Sorry for asking, but I'm not familiar with this term. "Generals" means "final exam"? For PhD?
Terry Tao's generals (2012)
71–80 of 145 posts
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy cow, I had not until today realized that "doctor" comes from "docere" (to teach). Thanks for enlightening me!
Which makes you wonder why a medical doctor is called that?
Because doctor comes from the passive doctus ('having been taught', i.e. learned) rather than the active docens ('teaching, instructing').
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#73First of all, nobody ever passed these exams with flying colors unless the examiners wanted that to happen or were having a bad day. Assume that there are three full professors testing you, and they have an average of 20 years each of post-graduate experience. That's 60 years of reading -- no way that a 2nd or 3rd year graduate student can keep up. Part of the process is humiliating the students a bit -- they did thi…
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Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#74First of all, nobody ever passed these exams with flying colors unless the examiners wanted that to happen or were having a bad day. Assume that there are three full professors testing you, and they have an average of 20 years each of post-graduate experience. That's 60 years of reading -- no way that a 2nd or 3rd year graduate student can keep up. Part of the process is humiliating the students a bit -- they did thi…
>Assume that there are three full professors testing you, and they have an average of 20 years each of post-graduate experience. That's 60 years of reading
who cares?
10 juniors with year of experience don't make it even close to decade of experience
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#75Sorry for asking, but I'm not familiar with this term. "Generals" means "final exam"? For PhD?
I'm not familiar either, but here they are talking about graduate students [0]. I guess it's a sort of final cumulative exam at the end of the programme.
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#76This is the first time I've read a detailed account of "generals" in a US math PhD. I'm surprised how broad the topics covered seem. I did my PhD in the UK and the transition to fully fledged PhD candidate after the first couple of years was significantly less traumatic than this seems!
Granted, this is at Princeton and for a child prodigy. Certainly only a few schools in the U.S. will have oral exams like this. Also, there's a potentiality of an unreliable narrator and certainly a modicum of figurative dick measuring on both sides of the examination table.
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#77Sorry for asking, but I'm not familiar with this term. "Generals" means "final exam"? For PhD?
I think these are normally referred to as oral exams. Most PhDs go from qualifying exams to oral exams to thesis defense.
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#78Sorry for asking, but I'm not familiar with this term. "Generals" means "final exam"? For PhD?
I'm not familiar either, but here they are talking about graduate students [0]. I guess it's a sort of final cumulative exam at the end of the programme. [0] https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/
The exams would be at the beginning to middle of the program.
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep making this mistake. I almost asked "why philosophy, didn't he study physics?" That does make me wonder: why DOES the qualification/position/status name mention only philosophy?
PhD is a license to teach (i.e. doctor) philosophy. Specifically, in "science" fields, natural philosophy. Natural philosophy was the original (and i think better) name for science, especially physics. It was understood to be an important subbranch of philosophy. I think its better name because it elucidates an important epistemological difference: science is a method, not knowledge. I learn science when I learn abou…
> In fluids, Bernoulli devised experiments to demonstrate to his calculus illiterate colleagues what he had already mathematically proven.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but I have the feeling you're downplaying the importance of experiments in Physics. Once you mathematically prove something, you proved that a statement is true when given a certain set of axioms. This is enough in Mathematics, like your example of the Pythagorean theorem, but it isn't in Physics. The reason being that proving something Mathematically consistent isn't enough to prove that it reflects what happens in the real world. A famous example in pop science of this is string theory.
I also have some doubts about what you say regarding evolution theory, but I'm not familiar whit how biologists verified it. Maybe every time a new fossil is found we can consider it as an experiment that can add a data point in favor or against the theory?
Re: Terry Tao's generals (2012)
#80Thought this Oppenheimer anecdote may amuse the HN contingent. "Oppenheimer obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Max Born.[28][29] After the oral exam, James Franck, the professor administering, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me."[30] " Franck had won the Nobel two years earlier. Sources: [Refs] quoted directly from Wikipedia artic…
Other reference to Oppenheimer:
James Franck, who had emigrated to the US, advocated to not use the Atomic bomb against Japan: