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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

How to read an AI research paper as a student without drowning in the math

#career #research #learning

Reading a paper front to back, in order, is the slowest and most discouraging way to extract what you actually need from it as a practitioner rather than a researcher.

A reading order that works

  1. Abstract and conclusion first — what did they claim to show, and did it work.
  2. Figures and tables next — most of a paper's real content lives in the results tables, not the prose around them.
  3. The method section, skimmed for the core idea, not every equation.
  4. Only then, if you need to reimplement something, the detailed math and proofs.

When it's fine to skip the proofs

If you're applying the idea, not proving a new theoretical result yourself, a solid intuitive understanding of why a method works is usually enough. Save full derivations for the rare paper whose core contribution you actually need to extend.

This reading habit pairs well with small language models: 1B-3B use cases as a paper-adjacent, practical starting point.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour in a shirt and tie holding a microphone in front of a career-opportunities slide
A career session for students

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Presenting to a room

Pranjul Rathour on stage presenting a requirements-gathering and user-flow slide
Requirements gathering, on stage

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Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting KrishGyan — farming advice in your voice and language — in front of a projector screen
Presenting KrishGyan

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-07.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
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