations with code. Print out plots of the state space at intervals for example. I also highly recommend the graphing calculator desmos.com.

> without sounding like an academician

What's wrong with sounding like an academic? Do you not want examples of good blogs written by academics then?

Not a blog, but this YouTube Channel called Real Engineering might fit the criteria for your first question:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR1IuLEqb6UEA_zQ81kwXfg

I would be leery of writing too much about things I am studying this quarter or semester. For one thing, you probably don't understand it as well as you think you do. For another, you are much more likely to regurgitate stuff from courses that might get you in trouble for copyright violation or similar.

Maybe make stubs for things you find interesting, return to it later and flesh it out with public citations available online. If you can't find a public citation available online, then skip it.

Put things in your own words. Quote things judiciously and make sure to cite the source. This is easy if you stick to online sources where you can just link to it.

Imagine your talking to a technologically knowledgeable friend from a different field, and write what you would say..

For 1, take a look at this guy's blog: http://colah.github.io

> 2. How to spread the knowledge from the courses I'm taking legally i.e. how much out of class homeworks/material is it okay to share?

I'd get this approved by somebody with authority at the university first (professor or above). Many professors re-use homework assignments, test questions, etc. You wouldn't want to get mixed up with accusations of helping other folks cheat.

ELI5 with simple examples. Something like that. If you can't ELI5 the material then pick a lowest level higher than that that you can. The best scientists can explain their work and why it is important to a wide range of audiences. So the key is to give the context and why it's important and then how what you've learnt applies.

I wrote a book on Technical Blogging (https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging) specifically aimed at programmers and technical people like you. You might find it useful. Also, feel free to email me directly (info@antoniocangiano.com) if you'd like to discuss your blog specifically.

1. Pick a topic you enjoy in your class and write about it. When you write about it choose a style you like to write in.

2. I have summer project I do that's related to the class. I write about those project and the concept I'm using from the class.

Matt Might does excellent academic blogging. So does RJ Lipton and, to some extent, Terence Tao (although his is for a specialist audience).

I would advise writing, writing, writing. I wouldn't worry too much about #1; a cohesive set of explanatory references and definitions goes a long way.

For #2 - I would actually suggest for #2 to focus on "explaining the papers you work through for seminars". I.e., do a public expository discussion similar to the "Present a Paper" internal seminars labs often old. Practitioners often don't get access to papers in a fresh way.

Hey. Apologies that this is off-topic. But I've been interested, broadly speaking, in the kinds of questions Control Theory has to ask. I want to do a masters in something, and there's a few Control Theory programs that have caught my eye. There are also a few 'Complex Systems' and 'Dynamical Systems' programs that seem interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone I can reach out to figure out what's bogus and what's not. There's contact info in my bio, if you had a second to reach out and answer a few questions it would be greatly appreciated.

> 2. How to spread the knowledge from the courses I'm taking legally i.e. how much out of class homeworks/material is it okay to share?

Class material is subject to copyright unless explicitly licensed otherwise. Without a license, you need explicit permission to reproduce it except for normal academic use (critique, etc, accompanied by normal citation). This is in addition to any academic integrity agreement you signed up for by taking the class, which normally forbids sharing with others.

The knowledge in your head is yours. The words and pictures generated by your profs are theirs. Produce your own original material and you are all set.

I'm a professor. Rules may vary by jurisdiction.

  "Some schools have created an honor code -- a school-wide 
  agreement about ethical behavior -- that parents sign in 
  September and students sign each time they turn in an 
  assignment, quiz or exam."  
  -- https://www.edutopia.org/blog/academic-integrity-cheat-or-be-cheated-denise-pope

William Zinsser's On Writing Well, about writing non-fiction articles, has a lot of examples of people (including scientists) writing beautifully about complex topics, and talks about style, audience, your voice etc. It's a very inspiring book.

re blogging, I've found Jeff Atwood's articles on blogging on his Coding Horror blog to be wise and very helpful. Also Julia Evans' blog is a great example of someone sharing what they're learning in an inspiring, energetic and fun way.

> document/write the things I'm learning

I do this whenever I learn something new. A new vocabulary, expression, API, programming language feature, etc. I think writing down your bite-sized microlessons is just as effective as blogging at length.

Currently I do it every day with a CLI and a browser extension that I keep close at all times.

Here is a previous Hacker News discussion about this method: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16357917

Quora seems to be a popular venue lately.

If you haven't already, I would read Strunk and White and apply those lessons to your writing.

I also highly recommend Steven King's book On Writing.

An idea: Take a topic that catches your interest, and explain it to a non-specialist or even non-engineer. I happen to enjoy blogs like that when they are well written. If a simulation is possible, share some code.

There's the old quote, attributed to various people, that you should be able to explain your research to a barmaid if you actually understand it. Having to explain it at a basic level will actually improve your own grasp.

This is one possible route - whichever topic or doubt you end up searching the internet for, make a small post about the solution. As you grow over time, start being more comprehensive about the solutions, and try to list information on the very niche topic till the periphery of human knowledge( from history of birth to bleeding edge tech in that area). Growing more over time you will start getting in-depth and at a zen blogger stage, cross-domain.

Or you could make the blog all about you. Your personal journey of how some attained knowledge in the past, you were able to apply.