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I'm a former physicist and I was expecting this article to make a different point (particularly because it's on HN). Physics education is heavily centered aroun

by foob 9y ago

I'm a former physicist and I was expecting this article to make a different point (particularly because it's on HN). Physics education is heavily centered around--well... physics--but the majority of what most physicists do on a daily basis is really software engineering, and most physicists are woefully unprepared for that. The majority of them are talented enough to figure a lot of it out as they go, but best practices like testing and code reviews were basically unheard of when I was in the field. I wasn't in a small laboratory experiment either, I'm talking about a large-scale collaboration that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involved thousands of people. A simple bug in someone's code could literally have a major impact on the field. Another comment asked whether universities are too focused on preparing people for academia rather than a job, but I honestly think that they're not even really focused properly on preparing them for academia. Teaching physics is a hard problem because there's a long and rich history of building upon previous advancements. You can't teach somebody quantum chromodynamics without first teaching them quantum electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, classical mechanics, and all of the mathematical methods that come along with these. It's hard to legitimately get anywhere close to the cutting edge in graduate school, let alone as an undergraduate. I hope that this has changed somewhat in the last decade, but most of the teaching methods in these subjects have historically been unchanged since the 70s. I strongly believe that it would be better preparation, for both academia and the real world, to integrate much more of an emphasis on simulation, visualization, and numerical methods into these requisite courses. These would be far more constructive for people developing skills that they simply can't get from doing problems on paper.

jessriedel 9y ago
> but the majority of what most physicists due on a daily basis is really software engineering Do you have a cite or explanation for this claim? Sure, particle physics is mostly software these days, but I don't think this is true for anywhere near a majority of physicists.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- foob 9y ago
  It's certainly also true for astronomy, quantum gravity, and most of the condensed matter physicists that I know. Which subfields don't involve at least Monte Carlo simulations or writing code to analyze data and/or control experimental apparatus?
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    My claim isn't that most physicist never write code, it's that most physicists spend most of their time not writing code. Analytical work dominates in high-energy theory, quantum information, mathematical physics, cosmology theory. I'll also dispute your characterization of quantum gravity with my own anecdotal experience. If we wanted to solve this, I think we'd just open up an issue of Physical Review and count whether more than half the papers are numerical. Outside big collaborations (e.g., particles, astronomy), my impression is that most experimental work is not writing code even though rudimentary code is of course needed for data analysis and equipment control. We're on a site for programers, so I think the former physicists who happen to be here are unrepresentative.
    - T-A 9y ago
      > Analytical work dominates in high-energy theory, quantum information, mathematical physics, cosmology theory. Yes, but most physicists are not theorists.
      - jessriedel 9y ago
        My comment doesn't assert or assume that.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        All true physicists are theorists, the others are engineers. ;oP
    - cozzyd 9y ago
      There are way more experimental physicists than theoretical physicists, and even theorists usually at least write Mathematica code...
- mmmBacon 9y ago
  Optical physicist here. I spend >80% of my time writing software and agree that I was woefully unprepared for this by my education. When I was a student the prevailing attitude that skills like programming were "trivial" and that formalized programming/computer science classes were unnecessary because it could be easily learned.
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    My comment doesn't address whether physicist who mostly write software are prepared to do it, it addresses the fraction of physicists who are doing this.
ll55tt 9y ago
It is interesting to see this analysis about the progress a student sees throughout their career since the situation is fairly analogous in mathematics. Although I make the more audacious claim that a "standard" pure mathematics educations (at least in the U.S.) is not even geared toward preparing students adequately for graduate school and this is somewhat intentional. Throughout the hundreds of conversations I've had with professors in my department they have routinely espoused the opinion that all of their students are lazy, stupid, and do not deserve anything resembling a quality lecture. Many of the classes taught are simply a regurgitation of proofs in some textbook on the board with absolutely no intuition, examples, etc. given. If someone asks a question in an attempt to clarify a point, or even ask for basic help, I've found extraordinary pushback from faculty members. Typically this is done through moralizing the value of hard work, but what they end up actually saying is "get the hell off of my lawn!". What's even more sad is many of the students hold the blind belief that the school will provide them with a quality education, but in reality the professors look to cut corners at every possible step. The students who then go on to accelerate their own education are generally looked down upon as well, unless of course they act as propaganda pieces as well and make sure not to go too far so that the professors don't look bad. It's a depressing situation which will only be remedied by figuring out how to democratize mathematics education completely. Unfortunately, I've only seen such efforts at extraordinarily high levels so that only beginning researchers who have been lucky enough to get advisors as a top 10 university will be able to readily access these materials.
- enord 9y ago
  You are paranoid.
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks aren't allowed here, regardless of how wrong someone's comment may be. Please don't do this again.
    - ll55tt 9y ago
      I'm interested to hear why you consider any of my opinions incorrect.
0x445442 9y ago
I started off as a Physics major in the 80s before switching to Mechanical Engineering. I was pretty far along in the Physics curriculum before making the switch and one of the most interesting things to me was the different approaches to the respective upper division Mechanics courses. The Physics version was the hardest course I experienced, spending hours coming up with closed form solutions. Rarely were any actual numbers used when solving these problems. On the M.E. side, once a sufficient set of equations were derived to model the problem we would use a computer to come up with a numerical solution that was close enough. The Physics course had no tests and consisted of roughly 30 problems we had our whole college career to complete. The M.E. course had tests where we were under time constraints to present a numerical answer. While the M.E. course was more "practical", the the I remember about the topic in general are retained from the Physics course. All that to say that I think there is a ton of value to a classic Physics curriculum but most of that value is indirect.
- arethuza 9y ago
  "30 problems we had our whole college career to complete" That sounds like a really interesting way of evaluating students - where was that?
  - 0x445442 9y ago
    This was at Cal. State Chico. However, it was not a department thing. It was a particular prof that ran the course this way. Other profs taught the same course in a more traditional manner.
kwhitefoot 9y ago
Please let's not reduce the amount of fundamental physics in a bachelor's degree. I have to work with people who have graduated relatively recently (recent to my graduation from Exeter Uni. in 1977 that is) and they often have a woefully inadequate grasp of the basics. This has a strong impact on their abilities as engineers later, in my field at least (transformers). They can learn to code after they have mastered basic EM, QM, and Newtonian mechanics.
neel_k 9y ago
> Teaching physics is a hard problem because there's a long and rich history of building upon previous advancements. You can't teach somebody quantum chromodynamics without first teaching them quantum electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, classical mechanics, and all of the mathematical methods that come along with these. I feel I was taught these things very inefficiently, though. Teaching tended to recapitulate the historical sequence in which the formalisms for each subject were developed, rather than developing the modern perspective from the outset. For example, Hamiltonians are typically taught in a final-year classical mechanics course (if they appear at all), but if they were taught early then statistical mechanics, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics would all be much easier. This even gives you a nice entry point to techniques for simulations via perturbative methods. I'm not a physicist, though, so maybe there is some deep underlying reason for the way the curriculum is set up.

by foob 9y ago

jessriedel 9y ago

> but the majority of what most physicists due on a daily basis is really software engineering Do you have a cite or explanation for this claim? Sure, particle physics is mostly software these days, but I don't think this is true for anywhere near a majority of physicists.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
foob 9y ago
It's certainly also true for astronomy, quantum gravity, and most of the condensed matter physicists that I know. Which subfields don't involve at least Monte Carlo simulations or writing code to analyze data and/or control experimental apparatus?
- jessriedel 9y ago
  My claim isn't that most physicist never write code, it's that most physicists spend most of their time not writing code. Analytical work dominates in high-energy theory, quantum information, mathematical physics, cosmology theory. I'll also dispute your characterization of quantum gravity with my own anecdotal experience. If we wanted to solve this, I think we'd just open up an issue of Physical Review and count whether more than half the papers are numerical. Outside big collaborations (e.g., particles, astronomy), my impression is that most experimental work is not writing code even though rudimentary code is of course needed for data analysis and equipment control. We're on a site for programers, so I think the former physicists who happen to be here are unrepresentative.
  - T-A 9y ago
    > Analytical work dominates in high-energy theory, quantum information, mathematical physics, cosmology theory. Yes, but most physicists are not theorists.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      My comment doesn't assert or assume that.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      All true physicists are theorists, the others are engineers. ;oP
  - cozzyd 9y ago
    There are way more experimental physicists than theoretical physicists, and even theorists usually at least write Mathematica code...
mmmBacon 9y ago
Optical physicist here. I spend >80% of my time writing software and agree that I was woefully unprepared for this by my education. When I was a student the prevailing attitude that skills like programming were "trivial" and that formalized programming/computer science classes were unnecessary because it could be easily learned.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  My comment doesn't address whether physicist who mostly write software are prepared to do it, it addresses the fraction of physicists who are doing this.

ll55tt 9y ago

It is interesting to see this analysis about the progress a student sees throughout their career since the situation is fairly analogous in mathematics. Although I make the more audacious claim that a "standard" pure mathematics educations (at least in the U.S.) is not even geared toward preparing students adequately for graduate school and this is somewhat intentional. Throughout the hundreds of conversations I've had with professors in my department they have routinely espoused the opinion that all of their students are lazy, stupid, and do not deserve anything resembling a quality lecture. Many of the classes taught are simply a regurgitation of proofs in some textbook on the board with absolutely no intuition, examples, etc. given. If someone asks a question in an attempt to clarify a point, or even ask for basic help, I've found extraordinary pushback from faculty members. Typically this is done through moralizing the value of hard work, but what they end up actually saying is "get the hell off of my lawn!". What's even more sad is many of the students hold the blind belief that the school will provide them with a quality education, but in reality the professors look to cut corners at every possible step. The students who then go on to accelerate their own education are generally looked down upon as well, unless of course they act as propaganda pieces as well and make sure not to go too far so that the professors don't look bad. It's a depressing situation which will only be remedied by figuring out how to democratize mathematics education completely. Unfortunately, I've only seen such efforts at extraordinarily high levels so that only beginning researchers who have been lucky enough to get advisors as a top 10 university will be able to readily access these materials.

enord 9y ago
You are paranoid.
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks aren't allowed here, regardless of how wrong someone's comment may be. Please don't do this again.
  - ll55tt 9y ago
    I'm interested to hear why you consider any of my opinions incorrect.

0x445442 9y ago

I started off as a Physics major in the 80s before switching to Mechanical Engineering. I was pretty far along in the Physics curriculum before making the switch and one of the most interesting things to me was the different approaches to the respective upper division Mechanics courses. The Physics version was the hardest course I experienced, spending hours coming up with closed form solutions. Rarely were any actual numbers used when solving these problems. On the M.E. side, once a sufficient set of equations were derived to model the problem we would use a computer to come up with a numerical solution that was close enough. The Physics course had no tests and consisted of roughly 30 problems we had our whole college career to complete. The M.E. course had tests where we were under time constraints to present a numerical answer. While the M.E. course was more "practical", the the I remember about the topic in general are retained from the Physics course. All that to say that I think there is a ton of value to a classic Physics curriculum but most of that value is indirect.

arethuza 9y ago
"30 problems we had our whole college career to complete" That sounds like a really interesting way of evaluating students - where was that?
- 0x445442 9y ago
  This was at Cal. State Chico. However, it was not a department thing. It was a particular prof that ran the course this way. Other profs taught the same course in a more traditional manner.

kwhitefoot 9y ago

Please let's not reduce the amount of fundamental physics in a bachelor's degree. I have to work with people who have graduated relatively recently (recent to my graduation from Exeter Uni. in 1977 that is) and they often have a woefully inadequate grasp of the basics. This has a strong impact on their abilities as engineers later, in my field at least (transformers). They can learn to code after they have mastered basic EM, QM, and Newtonian mechanics.

neel_k 9y ago

> Teaching physics is a hard problem because there's a long and rich history of building upon previous advancements. You can't teach somebody quantum chromodynamics without first teaching them quantum electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, classical mechanics, and all of the mathematical methods that come along with these. I feel I was taught these things very inefficiently, though. Teaching tended to recapitulate the historical sequence in which the formalisms for each subject were developed, rather than developing the modern perspective from the outset. For example, Hamiltonians are typically taught in a final-year classical mechanics course (if they appear at all), but if they were taught early then statistical mechanics, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics would all be much easier. This even gives you a nice entry point to techniques for simulations via perturbative methods. I'm not a physicist, though, so maybe there is some deep underlying reason for the way the curriculum is set up.