I’ve had a lot of weird things happen in the time I’ve been teaching, but the above image is my new favorite message from a student. We gave an exam Thursday night, so a couple of my colleagues canceled class on Friday, but I’m going to be at DAMOP the last week of class, so… Continue reading May I Be Excused? My Brain Is Full.
Category: Academia
The Importance of Shaking Things Up
That recent study on active learning continues to generate some press, including a new interview with Carl Wieman about why traditional lectures are problematic. Wieman is pretty blunt about his opinions on the subject, which will come as no surprise to people in the AMO physics community… Anyway, while most of the rest of the… Continue reading The Importance of Shaking Things Up
Uncertain Dots 15
Rhett and I did the 15th episode of our Uncertain Dots hangout yesterday, commenting on a discussion started by Casey Rutherford about what we would like students coming into college physics to know. We had a slight difference of opinion about physics content, but agreed about the importance of algebra (which is like sunscreen). I… Continue reading Uncertain Dots 15
On Beginning to Write
Over at Xykademiqz, a couple of weeks ago, there was a very nice post about the struggle to get students to write. “Very nice” here means that it’s a good description of the problem, not that I’m glad anybody else has to deal with this. I don’t face quite the same thing– my students generally… Continue reading On Beginning to Write
What I’m Doing This August: Nordita Workshop for Science Writers
I’ve been setting up schedules with my summer research students lately, and the main constraint we’re facing with that is that I’m going to spend most of August in Europe. Part of this is pure vacation– Kate and I are going to the UK for a couple of weeks. Part of it is the World… Continue reading What I’m Doing This August: Nordita Workshop for Science Writers
“Gen Ed” Relativity: Pondering Books
This coming fall term, I’ll be teaching Astronomy 052, “Relativity, Black Holes, and Quasars,” because the guy who has traditionally taught it (a radio astronomer who studies active galactic nuclei) has to do other courses instead. But I said “Well, hell, I’ve written a popular audience book explaining relativity. I can teach that.” And since… Continue reading “Gen Ed” Relativity: Pondering Books
On “Excessive Technical Detail”
I’ve seen a few links passed around to this Tom Siegfried post about science literacy, which is mostly a familiar story about how polls show most Americans giving incorrect answers to science questions. The sort of stuff you find in the NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators report. What’s getting the social-media attention, though, is this… Continue reading On “Excessive Technical Detail”
Great Moments in Puzzling Axis Labels
While I’m complaining about statisticulation in social media, I was puzzled by the graph in Kevin Drum’s recent post about college wage gaps, which is reproduced as the “featured image” above, and also copied below for those reading via RSS. I don’t dispute the general phenomenon this is describing– that the top 10% of college… Continue reading Great Moments in Puzzling Axis Labels
Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats
Via a mailing list, probably via this Tyler Cowen post, an awful statistic about adjunct faculty: 35 years ago there were 44% more tenured faculty than adjuncts. Today there are 76% more adjuncts than tenured faculty, via @chronicle — Ángel Cabrera (@CabreraAngel) April 25, 2014 This is awful in two ways. First, it’s obviously a… Continue reading Adjunct Faculty and Awful Stats
Music Writing and Science Writing
No, this isn’t another blog post lamenting the fact that music writing gets far more attention than science writing. If anything, it’s a bit of an argument that science writing ought to be less like popular music writing. On Twitter this past weekend Jim Henley, one of the few bloggers I consider “old school” (the… Continue reading Music Writing and Science Writing