One of the odd things about the C-list celebrity life of a semi-pro blogger is that I get a bunch of requests to review books on physics-related topics. Some of these take the form of a book showing up out of the blue, others are preceded by a polite request from the author. Aaron Santos’s… Continue reading How Many Licks? or How to Estimate Damn Near Anything by Aaron Santos
Category: Education
Service Reform
The Dean Dad and the Tenured Radical are having a really good discussion of service responsibilities, or as TR puts it, the “Just Say No” problem: The Just Say No (to everyone but me) issue is a problem that, frankly, untenured people, adjuncts and visitors are not responsible for managing; and that achieving tenure can… Continue reading Service Reform
Dehumanizing the Two Cultures
It’s probably a good thing that I don’t have full-text access to Mark Slouka’s article in Harper’s, with the title “Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school.” Just the description in this Columbia Journalism Review piece makes me want to hunt down the author and belt him with a Norton anthology: According to the… Continue reading Dehumanizing the Two Cultures
Academic Poll: What Do Faculty Owe Former Students?
The Female Science Professor is thinking about what advisors owe their students: When I got my PhD and went out into the great big academic world, I felt that I had the respect of my adviser, but I knew not to expect anything more from him in the way of support in my career other… Continue reading Academic Poll: What Do Faculty Owe Former Students?
Second-Hand Second-Rate Culture War Hackery
Dave Munger on Twitter drew my attention to this blog post on college costs, and I really wish he hadn’t. The post in question is really just a recap-with-links of an editorial by John Zmirak, blaming the high cost of college on an unlikely source: [W]hat if universities began to neglect this basic charge, and… Continue reading Second-Hand Second-Rate Culture War Hackery
How to Choose a College
It’s that time of year again, when the US News rankings come out (confirming my undergrad alma mater as the Best in All the Land) and everybody in academia gets all worked up about What It All Means. There are always a few gems in there with all the pointless hand-wringing, though, and Timothy Burke… Continue reading How to Choose a College
The Importance of Distraction
Kate recently signed up for Facebook, and I was talking to her earlier about some of the options for wasting tons of time entertaining yourself with Facebook, and mentioned the ever-popular trivia quizzes and “personality tests” and the like. Of course, I had to caution her that most of the quizzes are really lame, because… Continue reading The Importance of Distraction
Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
One of the blogs I hyped at the science blogging panel at Worldcon was Built on Facts, Matt Springer’s blog explaining introductory physics concepts. You might not think that you want to read a blog that goes through freshman physics problems in detail– I would’ve been dubious on the concept, had you explained it to… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
The results of the estimation contest are in. There were 164 serious entries (I excluded the $12,000 and $1,000,000 “guesses” from the final data). The mean value guessed by commenters was $83.30, and the median was not far off, at $77.12. The standard deviation was high– $43.10– but as you would expect with a large… Continue reading Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
Majors Are a Choice, Not an Obligation
ZapperZ links to an interview with David Saltzberg about careers for students with an undergraduate degree in physics. As is often the case, ZapperZ proclaims himself “disappointed” with things that I think are about right. In particular, he writes: [W]hen asked on why one should major in physics, is the best that can be answered… Continue reading Majors Are a Choice, Not an Obligation