aardvarks

7 ms·

1.
by aardvarks 2y ago
When I was trying to choose a PhD supervisor one of the things I did was read through recent grads' acknowledgments. While no one ever mentioned their advisor with anything but gracious words, you could get a pretty good idea of what w
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by aardvarks 4y ago
It's true that professors rely on grad students/postdocs to do work. And, at least in my experience, advisors are actually pretty good about giving students credit for their work -- having successful students reflects well on the
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by aardvarks 5y ago
Just having the good new ideas isn't really enough, though. You have to be really persistent about figuring out all the details and making them work. This is related to, but definitely not the same as, being fascinated/obsessed by
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by aardvarks 6y ago
So I'm totally on board with everyone knowing something about the liberal arts and trying to expand your world outside your traditional scope. But I think "understanding" can mean just making connections within a single tech
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by aardvarks 6y ago
Nice article! I guess it's obvious in retrospect, but I hadn't known of all the systematized study devoted to this topic. I'm happy to learn about it because I've found myself thinking about effective teaching and learni
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by aardvarks 6y ago
Actually, even the first two tables comparing the frequency of 1,2,3,4,5,6 when obtained using primes vs. a fair die suggest that consecutive primes do not give a truly random (uncorrelated) way of choosing congruence classes mod 7. If I th
7.
by aardvarks 7y ago
He would sometimes eat lunch with us postdocs (just randomly, on a whim) when I was a postdoc at IAS. He would always have something interesting to say or ask, generally about science but often offbeat or unexpected -- you couldn't hel
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by aardvarks 7y ago
There is a parallel with one of pg's other essays, 'Why nerds are unpopular'[1]. He says (I paraphrase): 'nerds care more about being smart than being popular'. But that's another way of saying nerds think the
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Artist reimagining the UK’s national parks in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s maps(theverge.com)
5 points by aardvarks 9y ago|1 comments
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by aardvarks 10y ago
As of earlier today you could still follow links from WSJ social media, for example their official twitter feeds, and get access to the whole article. Any way to set that up as a link in HN?
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by aardvarks 10y ago
Rota was quite the celebrity, at least among students. In addition to advanced classes in his specialty, he taught differential equations, which was required for at least two thirds of undergraduates, so everyone knew him. Each semester he
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An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat)(mitadmissions.org)
163 points by aardvarks 10y ago|61 comments
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Mapping Sound on a National Scale(nature.nps.gov)
1 points by aardvarks 10y ago|0 comments
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by aardvarks 11y ago
That's a pretty good 3-sentence summary - reflects my experience as well. To expand a bit...it's not that nearly everyone doesn't start out super excited about their subjects and motivated by advancing human knowledge. It&#x2
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by aardvarks 11y ago
Agreed, it can sometimes be exhausting. But I think being kind is (to be rather mercenary) very practical also: I've found it is much easier to get people to listen to and go along with opinions stated kindly (it is also exhausting t
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by aardvarks 12y ago
What ivy league and other private research universities excel at academically is scholarly opportunities outside class assignments. This is actually true at any school. At large state schools, there are professors doing real research. The
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by aardvarks 12y ago
I'm an academic - have worked at a variety of institutions but never officially been at an ivy league school, so I can't strictly speaking claim ground truth. But my impressions are, sure, if your idea of the "education"