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Invisible wrote:
> 1. I am insufficiently intelligent to actually acheive a PhD. (I nearly
> failed my BSc as it is!)
You're doing a poor job of convincing us of this fact.
I went to a grad school ranked in the top 5 in my field (nationally,
not globally). There are plenty of people who are just below my level -
and yours (before I begin to start arrogant, there are probably those
higher up on the scale who feel the same about me...).
Trust me - some of my fellow colleagues had trouble with elementary
calculus - and they were in a field that uses it a lot. And many can't
handle some of the stuff you've been posting here.
> 2. I have insufficient money. (I'm still paying for my BSc. Very slowly.)
No one should have to pay for a PhD. Find funding options. In the US,
in engineering programs, the funding almost always comes from research
grants that your adviser gets. I wouldn't have even joined a grad school
unless I was guaranteed funding. Most students get funding for about a
year from the department as a teaching assistant - and in that year they
find an adviser and hook up with him.
> 3. I don't think I can spare the time. (I have a job to do, sucky as it
> is.)
In the US, if you have funding for a PhD, then you're paid to do one.
And depending on the city, you can be quite comfortable with that income.
> 4. It is *highly* unlikely that having a PhD will make any kind of
> positive change to my employment situation. Nobody is impressed by a
> BSc, and I doubt a PhD will be any different. Everybody wants
> "experience" and/or "people skills".
Actually, much of what you do in a PhD can count as experience. This
may depend on the country you do it in. In the US, a MS+PhD could take a
while (5-8 years total). In that time, you have a lot of opportunities
to give talks about your work, and attend talks and interact with them.
Unfortunately, this may not be forced on you, and you'll have to put
some initiative into it. Also, if you're a TA, you interact with students.
For many companies, just that you have experience talking in public is
a _huge_ plus.
And all those people you meet (if you take the initiative) can be quite
handy in helping you find a job after PhD. They'll be people with
similar interests.
> 5. Presumably a PhD is a serious amount of hard work. It's not exactly a
> pleasure cruise. So I'd need a good reason to do one.
Meh. Depends. If you're dissertation topic interests you, you'll
voluntarily do the work anyway, and it won't be considered boring,
tedious work.
> 6. I rather doubt that you can get a PhD in "doing cool stuff".
> Presumably it must be something rather more specific than that.
True. That's what many in their first year do - they just keep looking
at all the options the department offers (i.e. the research areas of the
faculty), and use that time to decide what general area to work in. That
includes talking to professors and finding potential research topics.
I'll be honest, though. All research topics will sound really boring in
the beginning. You get over that and begin to enjoy it after you've been
working on it for about a year.
> 7. Where the hell am I going to do a PhD anyway?
Wherever you get accepted and funding is provided for?
--
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawaz org<<<<<<
anl
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>> 1. I am insufficiently intelligent to actually acheive a PhD. (I nearly
>> failed my BSc as it is!)
>
> You're doing a poor job of convincing us of this fact.
Having just discovered that I actually suck at Haskell, I think I'm the
one who needs convincing. :-S
> Trust me - some of my fellow colleagues had trouble with elementary
> calculus - and they were in a field that uses it a lot. And many can't
> handle some of the stuff you've been posting here.
I manage to look like I know what I'm doing with derivative calculus.
That doesn't mean I *actually* know what I'm doing. I mean, *I* think I
know, but maybe I'm wrong about this too?
>> 2. I have insufficient money. (I'm still paying for my BSc. Very slowly.)
>
> No one should have to pay for a PhD. Find funding options.
OK.
>> 3. I don't think I can spare the time. (I have a job to do, sucky as it
>> is.)
>
> In the US, if you have funding for a PhD, then you're paid to do one.
> And depending on the city, you can be quite comfortable with that income.
Heh. We'll see...
>> 4. It is *highly* unlikely that having a PhD will make any kind of
>> positive change to my employment situation. Nobody is impressed by a
>> BSc, and I doubt a PhD will be any different. Everybody wants
>> "experience" and/or "people skills".
>
> Actually, much of what you do in a PhD can count as experience.
I see.
> For many companies, just that you have experience talking in public is
> a _huge_ plus.
Heh. Last time I had to stand up and give a talk (to 3 people, mind you)
I almost threw up over the projector! o_O And only one of the people in
the room actually knew WTF I was actually talking about anyway. And he
already knew what I was going to say!
> And all those people you meet (if you take the initiative) can be quite
> handy in helping you find a job after PhD. They'll be people with
> similar interests.
I'm still trying to get back in touch with some of the lecturers from
uni. (Doesn't help that the place couldn't continue operating without me
and so immediately shut down once I left.)
>> 5. Presumably a PhD is a serious amount of hard work. It's not exactly a
>> pleasure cruise. So I'd need a good reason to do one.
>
> Meh. Depends. If you're dissertation topic interests you, you'll
> voluntarily do the work anyway, and it won't be considered boring,
> tedious work.
Well, it's not unknown for me to stay up until ridiculous times of night
just reading stuff because it's interesting. OTOH, I have a strong
tendance to not finish things, which I'm sure wouldn't be very helpful...
>> 6. I rather doubt that you can get a PhD in "doing cool stuff".
>> Presumably it must be something rather more specific than that.
>
> True. That's what many in their first year do - they just keep looking
> at all the options the department offers (i.e. the research areas of the
> faculty), and use that time to decide what general area to work in. That
> includes talking to professors and finding potential research topics.
>
> I'll be honest, though. All research topics will sound really boring in
> the beginning. You get over that and begin to enjoy it after you've been
> working on it for about a year.
Well, I've looked at the OU today. They're just down the road from me,
but unfortunately all their "computing" stuff is really social stuff -
what motivates programmers? What coding standards facilitate new team
members learning the codebase? What metrics can be used to monitor
programming projects? *yawn*
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On 20-2-2009 17:15, Invisible wrote:
>>> Ah, here we go: H2 is "0.08988 g/L". Apparently air itself is heavier
>>> than that.
>>>
>>> (You would, of course, *expect* air to be heavier than the lightest
>>> gas in the universe. But not thousands of times heavier...)
>>
>> Only seems like a factor of 10 difference to me. You do realise that
>> 1g/L is 1kg/m^3...
>
> Heh. I hadn't noticed that the mass unit was different as well as the
> volume unit. ;-)
>
> Even so, 10x higher still seems rather large. I would have expected
> something more like a few percent denser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro%27s_number
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On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:08:34 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>> I actually have no idea what you're talking about - although spending
>>> 3 years evaluating the intelligence of a half-mouldy cup of yogurt
>>> does seem like an amusing prospect. ;-)
>>
>> That could be your dissertation. :-D
>
> ...and now I'm thinking about the "Ode to a lump of putty I found in my
> left armpit". :-S
A most excellent poem. :-)
Jim
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>> Even so, 10x higher still seems rather large. I would have expected
>> something more like a few percent denser.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro%27s_number
There are 6.03 x 10^23 atoms in 12 grans of Carbon-12.
[A fact which our Java lecturer disputed. He was trying to claim that
the range of a single-precision float is "oh, more than the number of
atoms in the universe", and thus you don't really need double-precision.]
I'm not quite sure how that's relevant here though.
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>> ...and now I'm thinking about the "Ode to a lump of putty I found in my
>> left armpit". :-S
>
> A most excellent poem. :-)
It excells - but at *what*??
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On 20-2-2009 17:50, Invisible wrote:
>>> Even so, 10x higher still seems rather large. I would have expected
>>> something more like a few percent denser.
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro%27s_number
>
> There are 6.03 x 10^23 atoms in 12 grams of Carbon-12.
>
> [A fact which our Java lecturer disputed. He was trying to claim that
> the range of a single-precision float is "oh, more than the number of
> atoms in the universe", and thus you don't really need double-precision.]
One of the reasons why I am happy that I did not know of CS when I
started at uni. They started a year before and somehow that message did
not reach me in time, otherwise I might have studied CS. While studying
physics I did a few courses at the CS department and was invariably
struck by the quality of the lecturers. Did I tell the story of the
teacher that could not write down the equation for a straight line?
> I'm not quite sure how that's relevant here though.
The number of atoms in a given volume of gas at standard pressure is
constant, hence the weight of a volume of N2 is 7 times that of H2 and
O2 8 times. So why did you expect a few percent?
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Invisible wrote:
> Certainly all the stuff the OU is looking at seems to be socially based.
> "How can we make computers more cuddly?" I really don't give a fig.
Yeah. that one made me retch a bit. I prefer my computers stone-cold
and unfriendly. (But really cool looking)
OK, I like some ease of use, but NOT CUDDLY.
Maybe you could work toward one of the underlying technologies. Like a
system that recognizes body language and facial nuances. Then it could
be cuddly and a forensic tool.
>>> 8. Are you mental?
>>
>> Yes, yes I am.
>
> Ah, I'm glad we sorted that one out. :-)
LOL. Indeed...
--
~Mike
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>> [A fact which our Java lecturer disputed. He was trying to claim that
>> the range of a single-precision float is "oh, more than the number of
>> atoms in the universe", and thus you don't really need double-precision.]
>
> One of the reasons why I am happy that I did not know of CS when I
> started at uni. They started a year before and somehow that message did
> not reach me in time, otherwise I might have studied CS. While studying
> physics I did a few courses at the CS department and was invariably
> struck by the quality of the lecturers. Did I tell the story of the
> teacher that could not write down the equation for a straight line?
Heh. Well, I guess if what you happen to be doing doesn't involve that
equation, there's no particular reason to know it. But yeah, generally
neither the students nor the lecturers, frankly, knew what they were on
about. [With some notable exceptions.]
>> I'm not quite sure how that's relevant here though.
>
> The number of atoms in a given volume of gas at standard pressure is
> constant, hence the weight of a volume of N2 is 7 times that of H2 and
> O2 8 times. So why did you expect a few percent?
Because oxygen is only slightly further down the periodic table than
hydrogen? I would therefore imagine one atom of oxygen is not "that
much" heavier.
(I had also assumed that because they're slightly bigger, there'd be
slightly fewer of them per unit of volume...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
>> My wife is a teacher (elementary students) I seriously don't
>> understand how she keeps from going homicidal. She's a very patient
>> person.
>
> ...so she teaches Boron and Lithium who to do their ABCs?
Err, no... kids. like 5 and 6 year olds.
--
~Mike
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