The first lecture from the Experimental Design and Common Pitfalls of Machine Learning in Finance series addresses the four horsemen that present a barrier to adopting the scientific approach to machine learning in finance.

The second lecture focuses on a protocol for backtesting and how to avoid the seven sins of backtesting. By implementing the research protocol outlined in these articles, an investment manager can avoid making the seven common mistakes when backtesting and building quant models.

How do you perform research? And what are some of the best-recommended practices that you should follow?

In this article, I will describe some of the main aspects of the scientific research process and also recommend some best research practices. The topics that I will cover are literature reviews, writing a research proposal, performing research, writing a paper for publication, useful tools, and, finally, hosting reading groups.