Are physicists looked down upon if

[chroot]

I got to say, mathwonk, that I disagree with your methods.

First, students expect textbooks to be correct, at least in the pages or sections the instructor has them use for reference. It's not really fair to expect a student to be able to find mistakes in his own textbook, as he's learning the material. He's going to presume that his instructor has read that section, and given it his blessing.

Second, students are generally rewarded for doing their reading and finding a simple and elegant way to solve a problem. You complain pretty much constantly about how your students are stupid and don't read or try to really understand the material. You complain about how they just try to do the grunt work and get a good grade, and don't care about depth. Now you're insulting the poor kid for trying to do exactly what you claim to want him to do, even if he (gasp) didn't catch an error in his textbook in the process.

I think everyone else is right: your posts are absolutely full of contradictions and illogical conclusions. I, for one, would be appalled to have you teaching anyone I know.

- Warren

 

[mathwonk]

I did not intend to trick them. i told them exactly how to proceed so as to discover the error. I asked them to carry out several explicit steps, then i asked what do you notice? I expected them to do what I said and find the error, and be amused by it. I was surprized when my student avoided doing what I told him to do.

I was impressed by his cleverness but puzzled that he thought it unnecessary to follow my directions. I wanted them to have the pleasure of discovering an error in a famous book by a world expert.

toelarn to be a researcher you cannot afford to assume anything is correct. you need to learn to verify things for yourself. You also need to learn that your own professor is often more reliable than your textbook. that is another thing that puzzles me. When students assume the textbook author is more authoritative than the professor.

but nothing is as reliable as checking it yourself.

but maybe it was a bad idea.

 

[Cyrus]

But typically texbooks are supposed to be reviewed by two to three pages of lists of professors from other universities for consistency. Open the cover of your book, and you will see the list I am talking about.

 

[mathwonk]

In math at least, there are several levels of textbooks. the best are written by real experts, and those books are the best ones for the best students.

Nowadays these books are only used at the top schools, and even those do not always use them. Student preparation has deteriorated the level where those books are considered too hard.

the next level of textbooks are written by average mathematics professors at colleges and universities, not the most famous, since those have no time for textbook writing, with rare exceptions. Some of these authors are no longer doing research.

Thus at many universities, they use books which are written by people who are no more expert than the research professors teaching the courses, often less so.

Even at harvard, they often use books written by people who are much less expert than essentially all the professors teaching there.

The courses are taught by active researchers, people who are often more active than the authors of the books they are obliged to use. These elementary books do often have review committees of professors of various levels of expertise, often not outstanding, written in the front.

Those reviewers are usually chosen to review the book for suitability for teaching to ordinary classes. the more profesors who say "yes my students can use this book profitably", the more likely the publisher is to make money. Even if they also review for mistakes they seldom catch them all.

More advanced books usually do not have these lists of names, and are not reviewed in the same way.

The book i was discussing was the classic work "Algebraic Curves" by Robert J Walker, republished by Dover, from the Princeton University press edition. the error is on page 74, section 7.1.

When a famous expert like this writes a book, it is rare to find any list of reviewers in the front, and indeed this book does not have any. I am nowhere near the expert Dr Walker was, nonetheless I noticed the error.

I would not expect a student to discover this error alone, (largely because stusents are in the habit of blindly believing what books say) and that is why I designed a set of exercises which, if worked as assigned, and without assuming anything not stated in the exercise, would reveal the error.

I assumed a diligent student would be willing to go through the computations needed to verify for himself the result that our formulas predicted.

The kicker was that the result of the computation contradicted the prediction of our formulas, and should have caused some puzzlement for the student.

(In the exercise I did not say the equation was irreducible, since it wasn't. The error was in the book, not in my exercise. There was no need to read the book to do my exercise. If one decided to skip the steps I gave and use the books false statements instead, that's when one got the wrong answer.

In a later post in the who wants to be a mathematician thread, I will give an other such exercise for the curious; fair warning to those who are appalled by questions which are not trivial or obvious, and require thought.

 

[chroot]

You also need to learn that your own professor is often more reliable than your textbook... I am nowhere near the expert Dr Walker was

Another inconsistency to add to the list: If you freely admit that you're nowhere near the expert who wrote the book, why do you get incensed that your students would be more likely to trust the book than you, the dope who got kicked out of undergraduate school?

It seems to me that you have a pathological desire to hold your students to standards that you yourself never met.

- Warren

 

[G01]

Ahh Morphism, I see I see. But still if he didn't do 35% of the work and only got a 65% then shouldn't that still be an F? I guess it depends on the school and the professor.

 

[mathwonk]

lets see, I'm a dope, pathological,... .

Why do i threaten you so much Warren? Or are you just off your anger management medication?

 

[TMFKAN64]

Look, if the kid's a genius, getting an F because he didn't do the homework doesn't really matter. If he's not a genius, someday, an employer is going to ask him to do something that isn't terribly interesting but nevertheless needs to be done. It's better to weed out those unwilling to follow instructions sooner rather than later.

 

[TMFKAN64]

I blame the holidays for making everyone insane.

 

[imastud]

as a physics student, i can say that i personally have put my grades ahead of my understanding of the material all throughout school. you can always go back and learn the material later, but you only have one chance to get a good grade.

also, why would a prof think higher of a B or C student that came up with a "creative solution" to a problem, over an A student who did it the conventional way? sure they may have more talent, but they can't even meet the requirements of the class.

 

[TMFKAN64]

why would a prof think higher of a B or C student that came up with a "creative solution" to a problem, over an A student who did it the conventional way? sure they may have more talent, but they can't even meet the requirements of the class.

There is a big difference between a potential research scientist and a potential engineer.

(And I say that as an engineer... )

 

[SticksandStones]

also, why would a prof think higher of a B or C student that came up with a "creative solution" to a problem, over an A student who did it the conventional way? sure they may have more talent, but they can't even meet the requirements of the class.

Because a creative solution may be better than the conventional way?

Why do we need an assembly line when the conventional method has worked fine for hundreds of years? Why have a printing press when a scribe can copy it fine?

Anybody can replicate the steps already proven to work, it takes talent to discover something on one's own.

 

[mathwonk]

lets see. i think i do see a better way to ask my exercise next time though. I could ask them to use the remarks in the book, and the formula used by the clever kid, to do the deduction first. Then I could ask them next to check the result manually by computing the analysis of the individual singularities, and compare the answers.

That way they would get the same surprize, but a kid who thought it useless to redo the computation by hand would still miss the point.

its just hard to read a students mind when assigning a problem. you don't say to yourself, well this kid thinks he's smarter than i am, so he's going to ignore what i said to do and do something entirely different, so i need to figure out a way to prevent that. you just take it for granted they will do what you asked.

And its not just holidays. I have noticed over many years, that no one ever agrees about how instruction should be carried out, at least not when discussing it abstractly. and the disagreements get very heated.

however when they actually go in the room and observe an instructor they almost always agree he was doing a good job. they just don't agree with the way he describes what he does.

merry xmas all, you too warren.

 

[SticksandStones]

How could the clever kid even know if his method worked correctly if he didn't test it against the conventional method?

Seems rather stupid to say "Well, I did it my way but I have no way to see whether or not I did it correctly."

 

[chroot]

Why do i threaten you so much Warren? Or are you just off your anger management medication?

You don't threaten me. It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor. It's even more disgusting for that professor to turn out to be impossibly arrogant, despite his own incredible failure, and to constantly belittle his students for not doing what he himself never could. You're a piece of work. I hope your students know your history, so they can take all your advice with the grain of salt it deserves.

- Warren

 

[imastud]

Because a creative solution may be better than the conventional way?

Why do we need an assembly line when the conventional method has worked fine for hundreds of years? Why have a printing press when a scribe can copy it fine?

Anybody can replicate the steps already proven to work, it takes talent to discover something on one's own.

haha yeah i know, i just hate how profs at my school coddle these clowns who do no work and get marginal grades because they are smarter. just bitterness i guess.

 

[imastud]

You don't threaten me. It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor. It's even more disgusting for that professor to turn out to be impossibly arrogant, despite his own incredible failure, and to constantly belittle his students for not doing what he himself never could. You're a piece of work. I hope your students know your history, so they can take all your advice with the grain of salt it deserves.

- Warren

dude you shouln't judge somebody on something that happened years ago. people can change. you got to have faith!

 

[chroot]

dude you shouln't judge somebody on something that happened years ago. people can change. you got to have faith!

I'm judging him on the attitudes he has towards his students today.

- Warren

 

[SticksandStones]

You don't threaten me. It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor.

That doesn't make any sense at all.

People change. They learn, they grow, they develop. Why should someone who failed as an undergrad not be able to make a comeback and become a professor?

 

[Quaoar]

I'm judging him on the attitudes he has towards his students today.

It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor.

Seems like your judging him on more than just his current attitude...

 

[morphism]

Seriously, chroot, these personal attacks are uncalled for. Simply because someone had a mishap at one point during their life doesn't mean they should crawl up and vanish. Actually, the very fact that mathwonk eventually succeeded despite that failure is to be admired.

 

[Knavish]

I agree that remark was senseless. What matters is that he knows the concepts today. In fact, this is what mathwonk has been trying to emphasize all along: The paramount goal for all students should be to gain understanding. That perhaps mathwonk himself did not know this as a student and learned it only later on does not make him a hypocrite, nor does it bring any irony into what he is saying.

 

[chroot]

People change. They learn, they grow, they develop. Why should someone who failed as an undergrad not be able to make a comeback and become a professor?

Do you really want someone who hadn't the brains or the work ethic to survive freshman year to come back thirty years later and demand things of his students that he could never, in a million years, have delivered himself?

- Warren

 

[morphism]

So by becoming a professor, he hasn't delivered?

 

[chroot]

So by becoming a professor, he hasn't delivered?

He certainly didn't deliver when he was his students' age.

- Warren

 

[CPL.Luke]

so he got better, he certainly did deliver in a big way when he went back to school, and so he does know what is required to be a successful student and a successful mathematician. so his previous failure says nothing about his abilities, or his knowledge of what a student goes through.

 

[fourier jr]

He certainly didn't deliver when he was his students' age.

- Warren

why does that matter RIGHT NOW? you & cyrus don't seem to be capable of understanding that there might be people who are different from yourselves, and that people might have different ways of measuring success. sure gpa matters but if someone doesn't say anything interesting, then it doesn't make much difference to me if they have a high gpa or not. someone like mathwonk might actually be more helpful as an instructor because of having trouble as a student. imho someone who coasted through school as a student is much more likely to have the view that the students who don't do very well are simply stupid &/or lazy & nothing more.

 

[TMFKAN64]

I think my favorite part of this thread is that it started with the phrase "I was just curious."

There is probably a lesson in there, somewhere...

 

[Cyrus]

To be clear, I am by no means saying anything contradictory to what Mathwonk is saying. Every summer I go back and review material and learn new material on my own. This is of paramount importance, to be sure.

BUT my difference is that you have to do this in addition to getting good grades. I have never said, (though most people in here are implying I said), that it is ok to get the grades and not know what your doing. I don't care how you learn, what school you go to, or any other particulars. If you go to a school that does not require things from you like HW in order to pass, it stinks. Good schools are not places where you just sit through great lectures and take exams. Good schools give you lots of work to keep you busy in the process. Now, if you want to moan and groan about this because your lazy, well then I simply DONT CARE. Like I said before, I am glad I don't go to your school if that's the case.

 

[Quaoar]

To be clear, I am by no means saying anything contradictory to what Mathwonk is saying. Every summer I go back and review material and learn new material on my own. This is of paramount importance, to be sure.

BUT my difference is that you have to do this in addition to getting good grades. I have never said, (though most people in here are implying I said), that it is ok to get the grades and not know what your doing. I don't care how you learn, what school you go to, or any other particulars. If you go to a school that does not require things from you like HW in order to pass, it stinks. Good schools are not places where you just sit through great lectures and take exams. Good schools give you lots of work to keep you busy in the process. Now, if you want to moan and groan about this because your lazy, well then I simply DONT CARE. Like I said before, I am glad I don't go to your school if that's the case.

Then I feel sad for all the great classes you're missing out on. Clearly this is upsetting you, and this thread is getting out of hand so...cheers!

 

[^_^physicist]

cyrusabdollahi: I am sick and tired of hearing the: Your school sucks, crap everytime you talk on this thread.

I have met many a professor, from multiple universities and colleges, that feel that assigning HW at this level is pointless. They frankly don't see a point in trying to force a student to learn the material by forcing them to repeat the same type of problem over an over again. To them if the student wants to understand what is going on in class it is time that student got cut-off from the emblical cord of the mindset of high school and has to figure it out for themselves. You sound like you need to have homework assigned or you would never get it.

And then you say that you go over the stuff later to compensate and build up your understanding further. What you should have happend, should have been that the professor gave you a set of recommended homework problems from the text, or something they made up out of thin air, that they feel really exposes you to the material and forces you to expand your thinking process out of the standard "solve this problem this way, then solve this one this way."

Being given multiple amount of HW assignments stops in Jr. High or High School. College is the student's responsiblity, not the professor's. If the student doesn't want to understand the material being discussed at the level the professor expects, then that student is going to do as many problems in his text as he can find, and possibly send the professor a nice e-mail requesting some help understanding the topic. If the student understands the material, he/she should not be punished for it by the HW of the week.

 

[Cyrus]

They frankly don't see a point in trying to force a student to learn the material by forcing them to repeat the same type of problem over an over again.

Did I ever say anything about doing the same problem over and over again?

You sound like you need to have homework assigned or you would never get it.

Did I ever say that?

And then you say that you go over the stuff later to compensate and build up your understanding further.

When did I say compensate?

What you should have happend, should have been that the professor gave you a set of recommended homework problems from the text, or something they made up out of thin air, that they feel really exposes you to the material and forces you to expand your thinking process out of the standard "solve this problem this way, then solve this one this way."

Jesus christ. Now you know what kind of homework problems I get assigned?

Stop putting words into my mouth that I did not say, and learn how to read. You clearly don't know how.

 

[George Jones]

It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor

Which emoticon: maybe , or , but probably works best.

Mathwonk - will you be teaching in Canada in 18 years or thereabouts. If so, I hope you teach my baby daughter.

 

[jbusc]

I don't care how you learn, what school you go to, or any other particulars. If you go to a school that does not require things from you like HW in order to pass, it stinks. Good schools are not places where you just sit through great lectures and take exams.

Total BS. I've taken classes where there was no homework to turn in. Instead, the professors use the socratic method. I challenge anyone to claim that's any easier than a class with mounds of homework, or that you learn any less.

Good schools give you lots of work to keep you busy in the process.

More BS. If that's the case, you don't attend a university, you attend expensive daycare.

There are some classes (particularly in physics) where the problems are so long and involved that it would be ridiculous to assign them with a time limit, on an exam or such - those are great HW problems. Otherwise, HW is usually provided as a way to:

1. give suggested study problems to students, with some token points attached to them to encourage people to work them
2. give students who may not perform as well on the exams an opportunity to raise their grades by working hard on the HW's

I have never, ever met a professor who assigned work for the express reason of keeping students "busy" - especially in engineering, that's a very cruel and unfair thing to do.

 

[Cyrus]

Boy, I have never met so many people afraid to do a hard days worth of work in my life. Sad.

 

[jbusc]

If you're not responsible enough to do the hours of self-studying required for a class on your own (without inducement from homework) you're never going to survive in grad school anyway.

Besides, did you even read what I wrote? Socratic method? Meaning you have to do the readings and learn the material before each lecture?

 

[Cyrus]

Really, is that a fact jbusc? So you know how much I study. Did you even read my last post about self study? Do you choose to read whatever you feel like?

This is pathetic. People, STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH.

 

[jbusc]

Well, I meant "you" as a generic, I wasn't referring specifically to you cyrusabdollahi, but rather any random person who would only do work if assigned.

I didn't put any words in your mouth. You stated that a good school would always keep students busy with a lot of homework, and that a school would "stink" if it didn't, and I took issue with that.

 

[verty]

All I ask of a professor is that they think about everything that goes on. I don't mind what happened to someone in the past; so what if he flunked out years ago? He got there in the end and that's fine as far as it goes.

But I expect a professor to always think and puzzle out any situation that arises. If a problem states that some given polynomial is everywhere irreducible, the student should be able to use that fact as they see fit. They should not be expected to check it because it was given.

To be disappointed because a student accepted what was given certainly seems odd. However we don't know what was said so can't really judge it.

Concerning homework, it is a simple fact that homework doesn't serve a clear purpose beyond illustrating principles. Not everyone is the same, so not everyone's homework should be the same. When the same homework is assigned regardless, obviously not everyone will do the homework.

It's not so much laziness but a loathing of inefficiency. Independent thinkers are not going to want to spend a large amount of time doing redundant work simply on the say so of someone else. Such people don't do what they're told, they do what they suppose they should do, and if they don't suppose they should do it, they don't.

These people are out there and I think we should realize that and cater to them. Some are happy to be told what to do but others want to understand the reason why. If you aren't going to clue them in, they aren't going to be motivated. Insulting such people by calling them lazy only shows you don't properly understand the situation.

Perhaps you think that part of the aim of education should be to condition these people to do what they're told but I don't think that will work. I also don't think draconian measures like having the homework count for a large part of the marks is the right approach. Such people will only do as much as they require.

In a sense, you can only tell people what to do but not how to do it. You can tell them what you require, but how they go about that will always be up to them, so I think the task for the educator is two-fold: to set requirements but moreover to justify those requirements, to give them the why of the matter.

Unfortunately, if the justification is missing, some proportion of people will not be motivated, and setting stricter requirements will not suffice for a lack of justification. The nail in the coffin is when a lecturer or professor tries to assert their authority, resorting to demands or threats. That is a surefire way to lose respect and thereby become powerless.

Respect is the only tool you have. If an educator can win respect, they are then in a position to do good. Personally, I can't respect someone who claims to be on my side but then won't explain why they tell me to do what they tell me to do. Certainly, I can accept that perhaps I am not in the best position to know, but try me!

Perhaps for some, education is preparation for working life and they reason that while working the boss will hand out edicts so education should be done the same way, but of course not all work is like that and not all workers are like that.

Some students and some workers need to know why, they want to understand that what they're doing is good. Telling them to do something that doesn't seem good is not going to work well. Telling them to do it or else is going to fail completely.

 

[marlon]

It's just disgusting to see a person who failed out of undergraduate school become a professor.

How is that possible ? Didn't he do a PhD ? Just askin'...

regards
marlon

 

[SticksandStones]

Do you really want someone who hadn't the brains or the work ethic to survive freshman year to come back thirty years later and demand things of his students that he could never, in a million years, have delivered himself?

- Warren

Why not? I don't care what he did thirty years ago, only that he is where he is NOW and knows what he knows NOW.

Frankly, mathwonk has shown more dedication to his work than most people I can think of. To keep persisting is an admirable quality.

 

[marlon]

Why not? I don't care what he did thirty years ago, only that he is where he is NOW and knows what he knows NOW.

Frankly, mathwonk has shown more dedication to his work than most people I can think of. To keep persisting is an admirable quality.

Hey,

I really don't get this. Chroot seems to be saying that mathwonk dropped out of his freshman year but then how on Earth can he be a college professor ?

Or did he achieve the undergraduate/graduate degees later in life ? If that is the case, but ofcourse i do not know, chroot is indeed telling rubbish which seems to be unlikely. I really don't get this.

marlon

 

[Pyrrhus]

I am pretty much on the same boat as Cyrus about having a strict school. It teaches the students to be responsible.

Now for mathwonk, he is one of the members in this website that inspired me to read more math books, that i didn't know about (such as Cartan's and Spivak's), so i consider his advice very useful. I don't see what chroot is talking about...

 

[ZapperZ]

This thread has gotten out of hand. I believe there is nothing else to be said here that is worthwhile, or would be informative to the original question. Therefore, it is done.

Zz.