One of the reasons I held off on commenting on the whole E. O. Wilson math op-ed thing, other than not having time to blog, was that his comments were based on his own experiences. And, you know, who am I to gainsay the personal experiences of a justly famous scientist? At the same time,… Continue reading E. O. Wilson and Learning the Wrong Lesson
Category: Academia
Math and Science Are Not Cleanly Separable
One of the hot topics of the moment is the E. O. Wilson op-ed lamenting the way math scares students off from science, and downplaying the need for mathematical skill (this is not news, really– he said more or less the same thing a few years ago, but the Wall Street Journal published it to… Continue reading Math and Science Are Not Cleanly Separable
The Trouble With Physics
For something related to the book-in-progress, I was reading Raymond Chandler’s classic essay “The Simple Art of Murder” last night, and stumbled across the following quote, where he laments the number of stories in print in the mystery genre in 1950: In my less stilted moments I too write detective stories, and all this immortality… Continue reading The Trouble With Physics
Blogging Doesn’t Have to Be a Career
Last week, I gave my evangelical talk about science blogging to the Physics department at Wright State, and also a lot of education students who came to the talk (which made a nice change in the sort of questions I got). It’s basically this talk that I gave at Cornell a couple of years ago,… Continue reading Blogging Doesn’t Have to Be a Career
I Teach for Free, They Pay Me to Grade
Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau has a bit of a rant about what students perceive as grading on a “curve”: Moreover, many students have only the foggiest idea of what a curve is. Many (though probably not all) of their high schools had fixed grading scales with fixed percentages for each letter grade. The A/A-… Continue reading I Teach for Free, They Pay Me to Grade
Hey, Ho, Ohio: Two Talks at Wright State, Thursday March 28
Kind of short notice, but if you’re in the appropriate bits of Ohio, you might be interested to know that I’m giving two talks at Wright State this Thursday. At 11am, I’m doing the Physics Department Colloquium in 202 Oelman Hall, “Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How… Continue reading Hey, Ho, Ohio: Two Talks at Wright State, Thursday March 28
On College Matching
We’re entering the heart of College Admissions Season– the offers are out, and students are doing the high-stress decision thing– which means it’s time for the New York Times to begin their annual series of faintly awful reports on the state of academia. And right on cue, there’s this weekend’s article about poor students who… Continue reading On College Matching
Science Communication: The Audience Exists
In the twelve years I’ve been at Union, there are only two times I’ve tried to go to an evening speaker and been turned away. Once was 4-5 years ago, when Maya Angelou spoke on campus, the second time was last night, when Bill Nye the Science Guy spoke. I managed to make it to… Continue reading Science Communication: The Audience Exists
Asking Questions and the “Finkbeiner Test”
There was a lot of re-sharing yesterday of an article about the “Finkbeiner Test” to be applied to profiles of women scientists. This is analogous to the “Bechdel Test” in pop culture, which asks “Do two women talk to each other about something other than a man?”, only because we’re scientists, it’s more complicated, hitting… Continue reading Asking Questions and the “Finkbeiner Test”
Deficit Models, Bureaucratic Empathy, and Work-Life Juggling
Every now and then, I run across a couple of items that tie together a whole bunch of different issues that weigh heavily on my mind. That happened yesterday courtesy of Timothy Burke, whose blog post about an NPR story is so good that there aren’t enough +1 buttons on the entire Internet for it.… Continue reading Deficit Models, Bureaucratic Empathy, and Work-Life Juggling