We had a couple of weeks of unplanned hiatus due to sick kids and day care closures, so the superstitious among you might’ve thought we would never get to the 13th episode of Encertain Dots. Rhett and I are scientists, though, so we powered through: Given the time of year, this is mostly about end-of-academic-year… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Lucky Number 13
Category: Education
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
Academic Round-up: Exam Review, Student Comments, Speaker Invitations
A collection of miscellaneous stuff with an academic inclination from the past week or so: — We gave an exam last night in introductory E&M (I’m teaching one of five sections this term), so we’ve spent a lot of time this week on exam review. One thing that might be worth mentioning here is the… Continue reading Academic Round-up: Exam Review, Student Comments, Speaker Invitations
Uncertain Dots, Episode 12
The last couple of days have been ridiculously hectic, but Rhett and I did manage to record another episode of Uncertain Dots, our twelfth: This time out, we talk about labs, undergrad research, kids doing chores, weather, student course evaluations, and I didn’t really rant about superheroes. Relevant to the weather thing, I offer the… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 12
On Exclusivity
Yesterday’s frat boy post prompted some interesting discussion, one piece of which is a response from Matt “Dean Dad” Reed (also at Inside Higher Ed), who overlapped with me at Williams for a year, but had a very different reaction to the social scene there. His take mirrors mine from the other side, though, which… Continue reading On Exclusivity
On the Positive Features of Drunken Idiots
I was invited to a dinner last night hosted by one of the umbrella organizations for fraternities on campus, with a stated goal of improving communication between faculty and frats. It ended up being kind of a weird crowd– most of the non-students there were Deans of one sort or another; I think there was… Continue reading On the Positive Features of Drunken Idiots
The Infinite Variety of Wrong Answers
I’ve lost track of who on social media pointed me to this, but this blog post about testimony to the Michigan Legislature is a brilliant demonstration of what’s so difficult about teaching even simple subjects. Deborah Ball, the Dean of the education school at the University of Michigan gives the legislators a simple grading exercise… Continue reading The Infinite Variety of Wrong Answers
The All-Important Letters of Reference
It’s the time of year where colleges and grad schools are making admissions decisions, and faculty job search season is winding down (for tenure-track positions in physics, anyway– our search for a visiting professor for next year is still underway). In the spirit of the season, then, Matt “Dean Dad” Reed asks about the writing… Continue reading The All-Important Letters of Reference
Communication as Art and Science
I alluded to this on Twitter, and meant to leave that be, but the other thing I was going to blog today didn’t come together, and I probably shouldn’t leave a cryptic tweet as my only comment. So… One of the links getting passed around a lot in my social-media circles is this Tumblr post… Continue reading Communication as Art and Science