The Academics Thread

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

This is a physics paper that was written for an actual class.

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Cancer]

Might have to compose a reply where the first character on each line is "F".

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

So many good ones here, I couldn't decide. WARNING: language

 

 https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-childrens-spelling-mistakes/

[rravenwood]

I almost feel guilty laughing at those...  But someone should make an NPC based on:

Spoiler

April Ham Lincon

 

[Starlord]

22 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

 

Teaching = pyramid scheme.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

[Cancer]

Welcome to my life.

[L. Marcus]

Our med school only had pass or fail. It was impossible to have the best marks in the grade.

[Old Man]

As the saying goes, the person who graduates last in their class in medical school is called "Doctor".

 

But the comic clearly refers to pre-med students, presumably before they have been filtered out by the required calculus and organic chemistry courses.

[L. Marcus]

We don't have those. (Most of*) our med students are fresh from high school.

 

* = I was 33 when I started. I was the oldest in that batch, but later I met a woman one year older than me, that started a couple of years later.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, L. Marcus said:

We don't have those. (Most of*) our med students are fresh from high school.

 

* = I was 33 when I started. I was the oldest in that batch, but later I met a woman one year older than me, that started a couple of years later.

 

So what you're saying is, you didn't graduate high school until you were 33? 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Not that there's anything wrong with that! 

 

[Pariah]

There were a lot of pre-meds in the chemistry building when I was an undergraduate. We chem majors had a joke about them:

 

Q: How many pre-meds does it take to change a light bulb?

 

A: Five. One to replace the bulb, and four to yank the ladder out from under him.

[Cancer]

Because of how various programs are set up here, when the pre-meds take physics, it is almost always in their senior year.  By then they have had lots of chem labs, including the quantitative analysis course, and it has been drilled into them that while they have to present an uncertainty analysis, their uncertainties are required to be small rather than honest. 

 

Then in the 2nd quarter of the algebra-based physics series, we start off with hydrostatics.  The first lab is a very nicely written exercise with Archimedes' Principle where three times they find a particular quantity in two different ways using different measurements.  (E.g.: samples are metal cylinders; measure diameter and length with vernier calipers, and then do a displacement volume on the same samples, by putting water into grad cylinder, read volume, slide sample into that, read volume again, take the difference.  Then compare the two volumes, taking due account of uncertainties.)  The grad cylinders are not special: 50 ml plastic jobs with 1 ml markings.  The kids seem to think they have to read those grad cylinders to 0.1 ml and quote that as the uncertainty, I assume because in the chem lab if they don't do that they get whacked for it. 

 

I do not for an instant believe, when walking in cold and using those cylinders in that way for the first time, that anyone can reliably read those to 0.1 ml.  Just Not. Forking.  Possible.  (Part of the reason is that there is no way to deliver the same volume of water to the cylinder repeatably, so that initial reading is literally reading a random volume that cannot be the same from trial to trial; and it is only the difference between two measurements that is -- or should -- be repeatable.)  And then they slam face-first into the contradiction that 6.03 +/- 0.14 cm^3 (something like that is what comes out of the calipers and geometry, when you propagate the errors in the caliper measurements properly) does not equal 6.30 +/- 0.10 ml.  And since I have been doing this for 15 years plus, I recognize the look when it happens, I walk over at The Most Inopportune Moment, and suddenly they are not as free to fudge the measurement as they would hope.

 

Then I hit them for the second time with the "honest not small" uncertainties speech, which is something they got at the top of the lab, and frankly made the conscious decision to ignore it because (IMO) they've been through three-plus years of chem lab pedagogy, which is corrupt and trains them be shameless liars.  I don't say that last out loud.  What I do point out is they have been too optimistic about reading the grad cylinder, and if their readout precision is, say, a quarter of a ml or half a ml, then there's perfectly acceptable agreement between the two methods.

 

Dedicated pre-meds hate it more than the straight-up biology majors, because pre-meds often have this pathological need to Be Right, Always.  And having to reason their way through a situation rather than regurgitate a memorized bit of trivia is fundamentally threatening to their mindset.  Very occasionally at the end of that class I make a reference to "Broken Bulldozer Gulch", which is the name I give to what befalls people who think they can memorize their way through any class, even a problem-solving subject like physics.  They have their bulldozer method memorized, and they will hang onto it like grim Death to a dead cat, and ... well, there's a lot broken, burned-out bulldozers at the bottom of the gulch.  And I have no sympathy for any of them.

[Pariah]

High school chemistry teachers, especially those who teach the AP course, tend to get really worked up about significant figures. Mainly because the AP Chemistry exam specifically tests for it.

 

As a consequence, AP Chemistry students usually fall into one of two camps when it comes to reporting results. There are those who either never bothered to learn about sig figs or never were able to comprehend it, who will reports the results of all calculations with as many decimal places as their calculator will spew at them. And then there are those who will meticulously strive to report every number with the appropriate number of significant figures, whether it needs it or not ("How many significant figures does 4 have?") and will frequently miss the correct precision by one or two decimal places in either direction.

 

Ask either group what significant figures has to do with error reporting and they will typically stare at you like you had asked for a lightly grilled groundhog cutlet with a side of mango chutney.

 

I can only imagine how bad it is at the college level.

 

My own lab experience, both as a student and a teacher, tends to remind me of this old adage:

 

Measure with a micrometer.

Mark with chalk. 

Cut with an axe.

 

 

[Bazza]

Who knew that reading a textbook on logic…could be fun? 
 

maybe I’m doing it wrong.

[Old Man]

40 minutes ago, Bazza said:

Who knew that reading a textbook on logic…could be fun? 
 

maybe I’m doing it wrong.

 

We worry about you, man.  Seek help.

 

 

 

[Bazza]

This is the help I’m specifically seeking. Being one of those strange anachronisms called “philosophical realist” I can’t help it. Knowing now about Universals, the Principle of Contradiction & Principle of Identity, it is enough to make a person sane for life. 
 

Later chapters are on Principle of Causation, Principle of Excluded Middle, and Simple Apprehension. Should add, the book was published 1888…so REALLY OLD. 
 

After that I might tackle philosophy of certitude. 

[Cancer]

Well, I give my students a handout on how to compute and present uncertainties in derived quantities given measurements.  (There is also an accompanying homework assignment in computing and presenting same.) 

 

Now, it is steered by my 20th Century astronomer's biases, and my field had a couple of notorious situations where there was a loud controversy, and both major parties in the controversy were overinterpreting their data and being overly optimistic about their uncertainties.  When HST data came after the principals in the controversy were both in official retirement, and the next generation analyzed data that was unprecedentedly good ... well ... entirely unstated in the literature is the lesson that the two warring camps were mostly interested in proving other side wrong, and the correct answer sat spang between the two camps' preferred values for the Hubble constant.  If they'd been honest about their uncertainties, the overlap of their error bars would have made a tight frame around the HST result.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

 

 

Confession time: As a theater teacher, I could memorize hundreds of pages of dialogue, but I couldn't remember my students' names. 

[Starlord]

I have asked my wife how to turn on a hotel shower more than once, so....

[Bazza]

 

[Pariah]

Tangentially related to a discussion on the Book of Face:

 

When I grade papers, lab reports, etc., I usually use a green pen rather than red. Not because green is life-affirming or any such fluffy nonsense. I just like green better than red.

[Cancer]

I grade with red pens because I can take those out of the department's supply cabinet.  They don't order green pens.