Moore Accuracy Lab at Berkeley-Haas
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Tips for Successful Collaboration with Don 1 Before
working with me 1.1 Research Assistants
Most research
assistants come to my lab group through UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate Research
Apprenticeship Program. Here are the
things I look for in RAs, in descending order of importance: 1. Training
and experience in statistics, psychology, economics, and decision research. The
more of this you have, the better. I also value coding skills, particularly
with R, Qualtrics, Python, and HTML. 2. Relevant
experience. Having previously done research, especially with randomized
experiments, is a plus. 3. Good
grades in relevant classes (statistics, cognitive/social psychology,
microeconomics, behavioral economics, behavioral decision making). If you have
a bad grade that you think misrepresents your abilities, feel free to explain it to me. 4. Interest
in our work, as evidenced by knowing about it and the related literature. 5. Good
quantitative SAT/GRE scores. I prefer quantitative GRE scores above 160, or
quantitative SAT scores above 700. I’m aware of the problems with these tests,
but they make comparisons across applicants easier, and give talented applicants
from underprivileged backgrounds a chance. If you think that your scores don’t
reflect your potential, explain. If you don’t have scores and can’t afford to
take the test, let me know about that too. 1.2 Internships
I usually don’t take interns for short durations; it’s not
worth the training that is required, for either of us. For longer durations (at
least 1 year), please refer to the section about RA positions above. 1.3 Current Berkeley undergraduates
I rarely say yes to requests to advise undergraduate theses
unless we have had the chance to work together.
If you want me to advise your undergraduate thesis, you should plan to apply
to be a part of the lab through URAP well in advance of your request. 1.4 Prospective PhD students
If you’re interested in working
with me in the Berkeley-Haas PhD program you can send me a CV, transcripts, and
test scores in the fall a year before your proposed entry. You can ask me –
even before you apply officially – for an indication of whether I think I can advocate
for you during admissions. I will give you an honest answer and hope that this
will make your application process more targeted and efficient. If I encourage
you to apply, that is no guarantee of admission. Note that we usually accept less than 5% of
those who apply. 1.5 Visiting Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD
students
I rarely have the time or resources to be able to sponsor
visiting bachelor’s or master’s students.
If you’re a potential visiting PhD student, please send me a CV,
transcripts, SAT/GRE scores (for transcripts and scores, nothing formal is
needed – screenshots or informal summaries are fine), and a writing sample
(publication, working paper, or essay, in that order of priority). Please also
indicate whether you have funding to cover your living expenses, e.g. from a
fellowship, your home university, or other sources. Include
information about your intended length of stay, and when you would like to
come. The longer you can come, the better. Tell
me what you expect to get out of such a visit; know that the
probability of a research collaboration is low because it is rare that
I have the time to start something new and unlikely we would have the
time to start and complete a project during your visit. Finally, I will
need to know that your home institution and primary advisor is
supportive of your visit and will require direct confirmation from
them. 2 While
working with me 2.1 The point of everything
The overarching goal of everything we do is to better
understand human and organizational decision making. In the day-to-day life of
academia, our dedication to this big goal may sometimes be difficult to
discern: it may look like we’re engaging in idle academic discussions about
minutiae, getting hung up on mundane methodological details, spending a lot of
time battling red tape, and chasing publications. But we do all of these things
because they are the most effective way we have discovered to further our
overarching goal of pursuing the truth. It helps to remind yourself of this
whenever the demands of everyday work are a source of frustration. 2.2 Communication
I value prompt communication, and
my favorite communications medium is email.
I will endeavor to respond to your emails within a day. If I ask you something via email, I will be
grateful if you respond within a day. If
you need more time to accomplish what I have asked, please reply promptly with
a forecast of time to completion. I
value accuracy far more than optimism—your forecast should accurately
anticipate how long it will take you to complete the assignment. If it
turns out that your original forecast was overly optimistic and you need longer
than you originally forecast, please update your forecast. Do not just let the project slide and hope
that I will not notice your failure to deliver.
If you have
asked me something via email and I have failed to respond within a couple of
days, you should feel free to remind me that you are waiting for a response
from me. I will be grateful for your
reminder. An email
auto-response message is helpful if you expect to be away from email for some
time. 2.3 Respecting participants
The people who participate in our research are essential to
the process. Our work is only made possible by their participation. They are
generous in giving their time; we are therefore grateful to them and want to
treat them with respect and courtesy: be nice to them and treat them as the
smart, interesting, kind, and generous people they are. If a participant wants
to speak to a member of the research team with a comment or concern, we want to
always give them that opportunity. Serious concerns and any adverse events
(e.g. angry participants) should be brought to my attention immediately. 2.4 Being healthy and happy
Your health and happiness are
more important than any research project. I expect you to work hard, but
whenever work gets in the way of you being healthy and happy, please let me
know. If you are aware of specific things that you want to change, I’m eager to
discuss with you whether and how we can make those changes; if you are
dissatisfied but don’t know what you want to change, I am eager to brainstorm
with you about possibilities. I will also always be supportive of you seeking
health care--physical or mental. This also
applies to vacations; you’re entitled to your vacation time and need not be shy
about asking for it. I ask you to let me know in advance when and for how long
you want to take vacations, and to have project needs in mind when making those
plans. I’m happy to discuss possibilities for making things work if you want to
go away during crunch-time. Relatedly, family and close
relationships are also more important than research. If you need to take time
off unexpectedly for reasons related to family matters, please let me know. 2.5 Being honest
The most important principles
governing our work together are honesty, trust, and communication. Working
together in our lab implies that we will get to know each other’s quirks. This
might be scary if it reveals our foibles. At the same time, it may be liberating,
because it means that you might as well just be yourself from the start. This
has a number of implications. First, it
means that nobody can make themselves seem more or less smart than they really
are. The rest of the group knows it already, for better or worse. I hope this
frees you up to put genuine understanding at the center of your interactions: you
don’t have to pretend to understand when you don’t, and you should ask
questions. A second,
related implication is that we can own up to our mistakes. All of us get things
wrong all the time; coding errors are the most common incarnation, but it
ranges from forgetting meetings to missing deadlines. Knowing that it happens
to everyone makes it less jarring to admit to it, and easier to deal with it promptly. Putting it
crudely: You will inevitably make mistakes, and I will inevitably find out
about them. What you can control is my perception of whether you deal with them
constructively: by actively identifying them, owning up to them as soon as
possible, and fixing them. Third, this honesty also makes it
easier to trust each other. Our group is fortunate to operate in a high-trust
equilibrium: it’s safe to assume that everyone else has your best interests at
heart. When you ask them for help, they will usually be glad to give it; they
expect the same of you. This also includes me: Once you are part of the group,
you can trust that I will do what I can to help you complete your work, advance
your career, and have good work/life balance. Conversely, I trust that you put
a solid effort into completing your work and don’t free-ride off of others. One
example of this is work hours: we don’t police each other in terms of how many
hours we work; the crucial point is whether or not the work gets done. As long
as our work is moving as expected, I won’t care much if you come in late, leave
early, or decide to work elsewhere for periods of time (although this should be
discussed with me in advance). 2.6 Managing back
It is difficult for me to see how
hard you are working, so I ask you to tell me if you need more work or if you
are working too much. I also rely on you to tell me what you think is going
well or wrong with particular projects, or with our working relationship. I
don’t take such feedback personally and will never blow up; if something isn’t
going well, I want to work with you to fix it. I ask the same of you when I give you feedback about your
work. 2.7 Driving projects forward
When we work together on a project,
my goal is to give you a lot of ownership and for us to interact as colleagues.
It is more interesting and educational for both of us if you think actively and
critically about what we are doing. This will also make it more likely that you
make the sort of sustained intellectual contribution that could earn
co-authorship. (The latter is not a guarantee.) An important aspect of this kind of
participation is driving projects forward proactively. When you think we are at
the stage where input from me is needed to move the project along, please don’t
wait for me to reach out; instead, set up a meeting proactively, get it on a
meeting agenda, and tell me what you think the project needs in general, and
what you need from me to make that happen. 2.8 Scheduling time with me
If you’re my student, postdoc, or research assistant, I
will always make time to meet with you. Scheduling works best by email. 2.9 Professional development
Once we have started working together, I consider it part
of my job to help you achieve your goals, and in particular, get the position
of your choice after our time working together. Because it’s your life and not
mine, you get to pick your goals, and I will support you whatever you decide to
do. Working with me on research is most useful to those who intend an academic
career path, but that is not the only path. I encourage you to share your
thoughts and plans with me as early and frequently as you wish. 2.10 Reference letters
If you have worked with me for at
least two semesters and we have had regular interactions during that time, I
consider it part of my job description to write reference letters for you for
the remainder of my career. You don’t have to apologize when asking for them. Sometimes it
will happen that we didn’t work together particularly well, and I may not be
able to write a strong letter. If that’s the case, I will tell you in advance,
so that you can ask others if you want to. When you ask
for a letter, please send me a CV, transcripts, SAT/GRE scores if you have them
(nothing formal is required, just mentioning them is enough), and the statement
of purpose or other motivational document if the application required you to
write one. I ask that
you give me at least two weeks to write your letter; if you give me less time I
will try to make it but can’t guarantee it. Once you have asked me for a letter
and I have said that I will do it, you have license and are encouraged to
remind me about getting it done. This is especially true in the days before the
deadline. It helps
greatly if you send me a list of the places where you are applying, and where
applicable enter me in all the relevant application systems in a single
session, so that I have all the request emails in one place. 3 Collaboration The very worst collaborators are those who say they will help but who do not. It doesn't matter how good their intentions were. Terrible collaborators simply do not respond to requests for help. Poor collaborators eventually help, but only after long delays and many reminders. Mediocre collaborators note problems but offer no coherent solutions: "This is broken. Fix it." Good collaborators identify problems and tell others to fix them: "This could be better. Here's how you should improve it." Great collaborators identify work that needs to be done and do it themselves. "I found a problem and here's how I fixed it."
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