have an empty email inbox at the end of the week. A state I rarely achieve, but enjoy intensely when I can achieve it.
I learned a new and useful phrase today: marginal efficiency. Meaning making the decision fast enough and doing the job well enough to achieve your desired ends in the least amount of time.
Marginal efficiency: I want it. I will get it.
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Categories: research
From Gregory Benford and Confessions of a science librarian
My favorite piece of advice in the article is to make sure that you have as many trendy buzz words in your title as possible. And of course, make sure that you overstate your results.
Suppose that you view a paper as a mature adult when the acceptance letter is finally written. According to that time-scale, the paper is probably a young toddler at first submission.
found via: See Jane Compute
Categories: research
I wish that when I was on the job market, I knew what I know now. All the things I was tense about then are irrelevant. I should have been tense about all the things I thought were irrelevant back then.
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Categories: random
All the open source tools are great. But I generally feel like a giant idiot when I first try them—the documentation is written for someone other than me—typically the designer of the tool, or someone who already understands how to use the software already. I know that I should volunteer to rewrite some of the documentation. Even after using some of the tools, I likely don’t understand enough of them to write decent documentation.
I am sure there is a teaching lesson in here, somewhere.
Categories: life
Berkeley Madonna 8.3.18 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker
Its a tool to solve ODEs numerically.
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Categories: research
The students treat me better—with more respect—when I wear a tie.
Mark Cuban on “the suit” – (37signals)
I wonder why?
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Categories: teaching
It’s too fast. Or the papers are too short. Either way, it does not give a good signal about your ability to teach and do research.
Discipline specific advice, I think.
Categories: research
from tony pierce:
you dont need teleprompters when youre not full of shit
(that’s the whole piece of advice, but the embedded utube is pretty great. and worth seeing again)
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Categories: research
but I have encountered most of them myself. I have never met an academic who is not ‘the wannabe’ mixed with the ‘pet peeved.’
via:
30gms – A Visual Digest by Fibre | Brand Camp
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Categories: refereeing
Here is something that I agree completely with, and applies to great papers:
signal v noise on the apple phone
<snip>
The basics are the secrets of business. Execute on the basics beautifully and you’ll have a lot of customers knocking at your door. Cool wears off, usefulness never does.
<snip>
The best research advice I ever received was to work on your own idea before reading anyone else’s papers on a topic. And use the basic toolkit to solve your problem. If you have a good problem and use the tools cleverly, you have a home run.
I realize the strategy is not be for everyone—if your work is about technical advances, then you need to know the latest fancy widgets. But the big advances have come from applying basic principles in creative and new ways.
Noted because I want to drill the advice into my head, as I start looking around for a new paper to write.
Categories: research
