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Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

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Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#61

Post by qppo »

xab31 wrote: post #47
feral wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nooo :-) If you find yourself in a PhD program with an advisor who thinks like the above, it's really important to not internalize their viewpoint. It's not a job. A job would pay much better! It's not your advisors money, and they aren't paying you to advance their career. Independence is critical, but so that you can avoid becoming someone else's cheap labor, and can instead focus on doing work that educates you an…

Hard disagree. I made every possible mistake that can be made related to being too idealistic about grad school; for example, I believed: - My advisor and collaborators have my best interests at heart - My primary role in graduate school is to develop novel, useful, reproducible ideas - Grants, fellowships, and stipends are generous donations freely given in order to enable the above - Quality is more important than…

> What are they paying you for, then?

To abide by labor laws, I'd imagine

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#62

Post by voxl »

xab31 wrote: post #55
voxl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your perspective is very pragmatic and reasonable. However, I think it still highlights only the _worst_ kinds of advisers, and if we're talking about looking out for your own self interests, then picking a good adviser is your highest priority. There are two kinds of advisers I think are missing in your analysis. First, are the idealists, the probably newly minted professors who view there students fondly an…

To avoid giving the impression that I had a horrible advisor who twisted me into cynicism, I should say: My advisor was definitely one of the "idealists". I was his first graduate student. He always treated me well, with respect and reasonable expectations, and we are friends to this day. He did have some of the weaknesses you mention. He looked out for me as well as could reasonably be expected, but he did occasiona…

I definitely think there is a grain of truth to everything you've said, but I do have to comment that the diction used is a bit dramatic.

For instance, I 100% agree that the posted document is how the PI views himself, without question. I also agree that this probably doesn't perfectly reflect reality.

But, at the same time, I think this is more just a human problem, not a PI specific problem. Moreover, I think a lot can still be gained from such a document, especially when the document is made public. It lets you point out inconsistencies and in the worst case share a negative experience with evidence to back it up.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#63

Post by ec2y »

HenryBemis wrote: post #60
ta1234567890 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to teach students about project management, planning etc. This is a problem with education in general. Those things should be taught in middle/high school as essential tools for modern life. Same as personal finances, effective strategies for team/group work, overcoming social anxiety, managing stress and building/maintaining relationships (personal and professional).

Project Management. I once was working with two CS professors in a UK university. One was full of words (let's call him A). The other was one of the brilllian minds in UI science that helped design the Nokia phones' keypads (let's call her B). Most people disliked B because she had a start, middle, end. She required timelines, milestones, deliverables. Because of that everyone working with her was getting better grad…

Very true! And you can even be a good project manager and be nice about it. For example, setting clear expectations, working together toward deadlines, etc.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#64

Post by ta1234567890 »

HenryBemis wrote: post #60
ta1234567890 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to teach students about project management, planning etc. This is a problem with education in general. Those things should be taught in middle/high school as essential tools for modern life. Same as personal finances, effective strategies for team/group work, overcoming social anxiety, managing stress and building/maintaining relationships (personal and professional).

Project Management. I once was working with two CS professors in a UK university. One was full of words (let's call him A). The other was one of the brilllian minds in UI science that helped design the Nokia phones' keypads (let's call her B). Most people disliked B because she had a start, middle, end. She required timelines, milestones, deliverables. Because of that everyone working with her was getting better grad…

Project management is definitely very important. As a group/team manager where do you put the "deep thinkers, not doers" though? What is their place in business or society?

I personally identify with being a thinker instead of a doer and for most of my professional life struggled trying to find a position from where to contribute without feeling inadequate for not doing/executing.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#65

Post by Beldin »

xab31 wrote: post #48
supernova87a wrote: post #2

I will just offer some unsolicited advice about PhDs, as it came up a few weeks ago also. And the author touches on this. Of course this mostly applies to empirical sciences, but maybe some theoretical ones too. An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. Test whether the PhD advisor you select knows this and has a history of t…

> An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. There is a tradeoff here. One of Eric's selling points for his lab is obviously that students get a lot of intellectual freedom to develop their own ideas. This is the "wandering the woods" approach, which was my advisor's as well. The advantage is the freedom, as well as the respon…

The job of a PhD advisor is to guide the student to become an independent researcher. That is: someone able to conceive of research-worthy ideas, separate the good from the bad, execute the research and write it all up in a paper.

I have seen very hands-off approaches and very structured approaches. Both have their merits and pitfalls: the first may leave a student stranded in the proverbial forest, while the second may turn into nothing more than a 4 year long series of related tasks to be executed, set at day one, with no input from the student. On the other hand, I've also seen both approaches work well.

Basically, you want a daily supervisor that cares, and with whom you have a click.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#66

Post by fuzzfactor »

angrais wrote: post #51
pmohun wrote: post #45

This is a fascinating look inside the academic system. Eric, a question if I may: Is there room for a modern PhD that values breadth over depth? The goal of completing a Ph.D. program is to become the most knowledgable person in the world about a specific topic. While this is a valuable goal for disciplines that reward specialization, it does not provide enough flexibility for autodidacts with a range of interests. A…

FYI: neither of those three well known individuals were regarded as what we now call citizen scientists. They were a politician, inventor, and an academic. This is very very different to citizen science.

I would regard them as prominent gentlemen scientists of their time, to say the least.

For every prominent man or woman of science, there have always been countless others having equal or better technology, whose recognition falls below an arbitrary media-determined threshold for eminence, whether or not eminence was on the agenda.

That much of it is a popularity contest.

There's rock stars and there's all the rest of the loud guitar players.

I accept a citizen scientist as toward the lesser end of academic credentials and lacking widespread recognition of their leadership or capability, but no shortage of talent or potential. And perhaps leveraging lesser resources or overcoming the same common limitations that otherwise encumber their equally ambitious peers, who do not become scientists at all even if they wanted to. By good fortune or not.

The citizen-scientist is an everyman of some kind.

Well, you gotta draw the line somewhere.

At the interface between citizen-scientists and citizen-not-quite-scientists, its a pretty fuzzy line and there's equal talent on both sides.

Similar talent but the more rarefied community has the actual accomplishments.

OTOH at the other end of the spectrum are the most prominent scientists and the fuzzy interface between the few of them and the next tier of equal talents having top credentials but insignificant recognition by comparison.

Similar accomplishments but the more rarefied community has the actual recognition.

It's much less common for the most prominent in the 21st century to be a gentleman scientist of our time anyway.

In between the top credentials and the lesser ones there's got to be an even more fuzzy line where the gentleman scientist and the citizen scientist can't tell which side of the line they're on their dang self.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#67

Post by Beldin »

g_p wrote: post #54
chrisseaton wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have seen a trend in UK PhDs in the last 10 years or so to include much more of the "practical skills" type work. Gah I think this is a terrible idea. In practice it means courses that aren't really relevant to anyone that you have to take when you really want to be getting on with your research. Everyone's putting in minimum effort and getting nothing out of it. What a waste of time. They're also taught by peopl…

I felt your way actually about it at the time. I like the 3 year timescale and greater level of self led work. I pretty much avoided doing any "taught" courses for the reasons you outlined, but I have found some of my students did benefit from them. I think it comes down to individuals and what they need. It wasn't right for you or me, but I think there are some students who perhaps come in needing a little bit of a…

I'm not from the UK. The idea of someone becoming an actual PhD in 3 years is rather quaint to me. Perhaps it's just a different approach, or perhaps the PhD system I'm used to produces a level of results that UK PhDs typically only achieve after their first PostDoc.

Or, perhaps there is an initial period of a year or so where the student is not yet doing a PhD, but is trying to produce results nevertheless. Saw that in Surrey, but can't remember how long students had after defending their PhD proposal and being promoted to PhD student.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#68

Post by xab31 »

voxl wrote: post #62
xab31 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid giving the impression that I had a horrible advisor who twisted me into cynicism, I should say: My advisor was definitely one of the "idealists". I was his first graduate student. He always treated me well, with respect and reasonable expectations, and we are friends to this day. He did have some of the weaknesses you mention. He looked out for me as well as could reasonably be expected, but he did occasiona…

I definitely think there is a grain of truth to everything you've said, but I do have to comment that the diction used is a bit dramatic. For instance, I 100% agree that the posted document is how the PI views himself, without question. I also agree that this probably doesn't perfectly reflect reality. But, at the same time, I think this is more just a human problem, not a PI specific problem. Moreover, I think a lot…

> I do have to comment that the diction used is a bit dramatic.

Fair. I wouldn't use this kind of language when talking to colleagues in person, for sure. In fact, I wouldn't address the subject at all.

> But, at the same time, I think this is more just a human problem, not a PI specific problem. Moreover, I think a lot can still be gained from such a document...

Absolutely. I think the OP has good intentions and believes what he writes. But I wanted to warn prospective grad students not to take this kind of thing completely at face value.

Re: Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

#70

Post by 082349872349872 »

pmohun wrote: post #45

This is a fascinating look inside the academic system. Eric, a question if I may: Is there room for a modern PhD that values breadth over depth? The goal of completing a Ph.D. program is to become the most knowledgable person in the world about a specific topic. While this is a valuable goal for disciplines that reward specialization, it does not provide enough flexibility for autodidacts with a range of interests. A…

If the aim is breadth, why target a field?

Matt Might illustrates "knowledge"[1] in two dimensions. Given that its true dimensionality is much higher, random walks in knowledge space, unconstrained by focus[2], will almost certainly never self-intersect: breadth "for free."

[1] Here come I, my name is Jowett / All there is to know, I know it / I am Master of this College / And what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.

[2] My interest space has obvious attractors, but I'm not pursuing breadth, so I'm fine with this situation.

Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaLa7NboOAw

хочу всё знать = I want to know everything

(in the soviet context, it was also the title of a kid's TV show)

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