The Laws of Gelada (How to be a grad student)

March 3, 2010

Irving Herman‘s Laws for graduates can make good little scientists. How can we make misbehaved big scientists?1 The original Herman rules have Hx numbers my versions are down under Gx.

H1. Your vacation begins after you defend your thesis.

G1. (Force yourself if necessary) to take some time off.2

H2. In research, what matters is what is right, and not who is right.

G2. In research, what matters is good and useful answers, and not who gives them.3

H3. In research and other matters, your adviser is always right, most of the time.

H4. Act as if your adviser is always right, almost all the time.

H5. If you think you are right and you are able to convince your adviser, your adviser will be very happy.

G3. In research, your adviser is probably right more often than you.

G4. Assume your adviser is wrong if you do not agree with him.

G5. If you are right and are able to convince your adviser, everyone gains. 4

H6. Your productivity varies as (effective productive time spentper day)1,000.

H7. Your productivity also varies as 1/(your delay in analysing acquired data)1,000.

G6. Your productivity varies and is not necessarily tied to effort.

G7. Keep on top of routine tasks, but do not be ruled by them.5

GH8. Take data today as if you know that your equipment will break tomorrow.

GH9. If you would be unhappy to lose your data, make a permanent back-up copy of them within five minutes of acquiring them.6

H10. Your adviser expects your productivity to be low initially and then to be above threshold after a year or so.

G10. Realise your productivity will not be high initially. Aim to be more productive, but always allow for variation.7

H11. You must become a bigger expert in your thesis area than your adviser.

G11. You must be more passionate about your thesis area than your adviser.8

H12. When you cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure will go down a bit.

H13. When you don’t cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure either goes up a bit or it goes down to zero.

G12. Do not care about your advisors blood pressure.

G13. Cooperate with your advisor. You will get more out of them. They should know a lot that you care about. Thats why you picked them isn’t it?9

H14. Usually, only when you can publish your results are they good enough to be part of your thesis.

H15. The higher the quality, first, and quantity, second, of your publishable work, the better your thesis.

G14. Ideas are only good enough for your thesis when you are proud of them, you can do things with them and you can communicate them to others.

G15. The more interesting you find your results the better your thesis.10

H16. Remember, it’s your thesis. You (!) need to do it.

G16. Remember, it’s your thesis, your research.11

H17. Your adviser wants you to become famous, so that he/she can finally become famous.

G17. Care about your work and find it important. Do not chase fame.

H18. Your adviser wants to write the best letter of recommendation for you that is possible.

G18. Be aware of politics, sell what you do well.12

H19. Whatever is best for you is best for your adviser.

H20. Whatever is best for your adviser is best for you.

G19. Think hard and decide what is best for you.

G20. Listen to authorities (like your advisor), but do not be ruled by them.13

Footnotes

1 BACK TO POST
A few years ago Irving Herman, a physicist at Columbia published a set of laws for graduate students in Nature. To be fair he does say that some of his comments are slightly exaggerated and should not be taken completely seriously. However he also claims these as laws. Which is a very strong rhetoric. On my side my laws can also be slightly exaggerated and are usually highly idealistic, but if you are not idealistic about science you are probably better in a different career anyway.

I came across these recently in Eric Weinstein’s twitter and his comments were the spark and much of the inspiration for this post. I have included his comments on specific laws below. Here is his overall opinion:

New Topic: Thoughts on Prof. Irving Herman’s “20 Laws All Grad Students Should Follow” or “On Being Science ‘Help’ ” as published in Nature. Tweet

I am delighted that colleagues in academe are starting to write down the ‘meta-rules’ of new science that select against strong scientists. Tweet

My goal as taxpayer & scientist is to get you, the young scientist, out of Irving Herman’s dystopia before he can help you become ‘better’. Tweet

and he concludes:

Yet being a scientist isn’t about any of this idiocy. This is about survival in universities & why basic research must reform or leave them. Tweet

2 BACK TO POST
A PhD is hard work, but…Practically taking time off can renew focus, give perspective and thus generate more ideas. More importantly, you are not a robot or slave. Take time off to remember why you are doing this crazy thing.

Herman’s Law 1:”Your vacation begins after you defend your thesis.”
Weinstein’s Excercise:Translate into German without use of a dictionary.

Eric Weinstein Tweet

3 BACK TO POST
It is often better to be productively wrong than unproductively right. Liebnitz/Newton’s Calculus was wrong (and many, most noticably Berkerley spotted this) but those who ignored or were ignorant of this did better maths for 100 years.

4 BACK TO POST
Of course you should treat your advisor with respect, especially for the work that he or she has done. They do have more experience and know more, so they are probably right. However they are also better at arguing than you. Give your intuitions confidence and be persuaded out of them by reasoning not authority.

(“in other matters” your advisor is just another human being, saying that they are mostly right there is crazy!)

3. In research and other matters, your adviser is always right, most of the time.
Just who is this guy? Nature? Physics? Columbia? Anyone?

Eric Weinstein Tweet

Herman’s Law #4. “Act as if your adviser is always right, almost all the time.”
That would be ‘Science … with Benefits’…wouldn’t it?

Eric Weinstein Tweet

5 BACK TO POST
Productive time is essential, but what is it? It is certainly more than time spent in the lab/office. Learn what helps make you productive. Maybe a weekend of surfing leads regularly to great results on a Monday. Routine tasks do need to be done. Keep on top of them so you can relax and think, do not hope you can get PhD students on day to do them, or become a lab assistant for your supervisor!

6 BACK TO POST
Agreement for both of these, it is good to put a little time into insurance against disasters.

7 BACK TO POST
Coming back to the “productivity is complicated” idea. Sometimes you have to get lost, following blind alleys for weeks or months to chase up the great result. It is easy to be productive by finding more routine tasks to do, is that your ambition?

8 BACK TO POST
If you are passionate about your area you will of course think about it and study it more. You should be doing all this for passion and not because your supervisor says that it is interesting.

9 BACK TO POST
Cooperation is a good thing. We do need to work together, to help find the right or useful ideas and communicate them. It is useful to achieve other goals however, not as a goal in its own right.

10 BACK TO POST
Find out what is important to you, what you feel are the big questions. Chase them. Take into account the opinions of others (such as journals) but remember they can be wrong.

11 BACK TO POST
You are paying for this and working very hard on it. Take pride in it, make it your own and do the best job you can. For yourself not your supervisor.

12 BACK TO POST
It is good to show your work achievements and ideas in the best light. Do not however do something for no other reason than it looks good.

13 BACK TO POST
The summary of this post. To be a good scientist is to respect authority while questioning it.

19. Whatever is best for you is best for your adviser.
20. Whatever is best for your adviser is best for you.
So,we may catch Pyonyang yet?

Eric Weinstein Tweet

32 Comments | General | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by gelada

LMS internet communication 2

January 3, 2010

As promised here is a draft of my article on ideas for the LMS and using the internet for society communication. Please comment!

Currently the LMS has two main mean of communication. The first is the newsletter and the second the website. It has already been mentioned many times that the website is in need of a redesign. I will therefore concentrate on the options available for more general communication. In a way the modern version of the newsletter, however some of the ideas here might inform decisions on the redesigned website.

What options are available?

The first option is RSS/web feeds. Using these people can subscribe to the stories from the LMS and then let the system take over. The stories would then come in automatically mixed with their other news in the reader. If this is set up as a blog people will have the ability to comment back on stories and announcements. The futurelms blog has shown that their are people willing to engage in this manner, and have good comments to make.

The second option to consider is twitter. This is a new system and has been the subject of plenty of hype. The important thing to realise is that although much that travels over twitter is meaningless noise people can choose what they follow. It is thus reasonably easy to find the signal. It is thus a system that has attracted a large number of people who are worth following and talking to (whatever your definitions of those). I would single out in particular Lord Drayson (@lorddrayson) the Science minister who has used the system well, getting feedback and reacting to the concerns of scientists as well as simply broadcasting his messages. This engagement, as an example, generated a debate on science journalism between him and Ben Goldacre.

The final option are wikis. These obviously take their lead from the wikipedia. Essentially they provide a means for a community to jointly create web pages.

How can the LMS use these?

I want to start with a general comment. Whatever options the LMS decides to follow two things will be necessary for success (unfortunately they are not sufficient). The first is to commit to the system, with the suggestions below I will give some of idea of what this means. The second is to make the system as open as possible. If there are problems with spam inappropriate content etc, then these can be dealt with at the time, but trying to address all possible problem can easily create an unworkable system.

Another general comment is that all the communication should consider the entire community of mathematicians and maths related people in the UK. This will have a positive effect on membership as it will make the importance and role of the LMS clearer to everyone.

A blog for LMS news is the first, obvious option. In many ways this will take over from the newsletter (I will discuss that further below). This will enable news to come out in a more timely fashion (the newsletter can be a long way behind due to the constraints of printing and a monthly schedule). It will also allow comments in response to articles. As I mentioned above this would need commitment. There should be a dialogue, not just a broadcast. It would be important for the commentators on the blog to feel that their views are listened to, and regular responses to comments are therefore essential.

Taking the dialogue a step further would give the LMS an active twitter feed. Again this should not be considered a broadcast. This could be a way to get opinion and feedback from a variety of people both within and outside the LMS. Watching replies and responding would therefore be essential.

A final, and more radical step would be to open up the process of creating policy. This is where a wiki can come in. In draft form policy documents can be freely edited and discussed. Anyone with an interest in the topic can therefore express their view. This is something that might need to be restricted to members alone. Obviously the final document would be the work of council or the committee involved, however this would draw more people into the descision making process and allow the society to tap as much available expertise as possible, not just the (admittedly great) expertise of those who can commit themselves full time to council.

Going slightly beyond the idea of communication within the LMS the world is currently lacking good computer based news streams for mathematics. This is something that the LMS is perfectly positioned to provide. The stream could be a mix of simple links to important papers or events combined with the occasional specifically written article. Members of the LMS would form a natural pool to write these! It would of course help if they could be given some level of LMS blessing as a publication. The systems for dialogue (twitter and blogs) would give an excellent basis for this as people could put forward the stories that they felt were important.

How to implement this?

I have said above that commitment is an important part of these ideas. Unfortunately as it is the nature of things this does cost money. Some of the money is already spent. Their are people involved in writing the articles and gathering news for the newsletter for example. Some more money can be found by stopping the newsletter itself. The cost of printing and distribution can therefore be put into maintaining the online presence. This step will of course leave some people out of the loop as not everyone is using online newsfeeds. A half-way house option would be to produce the newsletter as an email (or pdf). This would be made up of the stories and events that had been posted during the last month. With a little investment in programming it could even be automated.

2 Comments | General, Main Article, Mathematics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by gelada

LMS internet communication

December 30, 2009

I have been asked to write a short proposal on internet communication for the council of the LMS (London Mathematical Society). More specifically, how the internet can be used to get better communication within the society. I am going to interpret this fairly widely to include communication between the LMS and the general maths community in the UK (given the nature of the internet it is probably more correct to say the world).

An obvious place to start would be with things like RSS feeds and possibly twitter. I plan to put my proposal up here in a few days for more specific comments. However if you have any preliminary comments please post below, or send me an email (edmund.harriss at mathematicians org uk). I am obviously interested to hear from mathematicians, but also from anyone with experience of setting up or using such institutional communication tools.

3 Comments | Mathematics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by gelada

Communication at the LMS

October 30, 2009

This is a cross posting of an article I have just put up on the Future of the LMS blog. I am posting it here as well as I think that the issues raised are of braoder interest. Especially the first paragraphs on the power of the web for mathematics.  To put it in context I have previously written about the LMS’s future and the importance of commication to mathematics.

One of the recurring themes in comments on this blog is the importance of communication, normally in the context of communication between members and the executive. Developments in this area are an essential part of taking the society forward, however we should also be considering communication in a wider setting.

Firstly communication as a whole is a rapidly changing area. In particular the internet is opening up opportunities that simply could not have been dreamt about even a few years ago. When this is mentioned in LMS discussions it is normally with a voice of doom as one of the effects is a potential reduction in money from publishing. Mathematics, however has a lot to gain from embracing this and it would be exciting to see the LMS taking a leading role. There are (at least) three different ways that mathematics communication can benefit:

  1. Communication between mathematicians and how mathematics takes place. A great example of this is the polymath projects started by Tim Gowers. These aim (already with success) to actually solve mathematical problems through massive collaboration. Another example is the often brilliant expository writing on wikipedia. This leads me naturally to…
  2. Making mathematics accessible. This is not just writing up on wikipedia, but videos on YouTube, photos, fractal art, the list goes on. As a simple example this YouTube video on Mobius transforms has been viewed over 1,500,000 times. Even if a small number of those communicated some understanding that is a significant increase in the number of people who know what a Mobius transform is!
  3. Finally the internet allows mathematicians to engage with a wider audience. The classic example here is Terry Tao, on his way to becoming a public intellectual through his blog, What’s New. The readership is very large, but he certainly does not achieve this by dumbing down. Many of his blog posts are incredibly technical. He also deals with questions of maths communication.

Therefore, can the LMS go beyond simply improving its website to play a role in leading how mathematics adapts to use these exciting new technologies and opportunities. Yes I am afraid that it will involve money! Though perhaps by getting ahead of the game potential new sources of revenue might reveal themselves.

Both the second and third points above are about public engagement with mathematics. There is excellent work taking place in mathematics public engagement. From school visits of students in the Undergraduate ambassador scheme to the Television programs of Marcus du Sautoy, to Science fairs like Bath Taps. The effort, however, is rather disparate. Consider, for example, large science festivals such as the Royal Society Summer exhibition. Last year there was no mathematics focussed exhibit. This year there was, but not through any planning, simply because I had an idea. I phoned several colleagues as was easily able to put together the team needed, including three other mathematicians (the exhibit “How do shapes fill space?” looked at topics in geometry and the theory of tilings). Similarly for next year’s Big Bang festival the LMS and IMA were contacted to arrange for a large mathematics stand but had to change plans after they were unable to fill it. The approach from the Big Bang shows the demand for mathematics at these events, and I can also say from the RSSE experience that the organisers were excited to be able to include mathematics. We therefore have the demand and the ability, all that is left is the organisation to provide the sparks.

I am not saying that the LMS is not already involved in engagement and education. There is excellent work being done. It is, however, rather limited. Let us compare briefly with the IoP. The IoP has a massive commitment to outreach, from school projects and teacher days, through grants for schools and outreach to innovative engagement activities like the recent “Lab in a Lorry” exhibits that travel round schools and events. In 2007 they provided 119 schools grants and a further 21 public engagment grants*. In contrast, last year the LMS gave out the tiny sum of £3,570 in education grants, with a further £1,000 by council for a discussion dinner**, out of a total grant spending of £234,000 ***. The IoP is obviously a far larger organisation than the LMS, however their annual spend on “Impact” which comprises education and public engagement is about £3,500,000 from an annual expenditure (not including publishing) of about £10,000,000 – £11,000,000. Even in terms of proportion, however, the entire LMS spending on education and engagement is small, about £125,000 of £750,000****. These are the numbers for promotion of mathematics, not just public engagement and so includes all money spent on interaction with government and research councils as well.

I have raised a variety of topic here without giving specific ideas about how they might be pursued. There are many things I would love to try, but mathematics needs more than that. We need to get a multiplicity of different voices. The difficult mathematics and technical detail of Terry Tao’s blog will reach a different audience to Marcus du Sautoy’s television programs, the blogs being set up by maths undergrads can reach different people still. There is no single path to public engagement, and so it needs to be opened as wide as possible. The best way to do this? Take something about the LMS that few would argue is not its greatest strength: the grants program, and add a significant amount for public engagement. Use the same philosophy as the main programs, plenty of small, easy to access grants aimed at filling the gaps in the standard funding sources. Open up grants to set off ambitious ideas that might fall flat, but could start working and then get big funding from EPSRC and elsewhere. Such a move into the work of public engagement would also show that the LMS is serious about this and enable it to take (with the IMA) a central role at the heart of UK outreach.

One final comment. This is not a zero sum game. Relatively small investments in these sorts of activities could help to pull other money into mathematics. Public engagement money is a natural example, but serious online projects could also attract funding from schemes like the EPSRC “Digital Britain” stream. (Claiming back some of the money lost from the Mathematics pool!). In the long term public engagement also helps to spread the message that mathematics is an essential part of a healthy society and economy. This public awareness is essential to obtain greater government funding for mathematics and even in the current climate defend the present funding. Unfortunately it is true that a small funding change from EPSRC makes far more difference than the entire LMS budget.

* (http://www.iop.org/aboutus/Annual_Review/file_30997.pdf P0 and P6)

** (http://www.lms.ac.uk/policy/annualreports/LMS_ARA_08.pdf P31-32)

*** (http://www.lms.ac.uk/policy/annualreports/LMS_ARA_08.pdf P21)

**** A note on the numbers, it is hard to get a close comparison as the accounting differs between the reports of the two organisations. The figures for the IoP were calculated by adding the three major expenditure streams (Opportunities, Members and Impact, P17). For the LMS the totals come from the total expenditure for Advancing Mathematics, Enabling research, Conference programmes and Promoting Mathematics, compared to the total spend on Promoting mathematics, P21.

Leave a Comment » | Main Article, Mathematics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by gelada

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 203 other followers