Abstract
I’m a scientist whose career has focused on developing statistical and computational methods for genetics and genomics. Here, I share advice and lessons learned from conducting research and from teaching others how to do it. I also provide reports on experiments related to my open-source software.
How much impact can a computer setup possibly have? Some choices can make your daily life as a computational scientist a lot happier. Conversely, other choices can make you curse yourself. If it sounds like I'm talking from experience, you're correct -- 20+ years worth.
This post is intended for anyone starting out in research and development with a computational bent, whether in a science (e.g. computational biology) or engineering context. In particular, it is focussed on the research process that leads to new tools and analysis methods.