Are physicists looked down upon if

[Cyrus]

I still don't get your point. You say that you should master the material, and then you say that grades don't matter, when in fact the two go hand in hand. (unless you attend Mickey Mouse University.)

This is rediculous...

So what are you saying, that students that study the material hard and get good grades don't know what their doing, or don't master the material? ...uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm talking to a wall.


Your posts are all a contradiction to themselves!

 

[mathwonk]

Cyrus,

well, i think it is possible to get good grades e.g. by choosing the easy grading profs, rather than by studying hard. I used to do this myself.

Maybe at your school this is not possible. So if you are at an ideal school, you are probably assuming that good grades mean understanding.

this is what it should mean, but as a profesor I know that I myself sometimes frustrate this ideal by doing a poor job of grading. so i am trying to remind the student to try to both earn good grades, and also to understand the concepts.

if you are lucky, and your school does a great job of teaching and grading, perhaps you only have to try to get good grades, and then understanding is guaranteed. but this is not alwaysso.

doe this make better sense?

 

[CPL.Luke]

although mathwonk you went to a top notch grad school right? there was a study a while back that said that grades in grad school really don't matter as then your looking at research work. But mathwonk if you hadn't taken the easy profs in your undergrad to get the good grades would you have gotten into the top notch grad school that you did? considering that its possible to get far more understanding in gradschool than you get in undergrad, then maybe by taking easy profs and getting the god grades you were able to get a far better education over the course of your education.

 

[Cyrus]

Cyrus,

well, i think it is possible to get good grades e.g. by choosing the easy grading profs, rather than by studying hard. I used to do this myself.

Maybe at your school this is not possible. So if you are at an ideal school, you are probably assuming that good grades mean understanding.

this is what it should mean, but as a profesor I know that I myself sometimes frustrate this ideal by doing a poor job of grading. so i am trying to remind the student to try to both earn good grades, and also to understand the concepts.

if you are lucky, and your school does a great job of teaching and grading, perhaps you only have to try to get good grades, and then understanding is guaranteed. but this is not alwaysso.

doe this make better sense?

Yes, I see what you mean. If that is the case, I'm afraid the student should find another school to transfer to, and fast.

In my vibrations class, for instance, there is one guy who the professor told me has a 100 and a 95% on the exams, but never turns in the HW. So, he is giving the guy a nice big fat F. He said "its too bad, he's smart but does not do the work, so I am not going to pass him." The grading is absolute in that class, if you get an 89.999999999999999999999, you get a B. Reading some of the BS that goes on in other schools makes me shudder.

Thats not to say that my school is perfect, but my god, its not as horrible as what I read about some of these other places.

Out of curiosity, how many people here can get away with turning in late homework or assignments? I know jason was complaining about it before, and I'd like to know. Around here anything not turned in the day of, in class, gets a zero, no exceptions, ever.

 

[mathwonk]

well of course this debate is interesting, but let me try to tell you the truth. I did get into grad school at brandeis by taking a course from a prof who gave grades based on memorization, and I was good at that. so i did get in based somewhat on a good grade that meant little.

(when eilenberg interviewed me at columbia, he thought i did not deserve to get in there and declined my application. so actual lack of understanding kept me out of columbia. he recommended i go somewhere that would allow me more time to mature, like maybe maryland. he thought brandeis would be too demanding for me. he was right i guess.)

so after I got there, I was on my own. I was in trouble because of my poor undergrad preparation, but i was reasonably smart, and i tried hard, and was taught by a wonderful professor maurice auslander, who made us work, and I began to distinguish myself a little by my ability. so in grad school ability and hard work began to matter over prior gpa.

but then I lost focus again, from the vietnam war, and bounced out of school again. Eventually, after teaching 4 more years to refresh my preparation, I went back to grad school at utah.

by this time i had a family and was resolved to try my best and see how good i could be. I refused any longer to pretend I was smart. I agreed with myself to try as hard as possible, so i could find out just how good I could be.

As i have told, i quickly found others much smarter than me, but still found that if i worked hard i could do well. so i was not as good as i hoped, but was far more successful than i had been while refusing to do my best.

By this time I had learned both to work hard enough to keep up my gpa, and also to try to learn well and impress people with my actual knowledge. I.E. I HAD LEARNED BOTH TO PLAY THE GAME i.e. to IMPRESS PEOPLE WHO JUST LOOKED AT THE GPA, and also to try as hard as possible to impress people who actually understod something.

This combination worked best. And soon i was able to focus almost entirely on just the math. Advisors appreciate so much finding a student who really wants to learn that I could ride on their grant coattails for quite some time.

Anyway, there is obviously a balance to be achieved here, but i really have faith in doing your absolute best, and it will be noticed. After becoming a professional, I noticed that every time i proved a good theorem i would be invited to speak about it, almost as if by magic, as if there were some kind of early waRNING SYSTEM INFORMING THE COMMUNITY THAT I haD ACTUALLY DONE SOMETHING GOOD.

SO DON'T BE FOOLISH, BUT KEEP THE FAITH.

oh and i had a fun rejoinder with eilenberg. after i became a harvard postdoc, he was speaking at brandeis and i went to his talk and introduced myself as a student he had interviewed, he asked where I was then and i said harvard. he immediately began to apologize for rejecting me, saying stuff like, well we can't tell how good you are in a single interview and so on.

but aCTUALLY HE WAS RIGHt to reject me, i just got better once i learned not to worry about my rep, and just work as hard as i could. but i didn't tell him that, and it was very pleasant to hear that from him.

it is amazing how much clout names like harvard have in the community. but do not be intimidated by them. if you do your best and honestly try to follow the advice of people you respect, you will go much farther than you could have imagined.

and if you are doing the work you love, you will not care where you are doing it, or who is praising you for it. It will be its own reward.

 

[mathwonk]

cyrus, i think you are very lucky to be at such a strict school. i was thinking of advising the student to find the toughest prof he could at his school and work as hard as possible to get good grades from him or her. but you may be right that he should consider a transfer.

 

[Knavish]

This "debate" is a mess. Some are going on about how students should aim to get good grades because of their practical value, others on how they should aim to gain understanding because of its satisfactory value, and still others on how the two aims are correlated. What are we debating?

Anyway, I agree with what seems to be mathwonk's advice to students: Approach learning as a personal adventure. As the life and beauty of the subject itself unfolds to you, the importance of grades will naturally disappear.

 

[verty]

In my vibrations class, for instance, there is one guy who the professor told me has a 100 and a 95% on the exams, but never turns in the HW. So, he is giving the guy a nice big fat F. He said "its too bad, he's smart but does not do the work, so I am not going to pass him." The grading is absolute in that class, if you get an 89.999999999999999999999, you get a B. Reading some of the BS that goes on in other schools makes me shudder.

This is one of the reasons I won't return to study. For someone who knows the work perfectly well, it doesn't make sense to force them to do arbitrary homework. The purpose of a course would seem to be to ensure the person understands the subject. Homework is selected because it will illustrate the principles that are being taught. By doing the homework, students will gain insight into the principles. For someone who knows the principles, homework is pointless.

If there is another reason for homework, like that the aim is to get people to work well, there should be a separate course for that. There should be an applied course about how to learn, how to represent knowledge, etc. To me, that would make so much more sense.

If you require someone who knows the principles to do the homework, they will only reason that the educator has an insufficient understanding of the matter. Enforcing the homework requirement without any explanation is a draconian measure and these folks will only reply in draconian ways, they will do as much work as is required and no more.

That's why these so-called geniuses have low marks, because they think the system is flawed, and if it isn't, the onus is on the educator to explain it to them. If the geniuses are coming out with low marks, the education policies are flawed. That is a simple truth.

Now I must admit that I studied in South Africa and perhaps it is different elsewhere, but my experience was that to do well, all that was required was to give the lecturer what he or she wanted. Answering the question according to how it was asked was a secondary concern, you might even be marked down for doing that; that approach might hurt you.

So in my limited experience, studying at university didn't promote independent thinking at all, but rather promoted one producing what the lecturer wanted without question. My conclusion was that the educators don't think independently.

Perhaps I'm being hard on them; perhaps they don't know any better and they are catering for the average student, etc. But then consequently, the best advice I can give to any student is to simply regurgitate what you know they want to see. Read the textbook yourself, etc, but that is really only for personal enjoyment; do it so that you feel your time was worthwhile, but don't mistake the nature of the game.

You are there to give them what they want to see, and if you give them what they want to see, you score highly. For your own benefit, read through your textbooks on your own and gain a good understanding, but don't expect to be rewarded for that until you are working.

So in a sense, grades count sooner, understanding counts later. You need both, but while you are studying, accept that all you are is a number. When you get into a job, having a good understanding will give you enjoyment which is obviously very important. You won't feel like you are an automaton merely doing what the boss wants, because you will be able to apply your understanding and learn at the same time.

Get past your study as soon as you can and don't look back. Get that piece of paper; believe me it means little more than just that. It states that you went through the meat-grinder that is further education. Now educate yourself.

 

[Cyrus]

Sounds like a horrible university, sorry. Ask for a refund.

If you already know the material, why are you in the class?

What you wrote shows that you have a very wrong opinion about what the university is about.

 

[morphism]

cyrus, I think your concept of a good university is skewed. In my book, a course you're doing extremely well on but fail because you don't want to hand in some tedious assignments isn't an indication of good grading policies; in fact, I'd go as far as saying that is an extremely terrible grading policy and the instructor should re-evaluate what he's doing. If I don't do the mundane assignments I should get 0 on that portion of the course. So unless the assignments are weighted enough for 0% on them will give me a final grade of an F, then your instructor is plainly unfair.

A good university isn't one that forces its students to do meaningless tasks in their courses and grades them harshly, and a good course is one that makes you completely forget about the grade and entice you enough to learn and understand the material. I've experienced both worlds, and I can tell you, the latter is much more satisfying and you will probably end up with a good grade in the long run.

 

[Cyrus]

Yeah, right. He's unfair because his syllabus says that you have to do the homework, and that all grades are final, period. You, are the one that is being unfair, and lazy. You deserve the F he gives you. Are you going to tell your boss, "oh, I don't think its fair for me to do this work, I get most of my other work done."...

 

[morphism]

I don't think I'm being unfair or lazy at all. Does his syllabus say that you will FAIL the course if you don't hand in assignments? If so, that isn't unfair, but he should drop this archaic mindset.

Also, your analogy makes no sense. We're talking about grading policies, not your job. Both are entirely different things, even if you're under the misconception that they aren't.

 

[Cyrus]

Yes, it does say that. Explicitly. The HW is worth 35% of your grade. Don't do it, and you WILL FAIL.

Your final grade is based entirely on your demonstrated proficiency of the subject as determined by your
grades on the examinations, and homework assignments. Questions regarding grading of an exam
must be resolved within ten days from the time the graded exams are returned.

The grades are calculated EXACTLY as follows:
A>=90%, 90>B >=80, 80>C>=70, 70>D>=60, & F<60

Yes, you are being lazy. I don't want to hear your excuses. You need to learn what's called, 'work ethic'.


What kind of school do you go to where you can pass without doing work? I am interested to know.


Boy, after reading so many peoples replies on here, I must admit. I am not impressed.

 

[marlon]

cyrus, i think you are very lucky to be at such a strict school.

I read this thread with a lot of interest and i agree with Cyrus. But i wonder about one thing here : why is he going to such a strict school? I mean, "if you do not do the work, you fail" isn't that normal ? I say YES

For example, when i was in college (and this goes for most colleges in know of in Western Europe) some professors even said that if you don't turn in projects, practica, etc in time, you cannot participate with the actual final examination. So, you have already failed that subject. It is THAT simple.

Policy like that should be the NORMAL WAY.

marlon

 

[morphism]

It doesn't say that.

Your final grade is based entirely on your demonstrated proficiency of the subject as determined by your
grades on the examinations, and homework assignments.

Right. Someone who gets 100% and 95% on the exams hasn't demonstrated sufficient proficiency - he deserves to fail!

You're still calling me lazy, and you're still wrong. The fact of the matter is if I see an assignment whose questions are entirely "busywork" and mindless tasks, I'd much rather spend my time doing something more worthwhile. I suspect that this is what your classmate was doing. The simple truth is just because I'm not handing in any work that doesn't mean I'm not doing any. Hell, I could be solving most of the difficult problems in the text, but can't be bothered to do the stupid assignments.

I feel sorry for you if you think failing people based on their willingness to do things they clearly can do is something that should be the norm. The fair and sensible thing to do is to pre-assign a set percentage for the assignment marks (like, in your case, 35%), and if the student doesn't hand in any work, their course automatically becomes out of 65%.

Although your classmate might well be lazy, but I'm saying that this is false in the general case.

I'll draw from my own experience. At one semester I had an easy computer science course and a very difficult and challenging abstract algebra course. The CS assignments were so pathetic and boring, that I would have rathered to set my hair on fire than do them. On the day they were due, I'd do them between my lectures and hand in my half-assed work at the end of the day. (Strangely enough, I only failed one, and even got a 90 on another.) However, I also easily aced the exams because the material was so straightforward. I ended up with an 84 on that course (and it could have been much worse had I not gotten lucky on the assignments, and I wouldn't have even cared).

Now, on the other hand, for my algebra course I'd spend countless hours agonizing over the problem sets. They were so difficult and challening that you would be insane not to want to do them. In fact, I spent lots of time doing the bonus probems instead of the mindless CS assignments. I eneded up with a 97 on this course, even though it was infinitely harder than my CS course. However, the CS course was just not interesting to me and I find it extremely difficult to work on something I find dull.

I don't care if you think I'm lazy because I'm not. I believe my time is too valuable to be wasted doing meaningless tasks, and I cringe in disgust at courses that force these things upon you.

And finally, there doesn't necessarily have to be a correlation between doing work and handing in assignments. This is another misconception you seem to have, because you're saying things like "what kind of school do you go to where you can pass without doing work?"

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

I think that doing the work can only benefit you in the end. Although of course you have to prioritize and if you have a subject you are struggling with it is probably smart to do the homework set from that course first, it surely can't be bad to do the problem set from the "easy" course after that.. It shows the prof that you are serious about your studies and that can come in handy later on I think.

Not to mention that you become sure that you know the material.

 

[eGuevara]

I used to dislike homework. I thought it was merely a way to increase the promotion of a hard course. I never did any, because I thought I was superior to everyone of my classmates, and instead focused on acing my tests. I passed the first couple of years of univ. that way easily... then I started my physics courses. Physics has a way of teaching you humility. Now, even though I still think I'm smart, I do not think I'm a genious (in fact, a prof. let me on to that ).

Now I think one should approach his/her work eagerly and with humility. No matter how trivial it seems, it was assigned by someone who, at the moment, knows MUCH more than you do. You can learn something from everything, even the dumbest of homeworks.

If you feel a course is too easy (easy and trivial homeworks, class is too slow for you, etc.) then there is NO EXCUSE for you to get less than a 90, in fact, I do feel it's kind of dumb not to get one. Don't get me wrong, I agree with mathwonk on the whole "study and understand the concepts", but over here gpa is how you progress (bad gpa == less chance to get into that course you've been wanting to take, bad gpa == bye-bye to that undergrad research position you wanted, etc) so I've learned to appreciate both.

Overall, my advice is (if anyone will take it): Be humble and work hard, it pays off.

Just my 2cents.

 

[vanesch]

There are many strange opinions here in this discussion. One seems to oppose "grades" and "understanding", or "being good at a course material" and "handing in homework".

I think one should keep in mind a few very basic, common-sense ideas:

1) understanding the material should improve your ability to have good grades.

Now, on short term, this might not always be immediately obvious: doing some drill exercises on type problems without understanding the material thoroughly might, in the short run, benefit more to your grades, than first trying to understand the material, and then doing the type problems drill. But tell yourself this: when you understand the material, you will be doing the type problems also much easier. However, don't commit the error of thinking that, when you understand the theory of the material, that you can skip the practicing. You need that just to get certain techniques "almost in the unconscious". You need understanding AND you need practice. But understanding first, and practice afterwards. If you master both, you will normally obtain good grades, and have the material "ready" to help you understand courses that build upon it. Understanding is an investment that will pay off in the near future.

2) Doing assignments helps your understanding and your practice. There's no reason not to do it. Never think that you know some material so well that you can offer yourself the luxury of skipping assignments. There's always something to gain from it (be it simply speed).

3) If you're in a class, do what the instructor tells you that is part of the class, even if you think it is "easy and stupid". If it is easy and stupid, then it is quickly done, no ? And if it isn't, after all, so easy and stupid, then you made a judgment error.
Now, if you find the whole class stupid, then you should have negotiated an equivalence or something, and otherwise, well, sometimes in life, you have to do stupid and easy things.

You're not obliged to be in a class, but if you are, play by the rules fixed by the instructor, try to get as much understanding of the material out of it as you can, and do the work and assignments. Try to get good, fast practice by working problems and assignments. If you do that, normally you should get good grades, and the course will be beneficial later too to you. You've gained some "internal strength" through it (understanding and practice) and you've gained something to show for (good grades). If that is not your aim, you shouldn't be in the class.

 

[G01]

I have followed this thread for sometime and I realized I had to comment on this:

I feel sorry for you if you think failing people based on their willingness to do things they clearly can do is something that should be the norm. The fair and sensible thing to do is to pre-assign a set percentage for the assignment marks (like, in your case, 35%), and if the student doesn't hand in any work, their course automatically becomes out of 65%.

This is the most ridiculous grading procedure I ever heard of. What you are saying is that if I'm taking a course on Quantum Physics and We have a homework assignment on the photo-electric effect worth 10% and I get a 10/10 on it I could sit back the rest of the semester and do nothing. I wouldn't have proved that I know ANYTHING about The Schroedinger Equation, Wave functions, Probablility Densities, Expectation Values, Operator Notation, etc, etc.

Yet, I will get an perfect A in the course because on that one homework assignment I knew how to use the formula E=hf.:uhh:

I'm sorry. I agree with Cyrus. The guy did not do the work that he KNEW was required for the course. He deserved the F. I don't care if he was the Reincarnation of Einstein, he deserved the F.

 

[physics girl phd]

Some of my friends interviewing for industrial jobs have been asked their GPA (even though they had PhDs!) -- so much that they eventually listed this on their CVs/resumes. They were in Chemical Engineering, but I'd assume this is now probably becoming more "standard" in many companies. So -- as long as the GPA was good enough to get an interview... okay.

But yeah -- don't worry about what OTHER people think of you. That's counter-productive.

 

[Stingray]

Referring to the original posts in this thread, getting a C+ in intro physics is very bad for a physics major. Unless someone didn't try at all (and will change in the future) or had an unusually difficult course, those courses should be easy. Later ones are almost always far more difficult, and require one to understand the freshman material very well to get anywhere at all.

 

[mathwonk]

at the risk of muddying the water further, i want to give my viewpoint as a prof, who actively looks for talented students. We always notice a talented student in our classes, and we are so excited to find a talented stduent that works hard and is willing to take instruction, and strive to be good, that we begin to shepherd their careers immediately from that point.

This year I had a C student who sent me an email asking a really beautiful question and giving his own very insightful answer. This one event immediately put this previously invisible student on my radar, and I told the whole faculty about it. I especially notified the honors counselor and inquired who this guy was. I found some of his friends who were in the honors program and who said he had been with them in high school and should have been in honors at uni too.

So I gave him the name of the honors advisor and told him to make an appointment. Now I do not know if he did, but if he shows even this much responsiveness, we will transform his university experience.

Another time in a freshman seminar I had a bright student, and I immediately got him into the honors section of calc, or a more advanced course, where he began to make a name for himself. He came up for admission to grad school last month and I recognized his name and told my stories about him, and how he ahd impressed me. others had similar stories about him, and he was immediatey included in the accepted pool.

So although grades do matter and reflect both ability and hard work, the real advantage is to make an impression on a professor. This can be done by showing remarkable ability and talent, but also from unusual stamina and determination. Almost all the grades in an applicant stack for grad school are high. We need to know which ones mean something and which are fake.

Every year I have students who drop my class for an easier class where their grade will be higher but they will learn less. These students go on my list of infamous underachievers immediately and I am uninclined to recommend them for anything. some of these students have carefully preserved 4.0's.

The real difference in geting or not getting a job is in the impression you make on people who write the recommendations, and who give out the jobs.

I used to travel extensively to conferences, both to hear the talks (and give them), and to find out who the promising young people were. I never read their resumes, I just talked to them and listened to them speak. In that situation I do not eve care what other people say abut them. I believe my own ears more. I have identified very outstanding people this way early in their career even though other experts had told me they were unimpressed.

Regardless of your resume, unless you have a deep understanding of your subject, and can convey that personally to other people, you will not get an academic job. And if you do have that and can do that you will never be without one, at least as long as jobs are available as they are now.

As an example of admission to grad school, I would recommed Hurkyl for our PhD program if he were interested, without looking at his transcript, just based on reading his posts.

 

[Quaoar]

Frankly I'm getting a little sick of Cyrus' elitist attitude towards colleges. There are MANY ways of passing information to others, and until Cyrus shows me some study that conclusively proves that a hard-ass homework policy produces better scholars, I'm going to completely ignore his "your college must suck" comments.

I had some good professors, some mediocre professors, and some awful professors when I went to college. Apparently I didn't "get my money's worth" from the professor I had who didn't even assign homework, but gave lectures that blew all the other professors out of the water. I believe I earned a B-range grade in that class, but that was because he expected so much out of us and the tests were very hard.

Which brings me to another issue: Ease of the course. If you have a hard-line professor who enforces solid percentages and doesn't curve the class, you HAVE to reduce the difficulty of the class to ensure a certain number of students will pass it. If the school allows the professor to fail most of their students, word of mouth will kill enrollment for that professor's class the next time he teaches it. I've seen it happen. I've had some classes where the mean score on the final was in the 30% range because the questions were so difficult. But that's not a bad thing, because it challenges the students. It seems to me that Cyrus frowns on any system that isn't carved in rock.

Frankly, I believe it's fine to have some professors with a more rigid grading policy, if that's what they believe will motivate the students to do well. But to make idiotic comments that a college must suck because the homework isn't given a set weight is very, very closed-minded.

 

[mathwonk]

your comment about having to insure a certain rate passing so the students will take the class, however shows the low point to which the us system has sunk.

this is indeed true at many schools, including mine, but it is a sign of disease in the system. when the stduents determine what level the course is taught at, things are upside down, and cyrus, although somewhat undiplomatically blunt about it, is at least partly right there.

this phenomenon is a result of the market system in the US, where education isa commodity, bought and sold and subject to supply and demand. if education were free, and there were a competition for the best slots, we could make a more careful selection of students and hold them to higher standards.

to some extent this is happening at UGA, because of the HOPE scholarship. I never realized it before, but this is a big plus for this scholarship. It makes us more in control of the standard of education. When the parents and students are paying more for it they can insist the quality be lowered and they often do so.

 

[JSBeckton]

At the end of the day, grades are very important for your first job only. If you get good grades but do poorly at your first job, you will suffer. If you get bad grades but excel at your first job you will prosper. Either way you will end up where you belong.

If I interviewed someone who had poor grades but was obviously very inteligent I would come to one conclusion.... this person is probabaly lazy.

I would probabaly rather hire someone with average grades that's working as hard as they can before hiring a genius with average grades that's not giving it his all.

What did Einstien say? Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, something like that?

 

[Quaoar]

My argument is mainly that a professor can CHOOSE to grade however he wishes, but people should not generalize and say that only one way works. If a professor thinks that being hyper-strict will work better, fine. If he wants to take a more relaxed attitude, that's fine too. There's no definitive proof that one method works better than the other.

 

[Kurdt]

What did Einstien say? Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, something like that?

I'm pretty sure that was Edison but either way it still applies.

 

[JSBeckton]

I'm pretty sure that was Edison but either way it still applies.

Edison, Einstein, Peyton Manning........whoever the kids look up to these days.

 

[morphism]

This is the most ridiculous grading procedure I ever heard of. What you are saying is that if I'm taking a course on Quantum Physics and We have a homework assignment on the photo-electric effect worth 10% and I get a 10/10 on it I could sit back the rest of the semester and do nothing. I wouldn't have proved that I know ANYTHING about The Schroedinger Equation, Wave functions, Probablility Densities, Expectation Values, Operator Notation, etc, etc.

Yet, I will get an perfect A in the course because on that one homework assignment I knew how to use the formula E=hf.:uhh:

I'm sorry. I agree with Cyrus. The guy did not do the work that he KNEW was required for the course. He deserved the F. I don't care if he was the Reincarnation of Einstein, he deserved the F.

That's not what I said at all.

If you did the assignment, you will get that 10%. If you didn't, your final course grade will suffer -10%. What's so unfamiliar about this?

What I was arguing about is that if you do not do 35% of the course material, yet still manage to do 60%, you are entitled to that 60%.

Now:

3) If you're in a class, do what the instructor tells you that is part of the class, even if you think it is "easy and stupid". If it is easy and stupid, then it is quickly done, no ? And if it isn't, after all, so easy and stupid, then you made a judgment error.

Not necessarily. Some assignments, especially in computer science, require a LOT of work and yet they remain unchallenging what-so-ever. Sometimes you're even spoon-fed the algorithms and all that remains is the (usually tedious) task of writing the code. This could take up time that would be put to better use on some other course.

 

[mathwonk]

heres an example of a homework problem i gave once. there was a certain polynomial depending on a parameter t in the book, irreducible for all t, but the polynomial was singular for t = 0.

So i asked the class to compute in detail the resolutions of the singularities at t = 0, and their contribution to the genus, and finally compute the genus directly.

One student figured out a clever way to avoid doing all the computation I told him to do, using the irreducibility of the polynomial, and some other facts we knew. He felt very clever avoiding all the useless busy work i had given him.

The only thing is, the book had a mistake in it. the polynomial really was not irreducible, and if he had done what I told him to he would have disovered that fact as his genus computation would have come out negative.

The purpose of my exercise was for him to discover that the book was wrong, and the value of doing explicit computation for oneself. But he thought he knew better than me what was useful spending his time on.

It is interesting that some students think they are better judges of the value of the work I assign than I am, after 40 years of teaching.

 

[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