Daniel Lemire has a new blog post arguing that working long hours is stupid. This collided with Bee’s Backreaction post on what keeps physicists up at night, included in this morning’s Links Dump. This got me to thinking about academic work habits, which led to the following poll: How long will you keep working, continuously,… Continue reading Poll: Working Late
Category: Academia
Synchronicity and “Administrative Bloat”
At Inside Higher Ed this morning, they have a news squib about a new report blaming the high cost of college on “administrative bloat.” Coincidentally, the Dean Dad has a post pre-emptively responding to this in the course of arguing with a different group: In terms of administration, what would you cut? Should we stop… Continue reading Synchronicity and “Administrative Bloat”
Algebra and Circuit Breakers
A couple of “kids these days are bad at math” stories crossed my feed reader last week, first a New York Times blog post about remedial math, then a Cocktail Party Physics post on confusion about equals signs. The first was brought to my attention via a locked LiveJournal post taking the obligatory “Who cares… Continue reading Algebra and Circuit Breakers
Academic Poll: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano?
This Slate story on the number of Americans who can’t swim was kind of surprising to me: In a 1994 CDC study, 37 percent of American adults said they couldn’t swim 24 yards, the length of a typical gymnasium lap pool. A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the University of Memphis found that almost… Continue reading Academic Poll: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano?
Reader Request: What’s the Matter with Stat Mech?
On the reader request thread, commenter Brad had several questions; one led to yesterday’s post about superconductors, another is a critical issue in pedagogy: Finally, why did all of my stat[istical] mech[anics] courses suck? Statistical Mechanics is the branch of physics that deals with building up macroscopic thermal properties of materials from a microscopic model… Continue reading Reader Request: What’s the Matter with Stat Mech?
The Full Seminar Experience
Avi Steiner emailed me with a set of questions that are too good not to turn into a blog post: Being a math/science major at a small liberal arts college, I unfortunately never get the “full” experience of a math/science talk. Since I do plan on eventually attending grad school, I thought it might be… Continue reading The Full Seminar Experience
Should Doctors Have to Take Physics and Chemistry?
The New York Times today has a story with the provocative title Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences, about a program at Mount Sinai that allows students to go to med school without taking the three things most dreaded by pre-meds: physics, organic chemistry, and the MCAT: [I]t came as a total shock to… Continue reading Should Doctors Have to Take Physics and Chemistry?
Two Cultures Defining Research
I was initially puzzled by the headline “Research-Assignment Handouts Give Students Meager Guidance, Survey Finds,” and the opening sentences didn’t help much: Most research-assignment handouts given to undergraduates fail to guide the students toward a comprehensive strategy for completing the work, according to two researchers at the University of Washington who are studying how students… Continue reading Two Cultures Defining Research
Twitter in Business Schools
My initial reaction to the financial meltdown caused by the housing bubble was “Are our business leaders really that stupid?” Things like this news squib from Inside Higher Ed make me suspect the answer is “yes, they are that stupid”: Business schools — including such prestigious ones as those of Columbia and Harvard Universities —… Continue reading Twitter in Business Schools
Presentation Poll: Outline or No Outline?
We have a summer student seminar series in the science and engineering departments here, running two days a week at lunchtime with three students each day giving 15 minute presentations on their summer research projects to other students and faculty. The student talks are split almost 50/50 overall on whether to provide an outline at… Continue reading Presentation Poll: Outline or No Outline?