“Physics does involve occasional congress with demonic beings…this demon is very stupid and has a very boring job”.
Archive for the ‘College’ Category
My TA on Maxwell’s Demon
Friday, April 13th, 2007How to know you’re in a fun class
Monday, August 21st, 2006My electrical engineering professor just spent twenty minutes ranting about how engineers are better and more important human beings than everyone else.
He also described IEEE student group activities as involving “…rafting, pizza, beverages of some description…”
How to tell you are in a weed-out class
Monday, August 21st, 2006Things my computer science instructor said in class today:
“My assignments have been described as everything from fun to challenging to brutal.”
“I can only take a limited amount of time per week…somewhere around 168 hours. And I do expect you to take an hour per day for shower.”
(in response to my “An hour?”) “Well, shower, food, sleep…you can think about your assignment in the shower, though.”
“We have a grad student who has all A’s and one A- all the way from undergraduate to Ph.D. I gave him the A-. He just skipped one part of one assignment…”
Class difficulty as a barrier to entry
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006I think it’s fair to say I’m an intelligent student capable of performing well in class. At least I like to think I am, and here is why: generally when a professor makes a class easier rather than harder, I’m more disappointed than relieved.
In one of my classes in the College of Business (which will remain un-named), the professor recently went over mid-semester evaluations and granted a popular request to announce quizzes beforehand instead of having unannounced pop quizzes throughout the semester. This disappointed me, and I think I understand why.
In “How to Make Wealth”, one of Paul Graham’s essays, he talks about solving not just valuable problems, but hard problems as important for startups:
This is not just a good way to run a startup. It’s what a startup is. Venture capitalists know about this and have a phrase for it: barriers to entry. If you go to a VC with a new idea and ask him to invest in it, one of the first things he’ll ask is, how hard would this be for someone else to develop? That is, how much difficult ground have you put between yourself and potential pursuers? And you had better have a convincing explanation of why your technology would be hard to duplicate. Otherwise as soon as some big company becomes aware of it, they’ll make their own, and with their brand name, capital, and distribution clout, they’ll take away your market overnight.
Challenging course requirements serve the same function. They allow the more talented, ambitious, and hardworking students to become obvious in their talent. Employers look at your transcripts. They read your grades. The grade in the transcript should accurately reflect the student’s value to the employer, and the best way to do that is by making the class difficult enough that the more talented can get a high grade while the less talented get a lower grade. Trying to give everyone a good grade only puts less talented candidates in competition with more talented candidates while clouding the employer’s ability to tell the difference. It represents a fundamental failure of the university’s duty to provide educated, qualified professionals to the work force.
First day of class
Monday, August 22nd, 2005You know, after summer, when campus is usually very quiet and you can stand on the Terrell Mall and have only so many people in sight you can count them on one hand, being back for the fall semester is quite a difference. It’s very populated and the campus is buzzing with activity. A variety of campus groups, from Christians to Young Democrats, are around promoting themselves. The student bookstore is filled with students getting ripped off on textbook purchases. And the hallways of Todd are crammed with students going to and from classes. Altogether it’s good to be back on a campus that is alive with activity.
Delayed exhaustion
Sunday, July 24th, 2005It is incredible what the human body is capable of. I’ve been stressed and worried about things—a recent class project, various personal stuff—and my insomnia reached a fever pitch last night when I failed to get a minute of sleep and spent valuable sleeping hours watching television. (Damn you, HBO Signature Channel, for broadcasting a documentary about Stanley Kubrick!)
Anyway, from about 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM today, I had a team meeting for aforementioned class project. I was upbeat and energetic throughout. It was really quite amazing, I felt like I had more than a full day in me. Get back home, however, and I’m completely drained of energy.
The stress and insomnia and team meetings will all be over Tuesday. They will be over forever. And there’s really very little real work that remains to be completed between now and then.
Early tomorrow morning, I’m getting up, working on the paper, and getting ready for the presentation. The rest of my life will have to wait.
Thoughts at the beginning of my operations management class
Monday, May 16th, 2005I rather dislike when people sit next to me in class. I’m not antisocial, and I don’t dislike people, but I usually require a large amount of personal space. And that doesn’t really happen when there are people sitting next to me, watching my computer screen, restricting my elbow room, etc. Of course, given that someone has to sit beside me, I would rather someone sit on my left side than on my right, as that way I have the most elbow room. What I truly despise is when people sit on both sides of me. It makes me feel rather claustrophobic, to be honest.
In theory, TA’s are better teachers than professors. This is because TA’s are grad students, and grad students are far closer to our level of experience, knowledge, and expertise than professors. TA’s have, most likely, covered the same topic we’re covering within the past decade of their lives, so they know what it’s like for us undergrads encountering this for the first time. Professors, on the other hand, are often bored out of their minds covering this material. This is especially true of the best professors, who are ideally such geniuses that the material bored them the first time they encountered it, and who can only be truly stimulated at the frontiers of human knowledge. Of course, few professors really achieve that ideal. There are also, I am sure, those professors who are better teachers than researchers, but I am hardly the first to comment on the inefficiency of this aspect of academia.
The point is, that theory about TA’s makes a lot of sense all other things being equal. There are certainly other relevant factors, and this particular class makes me painfully aware that fluency in the English language is most certainly a relevant factor. While this is true of both TA’s and professors, anyone who has been at an American university long enough to be a professor should have become fluent enough in the language to be able to lecture coherently. TA’s don’t necessarily have that level of experience. Thankfully, I seem to be a lot better than most people at deciphering foreign accents, and the TA in this class seems to be getting more comfortable teaching in English.
Fun with deer carcasses
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005In my biology class (which is the obligatory basic biology class for Honors students not majoring in any of the life sciences), we were taking apart a rotting deer carcass to collect the insects that were cleaning it out. (Apparently this is some sort of forensic technique.) All we had left was basically the skeleton, but we had to break it apart to get all the bugs. I proposed that in homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, we pick up one of the leg bones and use it to break apart the rest of the skeleton. Then I ended up on skeleton-breaking duty.
We eventually resorted to using a weighted tape dispenser (made of metal) to bash apart the spine. Anyway, here’s a couple pictures of my homage to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece:
Textbooks!
Saturday, May 15th, 2004Well, I got my textbooks from Amazon today. A week after summer session began, but I didn’t need them till now anyway. Why did I order them from Amazon? Well, in terms of price, the experience, the convenience, and the idea of supporting a business pioneer instead of the textbook cartel, it’s better than my college bookstore. In fact, to make direct comparisons:
Amazon.com vs. my college bookstore: Amazon wins.
Amazon.com with express shipping vs. my college bookstore: Amazon wins.
Amazon.com with express shipping vs. my college bookstore with attractive, topless, women cashiers: Amazon wins, barely.
That is why I buy my textbooks from Amazon.com.
So just how much does Amazon.com rock? To the tune of $15, new, shipped for my accounting textbook on Amazon Marketplace (as opposed to $140 new from my college bookstore), and less than $50, shipped, for my philosophy books from Amazon itself. My philosophy books wouldn’t have cost that much more at the Bookie (yes, that’s what they call it), but then again, I didn’t have to stand in line.
Frankly, I don’t know why the Bookie is still in business.
I am embarrassed for my university.
Thursday, September 27th, 2007Source
This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Of course, the entire reason for this was mentioned later on:
Somehow, I doubt that perpetuating the stereotype that college-age women are too stupid to operate and maintain their computers without the assistance of male nerds will help this. (Even if it is true, it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than any inherent problem with women, and perpetuating the stereotype only makes it worse.) And while it’s no secret that computer enthusiasts are generally male nerds with little ability to attract women, I don’t think advertising this generalization will attract women to computer science programs either.
Fortunately, it wasn’t the PR class that came up with this dumb idea; it was Ben Ford, in the shower. I say “fortunately” because WSU’s communications department has a good reputation as far as communications departments go, and after this level of national embarrassment I want there to be something left over for WSU to be proud of.
Tags: computer science, computers, washington state university, women
Posted in College, Commentary | 7 Comments »