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Reminds me of who were on Fourier’s doctoral defense committee: Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre, who all have a “list of things named after” page on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Jos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Adr...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_J...
I use to frequent a grad student bar that regularly held an open-mic night for people to practice their defense. It was brutal. A room full of drunk grad and post-grads would try and pick apart your presentation. Targeted academic heckling. It was great. The goal was to get over your fear of the whole process -no matter what, your actual defense would be a better experience.
TIL that a brilliant physicist nearly failed his physics exam (sort of). What is revealing is the broad-based knowledge that was expected of any student of those times. Unlike the super-specialities of today. A career in such fields (rather in any field) in those days required total dedication to academics. Also the importance of oral arguments and oral debate.
> Unlike the super-specialities of today. Many programs still administer pretty general qualifying exams. Mine was about two-thirds systems neuroscience (close to my thesis topic), with some reinforcement learning (in the Sutton and Barto sense) and genetics of autism on the side. You were strongly encourage to pick at least one topic that would be "mind-expanding" rather than just thesis prep work. My spouse's depar…
TIL that a brilliant physicist nearly failed his physics exam (sort of). What is revealing is the broad-based knowledge that was expected of any student of those times. Unlike the super-specialities of today. A career in such fields (rather in any field) in those days required total dedication to academics. Also the importance of oral arguments and oral debate.
Broad? Limited to the fields of the professors, like today. The story talks about the FPI, and an extensive lecture by one of the examiners about this topic. Like today, expect professors to ask about their favorite topics. The FPI seems suitable for a 1st year physics course today, if not even at school. That example shows how one-sided his interests were, not how much of everything was expected.
Edit to add: The actual quote (which I just found) was from G.E. Moore (Bertrand Russell was the other examiner): "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree."
One of my favourite positive doctoral viva stories was Wittgenstein, who presented "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" as his dissertation, which had already been published and was already considered a masterpiece. The report was something like "We consider the work of Mr Wittgenstein to be the work of a genius. Nevertheless, it fulfills the criteria for a Cambridge doctorate". Edit to add: The actual quote (which I jus…
Let's have some fun. Here's a basic special relativity problem from John R. Taylor's Classical Mechanics . A space explorer A sets off at a steady 0.95 c to a distant star. After exploring the star for a short time, he returns at the same speed and gets home after a total absence of 80 years (as measured by earth-bound observers.) How long do A's clocks say that he was gone, and by how much has he aged as compared to…
ChatGPT says: The time dilation formula tells us that the time experienced by a moving clock will appear slower to a stationary observer by a factor of $\gamma$, where $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - v^2/c^2}}$ and $v$ is the speed of the moving clock and $c$ is the speed of light. In this case, the speed of the space explorer's rocket is 0.95c, so $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - 0.95^2}} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{0.0025}} \approx…
I simply cannot trust it.
ChatGPT is like one of the stone statues guarding a mythical treasure - one of them always lies and one always tells the truth. But they do speak full and coherent sentences and they sound convincing.
This does lead I guess to the point - maybe we are ChatGPT engines underneath but use some form of listening to the words and trying to build a real working model that can be tested and predicted.
I use to frequent a grad student bar that regularly held an open-mic night for people to practice their defense. It was brutal. A room full of drunk grad and post-grads would try and pick apart your presentation. Targeted academic heckling. It was great. The goal was to get over your fear of the whole process -no matter what, your actual defense would be a better experience.
It's interesting how the story switches between reasons. To me, the most salient is: "could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort".
Attention to detail has been one of my largest issues in mistakes I've made, and this reminds me that sometimes that's what is required.
And sometimes what's required is putting a draft on arxiv.org and waiting for the criticism or roast.
Growing up in a house where your parent is worried about your performance in a subfield and reaches out to experts in the field. That's the complicated double-edged sword.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, verbal contrasts with written, as in verbal instructions versus written instructions. Is English your first language?
Yes, first and effectively only. First definition at MW: > of, relating to, or consisting of words https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verbal
> When two or more parties come to an agreement without any written documentation, they create a verbal agreement (known formally as an oral contract).
I think that alone demonstrates that verbal contrasts with written.