51–60 of 76 posts
Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names,
otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving
an oral presentation
Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek.
(that's all I got :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. It's actually a really good post! Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?
Everyone's an armchair economist so I wouldn't count econ out. I think that math/physics are more accessible to the layman. I know where to go if I want to get deeper into this subject. I really don't know how to start becoming an amateur chemist or biologist. I've wanted to learn more about synthetic biology and gene therapy, but it's not as simple as cracking open a math book or going to a dev bootcamp. I wish thes…
In reality it's literally impossible for most people to imagine how hard the math is - because an undergrad physics or engineering degree is barely even a warm-up for it.
I'd love to see a TV show that made it clear just how challenging the math is without reducing it to the usual storytelling.
Popularisation can be great, but maybe it would be good to get a realistic appreciation for the raw version into the public narrative.
Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)
Same here. It's actually a really good post! Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?
Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names, otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving an oral presentation One thing that surprised the heck out of me is that we don't pronounce Greek letters like the Greeks do. Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek. (that's all I got :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are misreading anger where there is slightly ascerbic honesty: > "set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just ordinary ones" -> -- use of 'ordinary' instead of 'experimental' is intentionally condescending, hopefully for sarcastic effect If you'd finished the sentence, you'd see: "but the very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. " He is constrasting "o…
I'm an experimental physicist who did an undergraduate before my PhD and had to fight tooth and nail for my grades and did all that petty nonsense like going to class and after school tutoring and such. I'm not a rockstar, but I'm not a joke either -- I would give myself a "B" rating -- I definitely don't struggle for fellowships, but I'm not Nobel material. I know from the inside that _these_ actions are the most pr…
The most profound thing that the internet can do for the world is create a single monolithic repository of documents that is designed to take a dedicated reader from basic principles of math to a high degree of understanding in any subject. This is such an easy task compared to all of the other projects that happen on the internet, it is astonishing that we don't have anything like it yet. Wikipedia comes close. Khan…
I think you drastically underestimate the difficulty of putting together quality curricula.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are misreading anger where there is slightly ascerbic honesty: > "set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just ordinary ones" -> -- use of 'ordinary' instead of 'experimental' is intentionally condescending, hopefully for sarcastic effect If you'd finished the sentence, you'd see: "but the very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. " He is constrasting "o…
I'm an experimental physicist who did an undergraduate before my PhD and had to fight tooth and nail for my grades and did all that petty nonsense like going to class and after school tutoring and such. I'm not a rockstar, but I'm not a joke either -- I would give myself a "B" rating -- I definitely don't struggle for fellowships, but I'm not Nobel material. I know from the inside that _these_ actions are the most pr…
He's not aiming this at practicing physicists. He says early on that, if you want to be a physicist, you should enroll at a University. He says in the Questions section that you'll eventually need a degree.
This is aimed at people who can't or won't. The sarcasm is intended to appeal to the "well intended but totally useless" amateur physicists that regularly send him crackpot theories. It's a common refrain from such individuals that they are held back by the establishment.
What he's trying to convey is the amount of information that one needs to master to be taken seriously as a theoretical physicist. His intention is both to put off those that have read a popular science book and now know it all as well as encouraging those that are actually serious by giving them some structure to their learning.
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What do you mean? :(
Basically the entirety of paragraph 3... "set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just ordinary ones" --- use of 'ordinary' instead of 'experimental' is intentionally condescending, hopefully for sarcastic effect "very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. If you are more modest than that" --- I'm not sure if this is actual encouragement or a joke. But the fo…
The author isn't expressing his disdain for school, but the disdain he perceives in the people who keep e-mailing him with the simple answers to deep questions. "Okay," he says (I'm paraphrasing wildly here), "you may be too cool for school, but if you don't have at least a firm understanding of these basics, you won't even be able to understand why you're wrong when you, quite inevitably, veer off into the muddy mire of misunderstanding."
He is most assuredly not denigrating experimental physics, nor is he saying that the ordinary educational process is a waste of time and effort. (This is not meant to encourage autodidacts in any way.) He's even hinted that the "lies to children" -- those models that seemed to work for a very long time in the pre-GR/pre-quantum world -- aren't nearly as useless as people might think they are, nor are the scientific processes that led to those models.
So, yes, he is being quite sarcastic here, but the sarcasm is pointed in a completely different direction.
Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names, otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving an oral presentation One thing that surprised the heck out of me is that we don't pronounce Greek letters like the Greeks do. Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek. (that's all I got :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aside: that phrase "someone who is trying to help" makes me wonder whether you know that _this_ someone is a Nobel laureate (shared with Veltman in 1999), as he casually mentions in the text.
I did read it so yes I did know. I just feel like most active researchers would be able to point people in the right direction, so the fact that he's a Nobel laureate wasn't particularly relevant.