9 ms·
Just so you don't get the impression every physicist is having a fabulous time, here's me: I have a bachelors in physics. I went for a phd in biology but had
by eightorbit 8y ago
Just so you don't get the impression every physicist is having a fabulous time, here's me:
I have a bachelors in physics. I went for a phd in biology but had to bail to work to support family, plus I can't seem to come up with original ideas.
I now have a job with physicist as part of the title, but what I really do is try to read bad handwriting from records from nuclear weapons plants. It's a dull job a monkey could do but it pays the bills. For years I worked as a computer guy for an academic department and that was fun and I'm trying to get back into it but nothing yet. I teach math at a community college for fun too.
I have great kids, so all and all I'm happy about things, but I am sad the physics thing never panned out. As an undergrad I was excited about chaos and nonlinear dynamics. Still read math texts for fun and play with Haskell.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago> I worked as a computer guy for an academic department and that was fun and I'm trying to get back into it Pick up a copy of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.
- BucketSort 8y agoSorry for the aside, but... Haskell gang represent!
- eightorbit 8y agoYo! As a further aside, I do get to do some fun graphics in R and I'm pretty impressed how R has become the statistical standard and graphics too, mainly I think from one super dynamic statistician. Now that R is entrenched I can work on moving everyone into Haskell!
- BucketSort 8y ago> I can work on moving everyone into Haskell! So pure and innocent. I've found that programmers are not too fond of having even a simple IO operation lead to discussions of category theory. Good luck in your noble lambda crusade :-). The future is functional! Hack the type systems!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bgibson 8y agoWould you have any interest in doing Haskell full-time? I know several well-funded companies looking for folks with similar backgrounds to yours, in SF, NYC, and London. Happy to connect you if you’re looking for something more interesting and possibly better pay.
- domlebo70 8y agoSorry to hijack the OP, but I am interested in companies in NYC doing Haskell. Would you mind sharing?
- bgibson 8y agoSure, the two I had in mind in NYC are Kadena (http://kadena.io http://kadena.io) and Jane St. (https://www.janestreet.com https://www.janestreet.com). Jane St. is more an OCaml shop but they like Haskell people. Kadena builds everything in Haskell.
- domlebo70 8y agoThanks. I know of these. I will apply.
- kriro 8y ago"""try to read bad handwriting from records from nuclear weapons plants. It's a dull job a monkey could do but it pays the bills.""" + """For years I worked as a computer guy for an academic department and that was fun and I'm trying to get back into it""" Sounds like you could enjoy automating your work. Learn a bit of Python and some Machine Learning/Deep Learning and digitize the handwriting and build a little program that reads the stuff for you. The default example for reading handwritten digits is called MNIST if you want to read further. I'd suggest fast.ai and watching the first couple of lessons. That should get you started to play around with this. You don't have to tell anyone that you do this (I probably wouldn't) but hey at least it might be a nice way to do a little less boring stuff and ease into a bit of programmin/data science?
- superhuzza 8y agoI would be very, very hesitant to to this. First of all, you definitely don't want any chance of incorrect recognition of handwriting coming from a nuclear weapons plant. Secondly, who knows what policies he might violate by using some unauthorized, untested software (whether OP is the author or not) with potentially sensitive information.
- fabiomaia 8y agoHe can use it such that the model's predictions are still manually verified by him before actually submitting them or whatever. Seems pretty harmless to me.
- throwaway2019Z 8y agoIn his current situation, if he zones out, he produces nothing. In the situation where he's aided by the potentially faulty described system, if he zones out, he produces erroneously transcribed data.
- fabiomaia 8y agoWhat? In his current situation, if he zones out, he can produce erroneously transcribed data too. What's your point?
- xingped 8y agoTo be entirely fair, people not educated in physics would likely have a very hard time at your job because we don't know the terminology or what makes sense for your field. If I tried to do what you do, I'd likely have no clue what half of the pigeon-scratch is because I flat out do not even know what the words or concepts are.
- eightorbit 8y agoThat's a fair point. Still, I feel I could take any of my students and in one month have them up to speed on what to look for and what things mean. And I don't mean to suggest that finding challenging work is any sort of failing of my employer. I have been able to diversify the position to include doing graphics in R and some stats things and, along with some other people, I think we can sell some sexy Bayesian things. They are very receptive of new ideas, but... it is not a growing industry (thankfully), so any sort of advance is going to be a jump to a different field. Which is possible, and I'm working on it. My point primarily is when you read these things about people doing all sorts of wonderful exciting things, you get the impression that what you have done or are doing is crap. Perhaps it's nice to hear that a lot of people do not set the world on fire. Takes a little pressure off.
- trentlott 8y agoI think you could swing some academic or national lab position if you put some time into it. Is there anything even tangentially related to your dayjob that you could mine for ideas? Or maybe take some time to come up with some research direction? A places like Oak Ridge could have something interesting available.
- Infernal 8y agoJust a hunch - are you in the southeast US?
- eightorbit 8y agoNortheast, although I do have to travel to the SE now and then.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- andrepd 8y ago>As an undergrad I was excited about chaos and nonlinear dynamics. I, too, read the Strogatz book :^).
- eightorbit 8y ago:) That's a good one, Devaney was more my era!
- perfect_wave 8y agoDevaney was my advisor's advisor when he did he his PhD at BU. I took a course on discrete dynamics and chaos and wrote my senior year thesis on bifurcation diagrams. We used this textbook by Devaney: https://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Chaotic-Dynamical-Systems/dp/0201554062 https://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Chaotic-Dynamical-System... Was absolutely fascinated by the class. One of my favorites from undergrad.
- eightorbit 8y agoI had his Chaotic Dynamical Systems book checked out from the library for years and carried it everywhere. I should find a copy, what a great book! I wonder if there's a good sort of "postmortem" on what happened to NLD and Chaos. It seems like everyone said, "Ok, that's a thing and it explains a lot but we can't do anything with it."
- cmehdy 8y agoNonlinear systems by Hassan K. Khalil (ISBN 978-0130673893) is also worth it to solidify the underlying maths!
- sanarothe 8y agoI'm a recent engineering grad working in medical quality, and it's a world away from the design work I fell in love with in school and even from the test work in internship. But something Dave Jones of EEVBlog has said is that if you can get your design satisfaction outside of work, then work can just be what it is. I'm sure how much of the physics you love can be done on your own time... Seems like the kind of field you need collaborators and CapEx but it's making me feel better about being paid to essentially check the work of others against regulation and sign off on it.
- mpsanders 8y ago* "All, in all"