Out of interest, how do you read papers like these

@Mix Android My friend Swami has a method for reading papers I like to share with my students.

1) Read the title. Turn the paper over and think how you would do it. What do you expect the results to be?
2) Read the abstract. Check your intuitions, did they do it the way you thought? Is your way better?
3) Read the introduction/background. Did you understand the problem context? Do you need to read up on additional references to get a better understanding? Now that you have the background, can you think of other ways to do the experiment?
4) Read the methods. Repeat.
5) Read the results. Did the results match your expectations?
6) Read the discussion. Do the results support the conclusions? Are there interesting problems that remain unsolved? Can you do it better/faster/simpler?

Reading papers like this takes a large effort and plenty of time, but you gain a much better understanding than trying to read one through like a newspaper article. I think it's worth it even when you're not a domain expert, although it certainly is harder.

@Mix Android For the first paper, I'd probably need three passes. I'd skim first to see whether I care, in the next pass I'd make sure to grasp all definitions, and in the third pass I'd follow along the proofs. Fully digesting the complete paper from scratch would probably take me days - while I'm pretty fast at the skim-and-discard-if-boring phase, I'm not the quickest at internalizing technical details.

To be honest, I'm quite glad I don't need to read the first paper =P. Intuitive concepts one could explain face-to-face in 5min packaged in a formal written presentation are always annoying to chew through. But I have to play by those rules for now...