Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department • Hacker News Board

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#131

Post by dnautics » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 7:40 AM UTC

ericjang wrote: post #39

vessenes wrote: post #33

What a great and inspiring letter from someone who is clearly under significant public and private pressure; I'm sure he was repeatedly advised not to go public in any way by friends, enemies and lawyers on both sides. My favorite part is where he imagines the Math department is "jolly cross".

I agree. He really knows how to substantiate his grievances with choice words and data. I don't know any of the players involved in this drama but the letter was so damning that I could not help but look up profiles of Stark, Ogus, Christ, and Evans just to get a picture of their faces. Politically, this was an excellent play - with his popularity among students, the Math department (and in particular, named faculty)…

Apparently there is now aa student protest in his support on Tuesday... So he certainly is playing his politics well.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#132

Post by Animats » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:01 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #113

joshAg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lecturers are Cal's version of adjunt professors. Just like how GSIs are Cal's version of TAs.

That's definitely not true in the CS department, at the very least. Lecturers in the CS department can get "security of employment" which is tenure in everything but name and, while I was there, most of the intro courses and some advanced undergraduate courses were taught by lecturers like that. Of course, the CS department is in a different college (Engineering), has a different culture and, probably, way more fundi…

Now that may be the problem. Perhaps the mathematics department should be moved to Engineering. Stanford did that with computer science back in the 1980s. It used to be part of Arts and Sciences, run by a rotating committee, and was graduate-only. The education side was disorganized, with schedules and staffing not matching up with admissions. The entire department was transferred to Engineering, was better organized, and got much better on the educational side.

The research side was dominated by logicians to and through the "AI Winter". Then they brought in machine learning people for the DARPA Grand Challenge, and that turned the research side around. Now the machine learning people are in charge, and most of the logicians and expert systems people have retired.

Science progresses one funeral at a time.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#133

Post by rootlocus » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:02 AM UTC

berkmathstudent wrote: post #97

I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here. Pros: 1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives out his cel…

"The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final." And that's your choice. How is it his fault for giving you a choice?

"Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof." Proofs are more important than memorizing a formula and forgetting it after a couple of month.

"Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math." That's way more important than stuffing you with formulas, algorithms and problems. If you have a passion for something, learning comes more easily and naturally.

By giving you confidence and passion, he gave you the greatest gift he could possibly give. You can find theorems, proofs, problems and solutions in countless books. The information is there, all of it. Structured in many different ways. And he gave you the courage to go out and explore. I wish I had that as a freshman. Instead I got fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being mocked in class. Fear of not being good enough. And I cowered in fear. I learned mechanically, memorizing formulas and problems by heart. What good where the quizzes, hard exams and midterms to me when I couldn't understand and apply what I was supposed to be learning?

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#134

Post by mianos » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

keyboardwarrior wrote: post #95

ezmuller wrote: post #91

I'll just be over here waiting on the other side of the story...

The other side of the story is that they probably want a consistent approach to education, having people go "unconventional" as they say. might work but it also might backfire. Its like being on the bleeding edge.You might bleed. I think the fast food analogy plays on the fact that every burger should be equal quality. Innovation comes at a cost in education, you are playing with lives.

Surely gathering performance metrics and analysing them is the method of avoiding the backfire? Surveying downstream faculties and see how they like the results is another way to measure and move forward from a system of cronies with a low risk of degradation.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#135

Post by psykovsky » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:19 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #119

berkmathstudent wrote: post #97

I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here. Pros: 1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives out his cel…

One of his letters suggests that folks at the math department insisted that he water the exam down and reduce the number of questions. Do you know if other Math 1A sections have more/less difficult exams?

I suspect he found those exams easy because of the quality teaching he got from the man...

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#136

Post by principal0 » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:37 AM UTC

This is ludicrous - I was taught by Professor Ogus, and he had an excellent grasp of didactic techniques. He dedicated a large amount of time to having me come in during office hours so I could do a mock lecture before it was actually delivered, and I could compare notes when he delivered his. Yes, he was exacting and demanding, but it made me a better student.

The fact that a lecturer with low standards happens to be popular with students is irrelevant. The math department has a large presence on campus because it is the best in the world. My advisor was Robin Hartshorne, and I took advantage of courses with a Fields medalist. That sort of department has standards that it enforces because it demands quality, not coddling.

This is all underlined by the fact that the lecturer in question states he has a breakdown of some sort due to the stress of the position. We're to take this seriously? I feel for the man, but it clearly indicates that the criticisms might be divorced from reality.

If you're too weak to excel in an environment filled with the world's top researchers, and where you are responsible for your own achievement, then find another school where they let prop comics teach math and spoon feed you.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#137

Post by psykovsky » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:37 AM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #76

NhanH wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really comparable between a dev team and the teaching position. At the very least, there are argument to be made that superstar but annoying dev can have detrimental effect on other devs. There are approximately 0 chance that an amazing professor can have negative effect on other professor's teaching ability (yes, they can, but you know what I meant and please don't get into pedantry here). The closer compar…

"Further, the current Interim Chair, Craig Evans, explained that I am causing problems because students are not signing up for other Professors' classes on account of me." Perhaps it's the other professors who are causing the problem by not putting any effort into teaching well?

Or maybe they're not putting the effort because they're "just doing what they've been told to do"...

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#138

Post by chris_wot » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

principal0 wrote: post #136

This is ludicrous - I was taught by Professor Ogus, and he had an excellent grasp of didactic techniques. He dedicated a large amount of time to having me come in during office hours so I could do a mock lecture before it was actually delivered, and I could compare notes when he delivered his. Yes, he was exacting and demanding, but it made me a better student. The fact that a lecturer with low standards happens to b…

I'm still learning mathematics. I'm in fact largely teaching myself. I can assure you, though, that a Fields medalist is not required to teach me Differential Calculus (Math1A). In fact, I'd prefer it if they didn't.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#139

Post by MaysonL » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:53 AM UTC

archmikhail wrote: post #109

hendzen wrote: post #69

Not the only skeleton in the UC Berkeley Mathematics closet - see the story of Jenny Harrison [0] for another example. [0] - http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_j...

I had her for a class a few years ago, and like Coward, she was an excellent teacher who didn't care for the norms of the department. She was actually working on a new textbook at the time which was all about teaching the fundamentals of mathematics in a completely different way to give a better foundation for higher level mathematics. At the time, she had just taken a small group of non-STEM majors, and using her bo…

The one book I saw in her list of publications[0], Universal linear algebra for students of mathematics and physics, seems to be awaiting publication, supposedly from Birkhäuser (a division of Springer), although I was unable to locate any reference to it on their site (possibly because the site sucks). It seems to be currently used, in pdf form, as a text for a course or two. I'd love to get my hands on a copy.

[0] https://math.berkeley.edu/~harrison/Publications.html

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#140

Post by ytinifx » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 8:54 AM UTC

I'm 100% on the side of Berkeley's math department here. In my opinion, the way AC has gone about things reflects upon his personality and why he is (probably) disliked by members of the math department. Read through what he calls his "evidence" to support his claims and you will see that there is more than enough reason to doubt his claims.

All the comments about Berkeley not caring about undergraduate math education are far from reality. Sure there are a number of professors who don't take teaching seriously. But there are a large number of them who do, and are very good at it. Among them are Ogus, Hald, Christ, Evans, and Rezakhanlou, all named by AC as people having to do with his dismissal.