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Permalink Reply by Dennard on November 16, 2012 at 9:14pm

It's hard to say, but my guess is your number is reasonable.

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Permalink Reply by Vytautas on November 17, 2012 at 8:44am

It really depends. You can't put a specific ratio on it and then follow that ratio and expect to be successful. You have to read as much as is necessary to accomplish the task at hand. If you're doing thorough research, you might read three or four books on a given topic, plus a half dozen articles. You might get three or four pages from your research, you might get ten or twelve.

I really don't recommend trying to put a mathematical ratio on it. That will not be useful.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Tantillo on November 17, 2012 at 10:43am

Same as the above said, it's a pretty variable number. If you're doing an analysis on some article another person wrote, you probably won't have to read much beyond the article in question before you can write about it. On the other hand, if you're compiling a report on the history of steam engines in Wisconsin manufacturing, you're probably going to read a lot more than you write in order to get all your facts straight.

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