RK
Joined 18 years ago
Karma
2,568
Submissions
919
Member since
Mar 31
Recent submissions
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
I don't know how we are in relation to Czechs, but one of things I hear as an American is that we are often too quick to talk about politics. Whereas, in many cultures, politics is considered almost taboo to talk about with all but the closest friends and family.
Comment · 11 years ago
As a grad student in the 2000's I was told by a professor that the department would take into consideration the expected attrition rate (typically ~50%) when admitting grad students. The idea being that they would have enough TA's for intro classes. Attrition would make the number of advanced students more inline with the money available to fund PhD students till they graduated. In other words, they purposefully over-admitted to get TA's, most of whom would leave with an MS as best.
This was in science departments. In departments that had few or no "general ed" courses, such as engineering, and thus little need for TA's, the graduation rate was much higher.
Comment · 12 years ago
graduate school admissions were ridiculously competitive in 2003-05
This was true in my experience as well. I applied to grad school for 2004 and heard lots of crazy stories from programs about high applicant numbers and quality. I ended up at a "hidden gem" versus a top program. A couple years later I re-applied to PhD programs and got accepted everywhere.
In today's markets it's a little hard to believe that people would be flocking to grad school due to a poor industry market, but it seemed to be the case across science and engineering fields. I'm sure that influx also made the bad academic job market even worse, unfortunately.
Comment · 12 years ago
If you're interested in the chemistry of Uranium, here's a do-it-yourself guide. The uranyl compounds are what fluoresce:
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/uranium-chemistr...
Comment · 12 years ago
Which country are you discussing?
Comment · 12 years ago
The ANU Quantum Random Numbers Server:
Comment · 12 years ago
My advisor in grad school once gave the following advice algorithm for making a decision:
1. Flip a coin.
2. If the result of the coin flip makes you hesitate at all, you know that was the choice you didn't really like anyway. Go with the other choice.
Comment · 12 years ago
In theory the rule is that you're supposed to refer to people by what name they prefer (e.g. "Little people").
Here's what Wikipedia says:
* The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been controversial. According to a 1995 U.S. Census Bureau set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as "American Indians" or simply "Indians"; this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups
Comment · 12 years ago
I visited Melbourne for about a month a couple of years ago and was excited to use the train to get around, but people there routinely said I was crazy for doing that. People often offered to give me a ride to the train station (usually a few blocks away). I got the overall impression that Australia has a very similar car culture to the US.
Comment · 12 years ago
My best friend had one of these as a kid and we made epic backyard GI Joe movies.
Incidentally he now works as a film editor.
Comment · 12 years ago
No write-up, but people I know have left physics for:
* Quantitative finance
* Insurance (working on models that were beyond what the actuaries were trained to do)
* Data science
* Scientific equipment R&D
* Scientific equipment sales
* Popular science writing (this is a bit of an outlier!)
* Defense contracting (engineering, "scientific" programming, etc)
* Programming
* Door-to-door insurance sales (no joke)
I usually tell people to brush up on their programming skills as much as possible. If you're a theorist who only does pencil + paper or maybe Mathematica, it might be hard to find a decent job. Also, it never hurts to talk to / network with any industry people that are related to your field (software or hardware vendors, etc).
I'm now doing data science, but have also done hardware development and electrical engineering related things (signals). When I was transitioning to data science I also did some very specialized consulting related to my PhD. A few people paid me to do simulations and/or help then implement some techniques that I worked on as a grad student.
Also: I had a very supportive advisor, who encouraged me to accept a job offer before I graduated.
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
Highlights include Chernobyl trips, a trip to "Soviet Ground Zero", and a how-to for DIY uranium chemistry.