Human Skills
Timeless techniques for research, writing, presenting, and discussion. Each follows the same template: Definition, Learning Outcome, Core Structure, Worked Example, Common Pitfalls, and a Rubric or Checklist — so a skill can be scanned quickly or read in full.
Benchmarking a New Tool
Before a new tool has to carry your real project, run it through a small, self-contained, checkable challenge first.
Better Technical Writing
Compact, precise, literal writing — a checklist for cutting the words that aren't earning their place, and structuring what's left.
Captions That Work
Write multi-sentence, stand-alone captions that let a figure be understood without the reader needing the main text.
Discussions That Work
Six ground rules and a nine-point discipline for group discussion that actually reaches decisions instead of wasting everyone's time.
Effective Mental Models
Build an explicit model of entities and relationships to understand any system, and know the three phases you pass through while building one.
Effective Reviews
A three-part structure for reviewing someone else's technical writing so the feedback actually helps them improve it.
Knowledge Half-Life
A short set of questions for judging whether something you're learning right now will still matter in five years, or be stale in six months.
Level of Expertise Dialogue
A notes-free, in-person conversation built around five questions that tests whether you can actually speak to the substance of your own work.
Position Papers
A tiered document structure for socializing and promoting an idea in an organization or community too large for everyone to read everything.
Predictions That Work
Ground any predictive claim in a model of the entities and relationships at play, and back it with real evidence rather than gut feel.
Presentations That Work
A story-shaped structure for a technical talk that leaves the audience wanting the paper, not just the slides.
Retrospectives
Three questions, asked at the end of any major activity, that turn experience into concrete action for next time.
Scoping a Thesis Statement
Two short tests — one for picking a topic, one for sizing it — that keep a research project both meaningful and finishable.
Slides That Work
Build a presentation backwards — key takeaways first, then the middle, then the intro last — so every slide earns its place.
Titles and Abstracts That Work
Koopman's five-part abstract structure — motivation, problem, approach, results, conclusions — for writing an abstract that earns the rest of the read.
Using LaTeX
LaTeX is a programming language whose output is a formatted document instead of an executable — a short annotated sample proves the point.
This index fills in automatically as pages are added to _human_skills/ — no manual list to maintain.