The last week has given me some time to reflect on life, the universe, and everything (Adams, 1982). One of the things that came into focus was reducing my research interests. My interests tend to branch out over time. That is both intellectually invigorating and frustrating. For better or worse, I need to focus in on a few key topics and work toward publishable works. A few minutes of every day has to be spent on academic pursuits. To that end, I started to think about my top ten favorite academic topics:
- Data mining
- Prime number factoring
- Political campaign design
- Pharmacy benefit management
- Public health policy
- Local government administration
- Applied data science
- e-government
- Encryption algorithms
- Multichannel campaign management
I was hoping that by focusing on a defined set of academic topics it would help flush out my research interests. Each one of those topics could be translated into problem statements and hypothesis. That is the kicking off point for research. My goal for the rest of the week is to pick three topics.
