What are guided tours?*

Believe me, doing is a lot more fun than reading about it, and text books seldom allow you even that pleasure. What is "it"? -- the hot pursuit of answers to interesting questions, a chase that may take you through web sites, databases, research articles... whereever it goes. Sometimes the pursuit will be by others, which you'll follow by reading their published research article. Either way, you are probably not equipped at present to keep pace. So, these first times out, I'll ride along with you, suggesting where to go and what clues to look for. This will be done by written tours that I'll post to the web, consisting of sets of instructions, questions, wry observations, etc, aimed at getting you in the hunt. To repeat, the value of these tours lies in your actions. There's nothing much you can gain by just reading through them.

Why are guided tours?

The sites and research articles visited by the tours were not made with you in mind but rather for those who spend their lives in research... which COULD be you too! It is therefore unrealistic to just throw you to those resources and hope for the best. Actually that isn't as bad an idea as you might think. You may be surprised to learn how much you are already able to extract from a research article if you don't get blinded by fear. But the frustration level may be higher than you're ready to bear right now, so... guided tours. They let you experience the process of discovery in a similar way as the person who first found the path. In this way you learn what bioinformatics is able to do as well as its limitations.

Why doesn't the @#$%& Tour X work?

The greater the distance in time from the posting of a tour to your reading it, the greater the chance that some key link will be broken. That's the nature of the web. Please don't be surprised, but please do contact me, telling me of the problem. The tour may also fail because it does not take into account your particular brand of inexperience. This was not my intent but means only that I did not know you at the time I wrote the tour. Please bring the regretable oversight to my attention.

Bear in mind that in attacking real scientific questions using real scientific resources, you are doing something that is quite difficult but still well within your means. You will need patience and the strength to accept momentary confusion. You will also need the resourcefulness to identify the source of your confusion, to confront it, and to thwart it. I'm here to help, but you must initiate the process.

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*Inspired by the excellent text, Discovering Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics by Malcolm Campbell and Laurie Heyer.