The Academics Thread

[Pariah]

On 8/2/2018 at 2:50 PM, Pariah said:

Well, I took the Praxis this morning. It became obvious pretty quickly that I hadn't reviewed E&M thoroughly enough, and I may be one of the few examinees to score higher on quantum mechanics than on Newtonian mechanics. Overall, however, my raw score was 168 out of 200. If my adjusted score is in that neighborhood, that puts me at the top end of the average score range. In any case, it should be good enough to pass. And that's all I really need.

 

Considering that we spent all night Tuesday driving and that I went to bed yesterday at about 7:30 a.m., I feel okay with how things turned out.

 

The results came in yesterday.

 

I passed!

 

(And yes, I scored higher on QM and Atomic Structure {11/12} than Classical Mechanics {25/32}.)

[Pariah]

I got an email from a kid late last night complaining that one of the answers I had posted on the online quiz for the week was wrong. The question asked him to identify out of 7 options all in which one of the fundamental physical quantities was correctly paired with its SI base unit. He listed the four he had chosen, of which three were correct, and then linked to the National Institute of Standards as justification for why all his answers should be considered correct.

 

(For the record, the one he thinks should be considered correct is amperes as the unit of electrical charge.)

 

I get a couple of students every year who think they know more than I do because they can look stuff up on the Internet. They usually don't self-identify in the first week, however.

[Cancer]

Get the point across to him by leading off with ... "Oh really?  Let us place a wager.  Your soul against mine, ...." 

[Bazza]

Just point to your masters degree. 

[archer]

5 hours ago, Pariah said:

I got an email from a kid late last night complaining that one of the answers I had posted on the online quiz for the week was wrong. The question asked him to identify out of 7 options all in which one of the fundamental physical quantities was correctly paired with its SI base unit. He listed the four he had chosen, of which three were correct, and then linked to the National Institute of Standards as justification for why all his answers should be considered correct.

 

(For the record, the one he thinks should be considered correct is amperes as the unit of electrical charge.)

 

I get a couple of students every year who think they know more than I do because they can look stuff up on the Internet. They usually don't self-identify in the first week, however.

 

One of the trials of knowing a lot is having to put up with people who don't understand as much as they think they do.

 

I've found that when I want to be effective in putting knowledge into someone else's head, I have to get them to separate the idea of "I have access to a lot of information" from the concept that "I understand a lot of things and can always put the information which I have into the correct context".

 

The distinction between the two is lost on most people.

[Pariah]

"By all means, dazzle me with everything you learned at the University of Google."

[Cancer]

Better still: assign them to go to google and record how many hits there are for each of the following phrases (include the quotes in all cases):

 

"Rene Blondlot was wrong"

"Darwin was wrong"

"Einstein was wrong"

 

 

[Badger]

4 hours ago, Cancer said:

Get the point across to him by leading off with ... "Oh really?  Let us place a wager.  Your soul against mine, ...." 

 

Never do that.  You never know when you got a budding politician on your hands (souls don't mean much in that business. And you'll just have an extra foul-smelling soul on your hands)

[Badger]

18 minutes ago, Cancer said:

Better still: assign them to go to google and record how many hits there are for each of the following phrases (include the quotes in all cases):

 

"Rene Blondlot was wrong"

"Darwin was wrong"

"Einstein was wrong"

 

 

 

Hey, I just had to look up who Rene Blondlot was to begin with.

 

For what it is worth, I actually ended up knowing beforehand what he was famous for, I had just forgotten the actual name of the scientist in the story.  (i'm not as dumb as you think. )

[Bazza]

11 hours ago, Cancer said:

 

"Einstein was wrong"

 

 

 

Einstein was/is relatively wrong. Ergo: All entities move and nothing remains still.

[Badger]

Nothing remains still?  What about the Browns win total, then?

 

 

[Old Man]

Regression is still movement. 

[Pariah]

7 hours ago, Badger said:

Nothing remains still?  What about the Browns win total, then?

 

The Browns' win total isn't a static quantity. You just need to look at it using a longer sample time.

[archer]

On 8/26/2018 at 12:37 PM, Cancer said:

Get the point across to him by leading off with ... "Oh really?  Let us place a wager.  Your soul against mine, ...." 

 

He'll just offer you links to a dozen studies which show that there's no physical evidence that souls exist.

 

Of course, if he thinks they don't exist, he'll probably sell you his for next to nothing....

 

Very next level thinking.

[Cancer]

45 minutes ago, archer said:

 

He'll just offer you links to a dozen studies which show that there's no physical evidence that souls exist.

 

Of course, if he thinks they don't exist, he'll probably sell you his for next to nothing....

 

Very next level thinking.

 

Well, since I'm at a Jesuit institution with a couple of theology courses on the required undergrad curriculum (where the existence of the soul is discussed far more deeply ... and the students are graded on that discussion) ... I admit I work in circumstances which are stacked to prevent that from occurring quite so simply.

 

And if that happens in any event, require an eight-page paper discussing the papers and analyzing their arguments.

 

Some of us were smartasses decades before the Internet existed, and know how to deal with today's data-rich thought-poor student population.  (You should take for granted I know how to spot web-based plagiarism, since I first wrote up someone for expulsion for doing that back in the mid-1990s.)

[Pariah]

Yeah, I'm amazed at the number of students who don't think I'm capable of discerning between professionally published writing and something that a first-year science student can come up with on their own.

[archer]

20 minutes ago, Pariah said:

Yeah, I'm amazed at the number of students who don't think I'm capable of discerning between professionally published writing and something that a first-year science student can come up with on their own.

 

Are you speaking of quality of the writing, the quality of his research on the topic, or both?

 

I was freakishly good at writing when coming out of high school (compared to the typical honors high school student).

[Cancer]

You're two for two, keep going....

[Old Man]

On 8/26/2018 at 5:54 AM, Pariah said:

(For the record, the one he thinks should be considered correct is amperes as the unit of electrical charge.)

 

 

Charge is measured in coulombs; current is measured in coulombs per second (which are amps).

 

Your grade is measured in GPA; its present rate of decline is measured in GPA per second...

[Cancer]

7 hours ago, Cancer said:

 

Well, since I'm at a Jesuit institution with a couple of theology courses on the required undergrad curriculum (where the existence of the soul is discussed far more deeply ... and the students are graded on that discussion) ... I admit I work in circumstances which are stacked to prevent that from occurring quite so simply.

 

And if that happens in any event, require an eight-page paper discussing the papers and analyzing their arguments.

 

Some of us were smartasses decades before the Internet existed, and know how to deal with today's data-rich thought-poor student population.  (You should take for granted I know how to spot web-based plagiarism, since I first wrote up someone for expulsion for doing that back in the mid-1990s.)

 

Extending this: one term, I was teaching my "Solar Systems, Ours and Others" course in one room; one of those required theology courses was next door.  Part of my class at the very end of the term is some stuff on SETI.  

 

The two classes started and ended at different times, mine starting and ending first.  Late in the term, I got out of my class and observed that the theology class was all broken out into small group discussions, so I walked in and asked that instructor (we know each other) loudly enough to be overheard, "So, I have an important question: Do aliens have souls?"

 

Without missing a beat, the other instructor scanned the room, found a student who had been paying attention to us rather than his group, pointed at him, and said, "You!  Do aliens have souls?  What do you think?"

 

At that point I declared that my work there was done and left.

[Bazza]

Yes aliens have souls, assuming they are living beings. #easy 

[Cancer]

Historically, it isn't an easy question, at least in Western religion.

[Lucius]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

 

Extending this: one term, I was teaching my "Solar Systems, Ours and Others" course in one room; one of those required theology courses was next door.  Part of my class at the very end of the term is some stuff on SETI.  

 

The two classes started and ended at different times, mine starting and ending first.  Late in the term, I got out of my class and observed that the theology class was all broken out into small group discussions, so I walked in and asked that instructor (we know each other) loudly enough to be overheard, "So, I have an important question: Do aliens have souls?"

 

Without missing a beat, the other instructor scanned the room, found a student who had been paying attention to us rather than his group, pointed at him, and said, "You!  Do aliens have souls?  What do you think?"

 

 

We must assume that they do.

 

For if we assume they are living souls, if they are instead soulless beasts, we may be mistaken, but not guilty of grave sin. But if we assume they are not living souls, if they in fact are, we will inevitably be led not only into an error of fact but into sin.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

A palindromedary has at least four soles.

[archer]

So which ones have fillet of sole?

[Pariah]

The aquatic ones, I guess.