Of course there’s some pingeonhole principle that works against you if you try to contact, say, Geoffrey Hinton, or the authors of the last making-the-buzz paper. But otherwise yes, most researchers are glad to talk about their work. And it’s kind of a professional duty, which is why most papers include the email of the corresponding author(s).
More generally, congrats on the KevinRoWang for this post! I started my own journey in ML before he was born, and I’m impressed by the maturity of his advices.
There’s an art to it, which I’ve seen best discussed here, but if you do cold emails well then yes people do in fact agree to such calls. I’ve had ~30% hit rates on cold calls to Berkeley professors while being a Berkeley undergrad in a completely different field, and that was for asks to chat about Zika. I’d expect a higher hit rate for professors in the same field you are in, where you can demonstrate greater understanding than I was able to at the time.
Yes! Especially if you show you have can provide relevant thoughts about their work, a lot of people will be happy to call or at least reply to some questions via email
I didn’t know one can do that. Do people really just agree to a call with a stranger?
Of course there’s some pingeonhole principle that works against you if you try to contact, say, Geoffrey Hinton, or the authors of the last making-the-buzz paper. But otherwise yes, most researchers are glad to talk about their work. And it’s kind of a professional duty, which is why most papers include the email of the corresponding author(s).
More generally, congrats on the KevinRoWang for this post! I started my own journey in ML before he was born, and I’m impressed by the maturity of his advices.
There’s an art to it, which I’ve seen best discussed here, but if you do cold emails well then yes people do in fact agree to such calls. I’ve had ~30% hit rates on cold calls to Berkeley professors while being a Berkeley undergrad in a completely different field, and that was for asks to chat about Zika. I’d expect a higher hit rate for professors in the same field you are in, where you can demonstrate greater understanding than I was able to at the time.
Yes! Especially if you show you have can provide relevant thoughts about their work, a lot of people will be happy to call or at least reply to some questions via email