6 ms·

Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - Manuel Blum (CMU)

56 points by chromophore 17y ago

TriinT 17y ago
I used to love to read these essays on how to be a good and productive grad student... until I came to grad school. Same with phdcomics.
- chromophore 17y ago
  LOL "TriinT" I know what you mean. :) I think I'll keep reading PHD comics, just because it's really funny. I don't relate it to grad-school as such. Just the whole exaggerated sense it is written in.
- Maro 17y ago
  phdcomics is funny, but not if you're phd student =)
  - pierrefar 17y ago
    They're still funny even years after I finished my PhD :)
    - Maro 17y ago
      But were they funny when you were doing it? I mean they're funny, but they're so negative I don't like to read them. At one point another PhD student printed out and put up one of them (it was the one which had a time plot about how you get more and more demotivated over time), and I actually took it down.
      - yters 17y ago
        I read them all the time during grad school, as a form of procrastination.
      - swolchok 17y ago
        One of my fellow grad students related a tale in which he was his advisor was telling him to work on something and he wanted to know whether his advisor was going to help. His advisor's reply: "Let me consult Ph.D. Comics." (Said advisor has a sense of humor.)
jmtame 17y ago
Advice to a beginning graduate student: do a start up instead ;)
- Ardit20 17y ago
  Why?
  - jmtame 17y ago
    why not?
    - Ardit20 17y ago
      Well, perhaps because some might be more interested in say digging in Egypt to undercover archaeological sites, or maybe they interested in being a doctor, or perhaps a lawyer, or maybe they would rather do research on how they can make machines think, or a million of other things which have not much to do with starting your own business, to start with anyway. So will you now tell me why they should start a business instead?
      - mechanical_fish 17y ago
        Because it will take you years and years of effort just to get the advanced degree that will enable you to try many of these lines of work, [1] at which point you may discover that you don't especially like them. I can tell you about this experience at great length if you really want. ;) (Dabbling in medicine or law is particularly expensive, because... it's expensive. You have to go into massive debt, on top of your potentially massive college debt, before you figure out that medicine or law can be a really miserable line of work. At least I didn't do that -- my years of career trial-and-error were cash-flow positive, though I didn't exactly live like a prince on my grad-student and postdoc salaries...) Meanwhile, you don't have to do years and years of academic hoop-jumping before learning whether or not you'd enjoy starting a business, or working at a startup. (Or working at a big company, for that matter.) You can learn a lot just by trying it. You don't even have to wait for graduation. --- [1] Beware: You may think that you can learn whether you'd enjoy (e.g.) archaeology by volunteering to help on a dig, or by being a grad student in archaeology. And that is a good idea. But enjoying life as a grad student or intern is not the same as enjoying a career in a given field. In many fields, professors spend most of their time raising money, managing people, playing political games, and writing papers and proposals, not digging holes, performing calculations, or building neat stuff in the lab.
anatoly 17y ago
There's a lot of filler in there, but one advice that I found interesting was to write right back what you're reading (I take it to refer to technical material and not exposition - e.g. proofs and definitions). Anyone has any experience with trying that? (I've tried this with math books before, but it always felt too tedious to keep up. But I suspect I may have tried to hard, going for a nicely formatted shortened exposition of the entire material; I didn't try to simply jot proofs and formulas down as I was reading them).
- physcab 17y ago
  Yeah this is something I do frequently. I discovered it while studying for my qualifying exam. When I first took the exam, I failed using the same study methods I used in undergrad. I realized the scope of information I had to know was much too broad to be able cram or understand through past homework problems. So as I went through my study materials I wrote down the material after reading in designated sections, keeping the summaries to just one page. Then during further review I used these pages of notes. The second time I took the exam I got 100%.
  - JimmyL 17y ago
    When I would study for exams, I found the process of writing notes would be almost more useful than the process of reviewing them. The process of writing notes made me boil the concepts down into more discrete forms, and the physical action of writing helped with the memorization. A few days before an exam, I would often find myself re-reading my old notes and condensing them down into briefer notes, eliminating full explanations of concepts in favor of keywords or mental links to the full note sets. The net result was that when I was in my exams, I would find myself mentally looking at my notes, and finding a formula or something would just be a matter of 'reading' them.
  - yters 17y ago
    When I went to grammar school in England, many of the other students seemed to do this.
- gintas 17y ago
bowman 17y ago
"Scrolls must be read like the Torah from one end to the other." - Associating Islam with being outdated can be good for your demographic I guess.
- chumsley 17y ago
  Er... what? Are you perhaps confusing the Torah (Jewish scripture) with the Koran (Islamic scripture)?
simplegeek 17y ago
When I was a kid, my father (an EE guy) used to tell me the importance of writing while reading. I mostly ignored that in my career and now a very smart person(Manuel Blum) has validated it. I hope there aren't many things (as told by my father) that I would want other smart people to validate ;(
modelic3 17y ago
This is actually quite good advice. It's not overly preachy and it's not overly poetic.
yters 17y ago
Did not realize this: "the median of n integers can be found with just O(n) comparisons." Must figure this out!
- sparky 17y ago
  There are a couple linear-time selection algorithms, some randomized and some not. An example of the latter is described here ( http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960130.html http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960130.html ). The constant factor is non-trivial here (<= 24n comparisons for this one) but for large datasets it will eventually be faster than sorting.
pkrumins 17y ago
I found this article extremely insightful and decided to prepare it for the print so that I could read it more carefully and add some notes on the margins. While I was doing it, I realized how awfully true was the fact that science people _can't_ write. No disrespect to Mr. Blum, but really, what is going on with the writing in this article? New line every several words, unconsistent emphasis, various writing styles, quick abbreviations in some places, but not in others, inconsistent division in paragraphs, several misspellings.

56 points by chromophore 17y ago

I used to love to read these essays on how to be a good and productive grad student... until I came to grad school. Same with phdcomics.

chromophore 17y ago
LOL "TriinT" I know what you mean. :) I think I'll keep reading PHD comics, just because it's really funny. I don't relate it to grad-school as such. Just the whole exaggerated sense it is written in.
Maro 17y ago
phdcomics is funny, but not if you're phd student =)
- pierrefar 17y ago
  They're still funny even years after I finished my PhD :)
  - Maro 17y ago
    But were they funny when you were doing it? I mean they're funny, but they're so negative I don't like to read them. At one point another PhD student printed out and put up one of them (it was the one which had a time plot about how you get more and more demotivated over time), and I actually took it down.
    - yters 17y ago
      I read them all the time during grad school, as a form of procrastination.
    - swolchok 17y ago
      One of my fellow grad students related a tale in which he was his advisor was telling him to work on something and he wanted to know whether his advisor was going to help. His advisor's reply: "Let me consult Ph.D. Comics." (Said advisor has a sense of humor.)

jmtame 17y ago

Advice to a beginning graduate student: do a start up instead ;)

Ardit20 17y ago
Why?
- jmtame 17y ago
  why not?
  - Ardit20 17y ago
    Well, perhaps because some might be more interested in say digging in Egypt to undercover archaeological sites, or maybe they interested in being a doctor, or perhaps a lawyer, or maybe they would rather do research on how they can make machines think, or a million of other things which have not much to do with starting your own business, to start with anyway. So will you now tell me why they should start a business instead?
    - mechanical_fish 17y ago
      Because it will take you years and years of effort just to get the advanced degree that will enable you to try many of these lines of work, [1] at which point you may discover that you don't especially like them. I can tell you about this experience at great length if you really want. ;) (Dabbling in medicine or law is particularly expensive, because... it's expensive. You have to go into massive debt, on top of your potentially massive college debt, before you figure out that medicine or law can be a really miserable line of work. At least I didn't do that -- my years of career trial-and-error were cash-flow positive, though I didn't exactly live like a prince on my grad-student and postdoc salaries...) Meanwhile, you don't have to do years and years of academic hoop-jumping before learning whether or not you'd enjoy starting a business, or working at a startup. (Or working at a big company, for that matter.) You can learn a lot just by trying it. You don't even have to wait for graduation. --- [1] Beware: You may think that you can learn whether you'd enjoy (e.g.) archaeology by volunteering to help on a dig, or by being a grad student in archaeology. And that is a good idea. But enjoying life as a grad student or intern is not the same as enjoying a career in a given field. In many fields, professors spend most of their time raising money, managing people, playing political games, and writing papers and proposals, not digging holes, performing calculations, or building neat stuff in the lab.

anatoly 17y ago

There's a lot of filler in there, but one advice that I found interesting was to write right back what you're reading (I take it to refer to technical material and not exposition - e.g. proofs and definitions). Anyone has any experience with trying that? (I've tried this with math books before, but it always felt too tedious to keep up. But I suspect I may have tried to hard, going for a nicely formatted shortened exposition of the entire material; I didn't try to simply jot proofs and formulas down as I was reading them).

physcab 17y ago
Yeah this is something I do frequently. I discovered it while studying for my qualifying exam. When I first took the exam, I failed using the same study methods I used in undergrad. I realized the scope of information I had to know was much too broad to be able cram or understand through past homework problems. So as I went through my study materials I wrote down the material after reading in designated sections, keeping the summaries to just one page. Then during further review I used these pages of notes. The second time I took the exam I got 100%.
- JimmyL 17y ago
  When I would study for exams, I found the process of writing notes would be almost more useful than the process of reviewing them. The process of writing notes made me boil the concepts down into more discrete forms, and the physical action of writing helped with the memorization. A few days before an exam, I would often find myself re-reading my old notes and condensing them down into briefer notes, eliminating full explanations of concepts in favor of keywords or mental links to the full note sets. The net result was that when I was in my exams, I would find myself mentally looking at my notes, and finding a formula or something would just be a matter of 'reading' them.
- yters 17y ago
  When I went to grammar school in England, many of the other students seemed to do this.
gintas 17y ago

bowman 17y ago

"Scrolls must be read like the Torah from one end to the other." - Associating Islam with being outdated can be good for your demographic I guess.

chumsley 17y ago
Er... what? Are you perhaps confusing the Torah (Jewish scripture) with the Koran (Islamic scripture)?

simplegeek 17y ago

When I was a kid, my father (an EE guy) used to tell me the importance of writing while reading. I mostly ignored that in my career and now a very smart person(Manuel Blum) has validated it. I hope there aren't many things (as told by my father) that I would want other smart people to validate ;(

modelic3 17y ago

This is actually quite good advice. It's not overly preachy and it's not overly poetic.

yters 17y ago

Did not realize this: "the median of n integers can be found with just O(n) comparisons." Must figure this out!

sparky 17y ago
There are a couple linear-time selection algorithms, some randomized and some not. An example of the latter is described here ( http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960130.html http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960130.html ). The constant factor is non-trivial here (<= 24n comparisons for this one) but for large datasets it will eventually be faster than sorting.

pkrumins 17y ago

I found this article extremely insightful and decided to prepare it for the print so that I could read it more carefully and add some notes on the margins. While I was doing it, I realized how awfully true was the fact that science people _can't_ write. No disrespect to Mr. Blum, but really, what is going on with the writing in this article? New line every several words, unconsistent emphasis, various writing styles, quick abbreviations in some places, but not in others, inconsistent division in paragraphs, several misspellings.