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Plorkyeran posted:what changed is that british metal isn't really a thing anymore something something steel industry
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Nov 20, 2016 18:58
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Many wiki articles are too complex. As a person with a computer science degree, i still often find pages about comp sci concepts that border on unreadable. Just formulas everywhere with lousy summaries
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Nov 21, 2016 07:32
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true enough, otoh the expectation of everything being explainable to a layman in an elevator pitch is a bit of a sickness of our times, i nearly went mad after my phd with people demanding an explanation of what my research was about and frowning deeply when the explanation wasn't to their liking
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Nov 21, 2016 11:13
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:true enough, otoh the expectation of everything being explainable to a layman in an elevator pitch is a bit of a sickness of our times, i nearly went mad after my phd with people demanding an explanation of what my research was about and frowning deeply when the explanation wasn't to their liking maybe if you could explain it properly people would be interested, and would pursue education themselves
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Nov 21, 2016 11:29
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people are too concerned with straight up STEM and don't think of other things, and get surprised when people don't think the same way and so on and soforth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z5_uHOONNE
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Nov 21, 2016 11:39
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SmokaDustbowl posted:maybe if you could explain it properly people would be interested, and would pursue education themselves my contention is that there is no "explain it properly" unless i can have ~45 minutes (and doing it in that time involves a rather practiced chain of explanations, and certainly requires some focus to follow), but people expect the elevator pitch thing which will not communicate anything it is unclear what basis there is for this "proper explanation" necessarily existing for everything
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Nov 21, 2016 13:03
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:my contention is that there is no "explain it properly" unless i can have ~45 minutes (and doing it in that time involves a rather practiced chain of explanations, and certainly requires some focus to follow), but people expect the elevator pitch thing which will not communicate anything so what do you study?
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Nov 21, 2016 13:08
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this was in automata theory
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Nov 21, 2016 13:12
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:this was in automata theory that didn't take 45 min, just go with that
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Nov 21, 2016 14:12
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i think it is implicit in the question about my research that people are wishing to get an inkling about what my research actually produced, rather than to get a mundane fact about me i'd hope at least
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Nov 21, 2016 15:00
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:true enough, otoh the expectation of everything being explainable to a layman in an elevator pitch is a bit of a sickness of our times, i nearly went mad after my phd with people demanding an explanation of what my research was about and frowning deeply when the explanation wasn't to their liking the thing that drives me crazy is stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyce%E2%80%93Codd_normal_form I remembered a few weeks ago "Hey, Boyce-Codd Normal Form is an important thing about databases I learned in college, but I've forgotten exactly what it is. I will look at the Wikipedia article" Hmmm...this is effectively gibberish, and it's a thing I used to know. If it can't even offer a refresher to a person who used to somewhat understand it, who exactly is helped by this page?
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Nov 21, 2016 15:46
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yeah, that article is really badly written, i too have known boyce-codd off-hand and the article does little to remind me what the logic behind it was. it even veers off and talks about how to improve a random schema in a way *not* consistent with boyce-codd towards the end?!
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Nov 21, 2016 15:50
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Wangs
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Nov 21, 2016 15:53
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Can't be all that complicated if it's automatic
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Nov 21, 2016 16:43
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:i think it is implicit in the question about my research that people are wishing to get an inkling about what my research actually produced, rather than to get a mundane fact about me just tell them to read that science book by the mathematica guy and mutter something about the game of life
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Nov 21, 2016 20:02
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:my contention is that there is no "explain it properly" unless i can have ~45 minutes (and doing it in that time involves a rather practiced chain of explanations, and certainly requires some focus to follow), but people expect the elevator pitch thing which will not communicate anything ahhhhh, academia the ability to take a complicated topic and produce explanations suited to a variety of levels is an extremely important skill in education, and unfortunately also quite rare. the people who want the elevator pitch don't care about if it's a "proper" explanation, they want a comprehensible sound bite. pick a potential outcome of your research and give them that. "i worked on math that could help robots more easily sort objects by shape" or whatever. think of how you learned about atoms through grade school 2nd grade: "atoms are the tiniest things that make up all matter" 4th grade: "actually, atoms are made of combinations of positive protons and negative electrons and neutral neutrons." 6th grade: "actually the particles aren't just floating there, the protons and neutrons make the nucleus, and the electrons orbit around it." 8th grade: "actually the orbits don't all spin around at the same level, they group into specific bunches that orbit in shells around the nucleus." 10th grade: "actually the shells aren't shells at all, they are these areas shaped like barbells and donuts" 12th grade: "actually the funny areas don't describe any sort of path for the electrons, they're just a graph of the probability of finding an electron in that space at any given time" all of those are true, and appropriate to the audience. some are closer to the truth than others. you pick which one your audience will understand and don't sweat whether it's "proper"
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Nov 22, 2016 03:52
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yeah, you have to start at or around the simplest explanation and then build up if people have questions. probably half of people won't push back at all, but if they ask questions you can advance the complexity based on how knowledgeable the question was. this is called conversation fyi
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Nov 22, 2016 04:04
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maybe just relate your research to something cool and popular that everyone loves, like cat memes?
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Nov 22, 2016 05:46
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theflyingexecutive posted:this is called conversation fyi well poo poo
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Nov 22, 2016 06:46
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except in a lot of theory work simplifications will almost always be oversimplifications, the details matter, and even the 45 minute version by necessity has to build up a broader idea from smaller pieces, rather than try to make overarching statements which can be refined e: this'll become a rather too serious derail, i do respect your views, but still feel that the length of an acceptable explanation has plummeted too far Cybernetic Vermin fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 08:17
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I can and have talked about my neuroscience research in one easily digestible sentence up to a two hour informal lecture. some people ask what you do because it's the conversational path of least resistance, some people ask because they're really interested, some people ask to try to one up you. if your answer for all of these people is the same "well I can't just explain it in five minutes" and you launch into a half an hour monologue trying to condense a whole degree's worth of knowledge into one unbroken stream of consciousness, you have some degree of autism.
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Nov 22, 2016 08:45
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I don't know why you have some "ideal" length of discourse in an informal situation. absolutely nobody is going to say "hey automata theory is really simple" and then attribute a bunch of incorrect quotes to you. there isn't enough space in anyone's brain to learn enough for an hour's worth of knowledge on everybody's profession, much less research area and everybody knows this. so when somebody asks you what you do and you start to spin up a diatribe about data structures or whatev the gently caress and they're still confused and frustrated that you can't bring it to their level of understanding, you come off like an elitist rear end in a top hat. I talked with a bunch of astrophysicists trying to get a simons fdn fellowship and they were absolutely incapable of understanding this basic human interaction and really dismissive of my work because of my affiliation with a public school (they were Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, et al). so the end result is that they didn't listen to what I had to say and I couldn't even process what they had to say and there was nothing of value gained. fwiw, trump was voted in by a massive segment of our population who feel they are constantly talked down to and the attitude of "I can't explain what I do in only five minutes" is condescending and gross
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Nov 22, 2016 09:04
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theflyingexecutive posted:I can and have talked about my neuroscience research in one easily digestible sentence up to a two hour informal lecture. mega agreed, but eventually I just started saying I used to be a rat catcher tbh
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Nov 22, 2016 09:43
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this isn't a joke. i realised it had gone too far when some guy in a bar was like "so how did you get into technology from pest control?"
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Nov 22, 2016 09:45
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i mean, as a thought experiment, inspired by your comment about atoms: how would one teach children mathematics by in first grade giving a digestible intuitive description of solving quadratic equations, and then filling in the details over time? one likely should make that combinatorial game theory or something slightly nastier to put it more on an reasonable even footing to understanding the atom, but no need to make it overly difficult up front i can understand it being workable in proper science, in that a clear underlying hypothesis is actually core to the way it is done (and there is usually a history of such hypothesis to draw upon), but in e.g. mathematics, philosophy, and no doubt many other areas i am struggling to make it work Cybernetic Vermin fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 10:26
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Sagebrush posted:12th grade: "actually the funny areas don't describe any sort of path for the electrons, they're just a graph of the probability of finding an electron in that space at any given time" there is also the fact that nobody actually knows the "proper" explanation yet because physics isn't finished
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Nov 22, 2016 13:30
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qntm posted:there is also the fact that nobody actually knows the "proper" explanation yet because physics isn't finished God knows u idiot
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Nov 22, 2016 13:48
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as a math person let me just say that we actively cultivate in students sperg-level attention to technical detail because even incredibly famous and brilliant people have been known to make errors by glossing over small assumptions in their proofs. the sperg culture of pure math and related fields like theoretical comp sci came about only when the deficiencies of the prevailing intuition based culture became untenable, not bc spergs gotta sperg. (altho nowadays it might draw spergy people to it by affinity) that does tend to make one very uncomfortable with oversimplifying for the sake of tidy explanations, though. this is especially hard if the work itself is not immediately related to something understood by the general population. i mean it's often hard to neatly impress upon people the importance of basic math like trig and calculus, let alone automata theory or algebraic topology or whatever. neuroscience for example clearly has many deeply technical and difficult challenges, but at least everyone can appreciate ultimate goals like "im trying to understand how x helps the brain stores memory" or "i'm trying to cure epilepsy" or whatever idk
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Nov 22, 2016 16:00
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:except in a lot of theory work simplifications will almost always be oversimplifications, the details matter, and even the 45 minute version by necessity has to build up a broader idea from smaller pieces, rather than try to make overarching statements which can be refined it's okay to oversimplify. your one sentence description could even be outright entirely wrong and have no connection whatsoever to your actual work and still be useful. i don't even work on anything particularly esoteric and when non-technical people ask me what i do it usually takes a few followup questions to get to an answer that isn't outright wrong or oversimplified to the point of meaninglessness because 90% of the people asking aren't actually interested in an answer beyond "computer things" the purpose of an elevator pitch is to tell the asker whether or not they actually want to learn more about your thing, not to actually convey any information about that thing
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Nov 22, 2016 20:31
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if your topic is something in pure math that doesn't have an easily comprehensible explanation, like, say, the riemann-zeta function, you can come up with a real-world application that could conceivably be improved by your research. like "well, i study math that helps describe attraction between objects at extremely tiny scales" (the casimir effect). that's technically correct and gives the other person an opportunity to either engage further or to glaze over and change the topic. itt: how to have a conversation like a normal human being you loving nerds if your topic literally has no relevance to any conceivable real world application, well, go huff your own farts some more, cause probably no one actually does care about it in that case
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Nov 22, 2016 20:40
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yeah if you can't come up with the real world applications of your research, look at your grant app. there's a whole section just for that jesus
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Nov 22, 2016 21:21
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Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:as a math person let me just say that we actively cultivate in students sperg-level attention to technical detail because even incredibly famous and brilliant people have been known to make errors by glossing over small assumptions in their proofs. the sperg culture of pure math and related fields like theoretical comp sci came about only when the deficiencies of the prevailing intuition based culture became untenable, not bc spergs gotta sperg. (altho nowadays it might draw spergy people to it by affinity) it's great to have that attention to detail but the people paying and hiring you will likely never understand every specific detail you possess and getting that paper will involve having to explain what you do to less-technical or even (gasp!) a layperson
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Nov 22, 2016 21:32
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Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:neuroscience for example clearly has many deeply technical and difficult challenges, but at least everyone can appreciate ultimate goals like "im trying to understand how x helps the brain stores memory" or "i'm trying to cure epilepsy" or whatever idk nah fam we just had too many rats
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Nov 22, 2016 21:33
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grant-driven soundbyte research is certainly sounding like an excellent ideal, hopefully i'll get to be interviewed by a tabloid about my take on the latest health scare one of these days~~
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Nov 22, 2016 21:57
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:grant-driven soundbyte research is certainly sounding like an excellent ideal, hopefully i'll get to be interviewed by a tabloid about my take on the latest health scare one of these days~~ settle down poindexter. we get it. you don't have to explain your deep thoughts to us normies, and it was wrong of us to ask. just try not to bourbaki the everloving piss out of wiki pages we might actually need to use, m'kay
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Nov 22, 2016 22:20
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:grant-driven soundbyte research is certainly sounding like an excellent ideal, hopefully i'll get to be interviewed by a tabloid about my take on the latest health scare one of these days~~ try to imagine explaining your research to your grandmother, and every time you act like a condescending prick she smiles sadly and says "oh, i guess i'm just not very smart"
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Nov 22, 2016 23:07
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lmao what the hell is wrong with you cybernetic vermin
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Nov 22, 2016 23:08
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Sagebrush posted:if your topic literally has no relevance to any conceivable real world application, well, go huff your own farts some more, cause probably no one actually does care about it in that case yeah, only loving nerds enjoy something for it's abstract beauty, the only worthwhile thing is raw utility *posts 50 threads in computer forum about johnny ive's amazing industrial design*
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Nov 22, 2016 23:23
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:soundbyte
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Nov 23, 2016 00:00
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Graff posted:this isn't a joke. i realised it had gone too far when some guy in a bar was like "so how did you get into technology from pest control?" sometimes the answers just come to you i guess
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Nov 23, 2016 00:57
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