3 ms·
Why is alphabetical order great? It just only means that people with last names starting with z will get penalized every single time because of choosing wrong p
by sytelus 11y ago
Why is alphabetical order great? It just only means that people with last names starting with z will get penalized every single time because of choosing wrong parents! I would think randomized order would be chosen - especially if you were mathematician.
- infinii 11y ago"Choose" parents with a surname starting with A then.
- Swizec 11y agoYou can also legally change your last name to anything you want at any point in time. If you care enough. Or use a pseudonym.
- ant6n 11y agoMeet Mr. Aaberg.
- finance-geek 11y agoMr. Aaberg has nuthin' on Mr. Aaaron
- mcnawoh 11y agoInterestingly, with this sounding like a somewhat realistic Norwegian/Danish name, it should actually show up at the bottom by the sorting rules of those two languages. The digraph "aa" is an archaic representation of the modern character "å", the last letter of the Norwegian and Danish alphabets, and should be sorted accordingly.
- Steuard 11y agoWhy "penalized"? If there's no significance attached to author ordering, why should it matter who's listed first? (I can actually answer my own question to some degree: the "alphabetical authors" convention is also the norm in my own field of high energy physics. Only after I finally landed a tenure-track job and served on another search committee did I realize that folks from other fields of physics would see my lack of first-author publications as a black mark. But in principle, among those who know the convention, order ought to be unimportant, shouldn't it?)