Category Archives: science-y observation

We Lost … to Mathematicians?

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Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs

The study, to be released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.
[…]
According to the study, mathematicians fared best in part because they typically work in favorable conditions — indoors and in places free of toxic fumes or noise — unlike those toward the bottom of the list like sewage-plant operator, painter and bricklayer. They also aren’t expected to do any heavy lifting, crawling or crouching — attributes associated with occupations such as firefighter, auto mechanic and plumber.

Physicist ranks 13th, presumably because we experimentalists get to play with dangerous things, which I consider a perq. At least we beat out Astronomer; I suppose that’s because they have to work nights.

Cabbage Crates Coming Over the Briny

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Who has the worst jargon?

I was recently asked to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate how my place of work was doing in terms of some business metrics. It was hell. Two groups that love their jargon and acronyms, the government and business. I thought that it could have been worse, because science could have been involved, too, so I wonder: who does the worst job with their jargon? I’m biased, but I think in general, science is not the worst offender — in the defense of myself and colleagues, it’s at least expected practice that you define any terms you’ve made up before you use them elsewhere in your presentation. In business and government/military (at least in my anecdotal experience), not so much. I’ve heard the stories (and seen once or twice for myself) of instances where someone will talk about FLURG at length, and then finally someone asks what FLURG stands for, because it turns out that nobody knew.

Unnecessary jargon obfuscates, er, hides meaning, because you focus on some buzzword without knowing what it means. So how does one distinguish between necessary and unnecessary jargon? In order to justify its use, the jargon has to give some benefit. The most obvious is shortening a long term to save time. To take some examples from atomic physics, Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy is CARS, a Magneto-Optic Trap is a MOT. I consider these to be reasonable jargon, even though you may not know what Raman Spectroscopy is (it’s not the study of inexpensive noodles, that’s Ramen Spectroscopy). But no information has been lost.
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Stir, Stir, Stir

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Thursday I stirred the pot and linked to some dredged-up Larry Summers controversy (It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time); I was dealing with a cold and didn’t include commentary while my head was foggy.

But I’m starting to feel better, and Cherish has raised some points and so here’s what my thinking behind this was.

One of the confounding issues here is the source amnesia that is going on — we remember statements made by non-credible sources, and forget the source before we forget the statement. We remember things not because they are true, but because they are repeated, and with that comes myths and falsehoods stuck in our memory. We all “know” Al Gore invented the internet, but fewer know that Gore didn’t actually claim that. The Summers controversy is similar. (And when I taught, I discovered that my students had a “not” filter: if you told them “X is not true,” the first thing they would do is forget the negation and thereafter believe that “X is true.”) So the first order of business is to read what he actually said, rather than rely on what we remember, or what others repeatedly told us he said.

Secondly, a disclaimer. Sexism and discrimination exist. Of this I have no doubt. I’ve seen it happen, both in academia and elsewhere (Sheesh, I was in the military, which is (still) a bastion for such behavior). I don’t like it, and try not to be a practitioner. Nothing in this should be misconstrued to think I’m denying or condoning such behavior.

The problem is this: there are times when the discussion about disparity of representation in areas of STEM (particularly academia) begins and ends with sex discrimination, and I have a problem with that. What I don’t understand why how other scientists don’t take issue with dismissal of requests to look at the situation scientifically, as with an attitude of not looking at other data, or how raising a question of “Have we looked at X?” is shouted down.
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It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

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It’s Thanksgiving, so why not stir the pot?

Larry Summers debacle, resurfaced over at incoherently scattered ponderings, (in response to a freakonomics blog post)

Do this simple experiment – go around and ask people to tell you in their words what was it that Summers said that got him in trouble. It’s an interesting Rorschach-test type question with a wide spectrum of answers. Then go to google and find the full transcript of his speech.

Political overtones aside, the question of whether there is a greater variance of certain skills in males or females is a legitimate scientific question, the one that can be answered with data, without all media hysteria. Since there are studies that show that males also vastly outnumber women on the low-IQ tail of the spectrum means that this hypothesis is not so outlandish after all. This may also be related to the fact that males are much more likely to be involved in risky (e.g. criminal) behavior.

Since I am not an expert in this field, I can’t take sides in this discussion, but the argument often presented by anti-Summers side that merely asking a hypothetical scientific question about origins of differences in cognitive abilities between genders is sexist seems very un-scientific and dangerous to me.

(edit: fixed link)

Pay Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain

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Check out Allyson’s guest post at Cocktail Party Physics for one of the main reasons for my recent observation

I didn’t see any glitches except for one or two instances of technical difficulties, which speaks volumes for the organizers and support staff, because you just know there were issues, and since they didn’t become visible it means they were solved quickly.

Allyson was the awesome conference secretary, and gives an account of her unique perspective on how you can help get science done without actually being a scientist.

And they’re all weirdly grateful when I pick up a gauntlet and call the accounting department to explain that they’re to call me with the bullshit questions, because when they tie up my scientists with a four dollar discrepancy on a rental car, SCIENCE IS NOT HAPPENING, JACKHOLE.

You betcha we’re grateful when we find people who are part of the solution, rather than being part of the precipitate problem.

Worth its Weight in Printer Ink

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The monetary density of things

People have been saying that the new industrial grade swimsuits like the LZR Racer are worth their weight in gold. As you can see, this is clearly inaccurate. But such a suit is worth its weight in marijuana or industrial diamonds.

At the high end of this graph is gold (the only thing worth exactly its own weight in gold!), right next to the cost of launching a pound of stuff to low earth orbit on the ISS. Putting that into perspective here: You might as well build your whole spaceship out of $20 bills– it still would cost less than putting it up there. It could almost be made of solid gold for that price.

At the end there’s a table with a whole bunch of stuff, all with its weight per pound. Printer ink? More expensive than silver, pound-for-pound.

We're Awake … But We're Very Puzzled

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Gender issues in science. Nerd Girls at Bad Astronomy, which begat smart = sexy at Cocktail Party Physics, which begat Flirt harder. I’m a physicist at sciencegeekgirl.

There’s some really interesting commentary to go along with the posts.

I have the sneaking suspicion that this topic is one where it is impossible to be right; there is no position one can take that won’t piss someone else off. Given, then, that I’m already in trouble, I will blithely assume that this is simply a Boolean state.

On “geeky” vs “girly,” Jennifer Observes with the very first comment on Phil’s blog,

What we really need to get over is this silly “either/or” tendency…

which I think is spot on, and it’s a bit surprising to me to see later remarks to the contrary — things to the effect of it’s great how girls can like science and girly stuff, too, and stereotypes such as “shopping is for girls.” I thought stereotypes were bad, hence the title of this post, and my comment that some people will get PO-ed no matter which side of this argument you’re on. Unless it’s just a big conspiracy to confuse me.

The other comment that came up a few times was that if we try and deny the significance of physical attraction we’re fighting a few million years of evolution. It’s true. Men have evolved to be responsive to visual cues. However, along the same timeline, humans have also evolved bigger brains and developed language and culture, and so response to visual stimuli does not give you the excuse to be a jerk.

Your Horoscope

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ARES — Perseverance is your word today. You will not become frustrated at your continued inability to separate quarks from each other.

TAURUS — You will suspect that the force pushing you away from the center of a circle is in fact a figment of your imagination, and would not be there if you were to analyze your motion in an inertial reference frame.

GEMINI — Don’t let your curiosity get the better of you. Checking which path the particles are taking will destroy the interference pattern of that double-slit experiment, and you will be found out.

CANCER — The positions of the stars and planets will have no effect on your daily existence.

LEO — All around you, elementary particles and antiparticles will pop into existence and then wink out, but you will remain calm and blissfully unaware of them.

VIRGO — Weigh your choices carefully: your decision to flap your arms or not will affect the weather far away. Breaking that high-level encryption will be easier once you finish that quantum computer you’ve been working on.

LIBRA — Despite your best efforts, you will increase entropy when converting thermal energy to mechanical work. You will strive to conserve energy, and succeed.

SCORPIO — You are a cold-blooded mass-murderer and “Dirty Harry” Callahan will make sure you get what’s coming to you. The number “five” figures prominently in your day.

SAGITTARIUS — You will be unable to simultaneously determine the position and momentum of any objects today, nor place two fermions in the same quantum state. Not a good time to start a new relationship with another spin 1/2 particle.

CAPRICORN — Ennui sets in: you continue to be affected by the same physics, unchanged, no matter which inertial reference frame you find yourself in.

AQUARIUS — Despite your best attempt to be in two places at once, quantum superposition eludes your grasp, partly because the creep in accounting keeps trying to “measure” you.

PISCES — You notice that your buoyancy is equal to the weight of water that you displace. Resist the urge to announce this fact overzealously.