Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Um... the obvious problem here is that I'm obviously not intelligent
> enough to do a PhD. :-P

	Yes you are (compared to the folks I knew in grad school). And yes,
Darren is correct: Perseverance and desire is a bigger factor than
intelligence.

-- 
I think animal testing is a terrible idea. They get all nervous and give
the wrong answers.


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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Darren New wrote:
> bureaucratic BS, and yes some amount of learning graduate-level computer
> stuff, since you need the MS first.  (Assuming you're getting a PhD in
> computers.)

	Depends on the university. In a number of well known grad schools in
the US, they actively discourage you from getting a MS, and strongly
encourage you just go straight to the PhD - in fact, they often don't
offer funding if you don't go directly into PhD, because they assume you
just want an MS and will leave.

	(Talking of computer science departments here...)

> You probably need to be a lot smarter to get a PhD in (say) physics or
> engineering than in computers.

	Engineering?

	Not really. I think it's on par with CS. Both have areas that will
require a lot of smartness, and both have areas that don't.

-- 
I think animal testing is a terrible idea. They get all nervous and give
the wrong answers.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Fact: I absolutely *suck* at research. At uni, every assignment
> involving any element of research was consistently graded very poorly
> indeed. Several such modules I failed outright.

	Oh please! First, what people call research at the undergrad level
often isn't.

	Second, you've been doing research all these years. Being curious and
learning stuff - especially technical stuff - is virtually research. All
that's left is to do some new interesting stuff in it. And generally
your adviser will guide you through that.

> Fact: I also suck at report writing. I'm good at writing technical
> stuff, but reports are supposed to have a specific structure and I don't
> really grok that. Also I'm not very good at structuring large documents;
> the flow tends to end up rather muddled.

	Writing papers for journals is a pain the first or second time. Beyond
that, you have the template figured out and you just write. It's
actually less painful than the lab reports I had to do in undergrad.

	And not all papers are large.

	And when you've spent time working on something, then trust me, you'll
probably have more difficulty trimming it down than trying to fill
space. Just look at your own Haskell evangelism!

> Fact: I don't actually need a PhD for anything. Certainly I don't have
> the money to pay for one. Time would also seem to be an issue.

	*Nobody* needs a PhD.

	And don't pay for one. Few people do. In the US, it's usually paid for
either by being a teaching assistant or being a research assistant (you
get a good enough stipend). I'm sure you can figure out how to get it
paid for in the UK (government scholarship, etc). If not, come this side
of the Atlantic or cross the Channel and do it in Europe.

	Seriously. I think it's the best advice you've been given. You get paid
to do all the fun geeky stuff your adviser wants you to do. And it's not
that rare that you'll also want to do it too! You'll be around smart
people (which *may* make you feel stupid for a while, but that'll go
away). And not sure about the UK and Europe, but (many) campuses in the
US have a good social environment. Lots of great speakers visit campus
and give talks - spanning the whole spectrum from science to politics.

	And no, you don't *have* to be social if you don't want to ;-)

	Others can give advice regarding the PhD in the UK and parts of Europe.
If you want to consider the US as an option, I can likely help you on
some of the details (GRE, etc).

> I could almost be tempted to do math classes - but again time and money
> would seem an issue. (As well as the minor detail of finding a suitable
> class somehow.)

	I went to grad school in electrical engineering. I told myself that
while there, I'd try to get a MS in either physics or mathematics. My
mathematics background when I joined was likely no better than yours. I
did the work for a MS in physics more or less as part of my EE PhD (not
yet completed) - so I won't get the MS in that. I was half way through
the mathematics requirements before I got sick of homework.

	Not to start a flame war or anything, but the MS in mathematics in the
US is generally not that advanced. Probably half of the courses are done
at the undergrad level in many places in Europe.

	Bottom line: At least in the US, they're very flexible about things.
Even if you're doing a PhD in engineering or CS, there's nothing
preventing you from taking courses in mathematics. And because of the
(*cough*) lower standards (*cough*) in mathematics, you won't have
trouble filling any missing maths prerequisites and going further
towards an MS in it.

-- 
I think animal testing is a terrible idea. They get all nervous and give
the wrong answers.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> [ lots of stuff ]

I'll second everything she said, including helping you find and get 
involved in the right place if you want.

Places in the USA pay you to get the graduate degree, because "famous 
alumni" are how they sell the school to the paying undergraduate 
schools. If you were doing an undergrad in physics, wouldn't you prefer 
to go to the school where Hawkings got his PhD?  Our schools aren't 
nearly old enough to have reputations on their own without famous people 
associated with them. :-)

It's also an excellent way to meet (a) friends and (b) business 
contacts. You'll be in a mile-square place with thousands of people your 
own age, most pretty smart, most rather more tolerant of differences 
than places with less explicit mixing of cultures going on, etc. You'll 
also be around people whose job it is to travel around the world meeting 
with and talking to people with interesting problems, and whose other 
job it is to talk people into giving them money to solve interesting 
problems they didn't know they had.

It's not about the computers. It's about the people.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 	Depends on the university. In a number of well known grad schools in
> the US, they actively discourage you from getting a MS, and strongly
> encourage you just go straight to the PhD - in fact, they often don't
> offer funding if you don't go directly into PhD, because they assume you
> just want an MS and will leave.

Odd. Never heard of that. I can see your point, but I would think the 
number of people who go thru the MS saying they'll get a PhD and knowing 
they're going to bail before then must be fairly low. Maybe where that 
has happened too often they instituted this policy.

>> You probably need to be a lot smarter to get a PhD in (say) physics or
>> engineering than in computers.
> 
> 	Engineering?
> 
> 	Not really. I think it's on par with CS. Both have areas that will
> require a lot of smartness, and both have areas that don't.

Maybe. The few engineering courses I sat in on seemed a lot harder. 
Maybe I'm just better at computers.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Invisible wrote:
> 
> Yeah, this is the thing. I had assumed that the digital devices you buy 
> in the shop are carefully designed to behave in a simple, predictable 
> mannar, even though their internal construction is a tangle on analogue 
> devices. I thought you could just treat a 7400 as a black box. 
> Apparently not...
> 

To a point you can - knowing that point is the trick - and likely some 
of what you are facing.

>> And as you have found out with LEDs, even when you think you are only 
>> dealing with digital, you are dealing with analog as well.
> 
> The LEDs actually worked just fine. It's the gate driving them that 
> didn't do what it was ment to.
> 

One think to keep in mind, you are best off not trying to drive the LED 
directly from the chip.  Some chips can do it, but most cannot.  Lots of 
times you need to put a *switch* that the gate switches.
see:
http://www.rason.org/Projects/transwit/transwit.htm
http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/tutorial/transistors/transistors1.html

remember, you need a resistor in the path from + to ground with the LED.


>> Even something as simple as a button or switch can cause problems.
>> When you close the contact there are literally thousands of 
>> connections made and broken in the very short time before the contact 
>> is completely closed.  If you have a counter, it might count 4 or 5 on 
>> each button press, not just one.
> 
> I wouldn't find this surprising. Rather, to be expected.
> 


Good, something won't catch you by surprise.  But it's all those little 
things that can add up and frustrate you.


>> That's what debounce circuits are for, but they can be analog - go 
>> figure.
> 
> Presumably a debounce circuit is merely a low-pass filter?
> 

can be - it can be implemented purely analog, or it can be filtered in 
programming.
You can also use some logic gate tricks to debounce.


>> Don't try to build a rocket ship - build something simple.
> 
> Heh. I got stuck just trying to get a truth table out of a logic gate. :-S
> 

So, keep trying to do it.  That's how you start.  Overcome the things 
that keep it from working.  How else do you learn.
You can certainly ask questions here - you've already gotten an ear full.


>> Get a book that doesn't just say hook this wire here and there, but 
>> that actually goes through how it all works.
>> The CMOS Cookbook I pointed out earlier is a good book in that reguard.
> 
> ....does it matter that I'm using TTL?

TTL & CMOS are very similar in their logic, but completely different in 
how they work internally.

You can't just hook the two together.  At you level you are better off 
sticking with one or the other.

CMOS is much lower power and is what is typically found in newer 
electronics - tho TTL has its place as well.

There is a TTL cookbook by the same author - it is basically the exact 
same book.

You can use either book, they are both good starts.


The TTL Cookbook is what opened my eyes that I could actually do 
electronics and it was relatively easy.  I had to return it as it was a 
loaned book, but then I bought the CMOS cookbook and took off from there.



I highly recommend either of the books if you are really interested in 
learning some about electronics.  Unless you have $100 in TTL chips, I 
recommend that you go the CMOS route as it is more likely what you would 
encounter when dealing with more specialized chips (think CPU).

If you get one, start reading it from the beginning and learn the 
fundamentals.

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Tom Austin wrote:

> I highly recommend either of the books if you are really interested in 
> learning some about electronics.  Unless you have $100 in TTL chips, I 
> recommend that you go the CMOS route as it is more likely what you would 
> encounter when dealing with more specialized chips (think CPU).

Just keep in mind CMOS is very easy to cook.

-- 
~Mike

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Invisible wrote:
>>> (E.g., I suspect if you applied to work for Google,
>> Not if their interview process is anything to go on.
> O RLY?
> You know something about this then?

Yeah. They saw my resume and wanted to interview me. So they asked me 
stupid questions over the phone like you get in phone interview just to 
see if you're a poseur or something.

But then, when I got there, there wasn't a single question about 
anything I knew or anything I'd done. Not one word mentioned about 
what's on my resume.

Plus, all the questions were these abstract programming questions, most 
of which had nothing to do with the sort of things Google does.

"How do you efficiently tell if an integer is a power of two?"  (It's 
trivia - if you know the trick, you answer the question, and if you 
don't, it's unlikely you'll come up with it in the middle of a job 
interview.)

"You have a bunch of data you want to be able to insert, find, and 
remove, and you want to be able to retrieve a random subset of size N of 
that data."   Well, use a hashtable, and take the first N entries. 
"What if your hash function doesn't balance out well?"  Can I assume I 
know how to generate good random numbers, or is that what you're asking? 
"You can assume you have random numbers."   So I can write a good random 
number generator, but I can't write a good hash function?

"You have 10,000 machines with 5,000 entries in a file on each. You want 
to find the 100 most common entries in the file. Estimate how many 
machines it'll take."   Well, how fast do you want it?  "Um, well, pick 
a speed, and estimate how many machines it'll take."  OK, run the 
program on 100 machines going to 5 machines, then 100 machines going to 
10 machines. Assuming that's roughly twice as fast, multiply that number 
by 100, divide it by how fast you want it, and that's your number of 
machines.  "OK, do that."  So, you want me to estimate how many machines 
it takes to run an unknown program on unknown data at an unknown speed 
and finish within an unspecified deadline, and you want me to estimate 
that standing in front of the whiteboard at the job interview?  "Yes."

"Find the smallest N numbers that fit the equation 2^i * 5^j for any 
positive i and j."   Struggles for a bit, realizes there's no obvious 
pattern to it.  Where do these numbers come from? "What?" What sort of 
process generates or consumes numbers like this that I'd have to find 
them? That'll give me a handle on what order they're in.  "Just solve it."

"How would you estimate the cache size of a processor?"  I'd look in the 
source of memtest x86 and see what processor instructions it uses to 
look that up in the CPU.  "Say it's a different CPU."   I'd ask the 
manufacturer.  "How would you do it with a program?"  Why would I guess, 
if I can actually determine it accurately at runtime? OK,here's some 
code to do it.  "What would make it's results invalid?"   See?

Virtually none of the questions were connected with any sort of 
scientific or business processes that I could figure out, except maybe 
the "estimate merging files", for which "do it on a small sample and 
multiply" wasn't acceptable for some reason.

Their system administration group did a better job on the questions. 
Stuff like "if you try to log in and get told 'too many processes', 
what's goign on and how do you fix it?"   Or "name the bits in the TCP 
headers."  At least that was testing actual knowledge you might need if 
you're administering machines.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Tom Austin wrote:
> Get a book that doesn't just say hook this wire here and there, but that 
> actually goes through how it all works.

Radio Shack in the USA used to carry little books like this. Maybe 20 or 
30 half-size pages (folded over and stapled, basically) saying how to 
make a counter, or a Xenon flash circuit ;-) or a tone generator. Of 
course they had the RS part number lists at the back, which was 
convenient since you were right there anyway.  But they explained how it 
worked, while other kit-companies just told you how to wire it up.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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"Mueen Nawaz" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message 
news:491c5c3a$1@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Um... the obvious problem here is that I'm obviously not intelligent
>> enough to do a PhD. :-P
>
> Yes you are (compared to the folks I knew in grad school). And yes,
> Darren is correct: Perseverance and desire is a bigger factor than
> intelligence.

Agreed. It's the perserverance that I'm struggling with right now (even 
though I'm just doing an M.Sc)

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