>> My mum wanted me to do a PhD. I have no idea why. As best as I can tell
>> from reading Stack Overflow, if you have a PhD then you are basically
>> over-qualified for 99% of all employment opportunities ever, and you'll
>> never be able to work outside academia ever again.
>
> Maybe Mother knows best. :-)

I doubt it. :-P

As I say, it seems to just preclude you ever getting employed, ever again.

> Going from your mathematical ramblings. I think that you would be
> eminently suitable to do a PhD at a good university. Not one of those
> who were ennobled, just to take the overflow from schools. When
> politicians decided it would keep them off the dole for another three
> years.

Fun fact: They stopped giving out university grants just a year or two 
before I started university. I AM STILL PAYING FOR MY TUITION! More than 
a decade later... *sigh*

>> Still, at least he could speak English. Many of my lecturers couldn't
>> (or at least not very well). Seriously, if your JOB is to teach people
>> who only speak English, not being able to speak English is surely an
>> instant disqualification. No?!?
>
> It would be at a a school. Universities are different, they employ
> lecturers for what they know and publish. Their world and ours touch but
> occasionally.

Favourite anecdote: So we're in a Network Systems lecture, and the 
lecturer writes the Shannon channel coding theorem on the board. [That's 
the same Shannon who invented Shannon codes, so we're drifting back 
on-topic now...] The formula states that the maximum data-rate over a 
noisy channel is given by

   C = B log2 (1 + S/N)

And everybody is like "ZOMG! WTF is a logarithm?!" And the lecturer is 
like "oh, really? I'm sorry, I just assumed that THIRD-YEAR 
UNDERGRADUATES would already know that".

So it turns out that only two people in the room actually know what a 
logarithm is. Obviously one of them is me. And the other one... is the 
crazy beer-drinking rugby thug from Manchester. o_O And I'm serious; he 
actually knows what he's talking about. First and last time I ever heard 
him say something sensible...

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