via /v/

[Via @HokutoAndy I think.]

The Noguchi filing system

The filing system proposed and used by Noguchi Yukio is worth a look. To employ the system, you’ll need to discard many conventional notions about how to store paper documents. Here’s how it works:

You need a set of A4 (letter)-sized envelopes and some way to mark the outside of the envelopes. If you want, you can color-code them with markers.

Take every document and store it in an A4-sized envelope with the flaps cut off, as shown here.

Mark the title and date of the document on the side of the envelope, as shown, and the envelopes are stored vertically on a bookshelf.

Don’t attempt to classify documents. The color coding is optional, and only there to help you find documents more quickly.

Add any new document to the left end of the “envelope buffer.” Whenever a document is used (i.e., the envelope removed from the shelf), return it to the left end of the bookshelf. The result of this system is that the most recent and frequently used documents move to the left, while documents that are rarely or never used migrate to the right.

Over time, some of the files on the right side of the shelf will be classified as “holy files” which you will retain indefinitely. Remove these from the shelf and store them in boxes. If a “holy file” is in use, it is part of the working file group at the left. Thus, holy files are really dead files which you cannot part with. Get them out of sight into a box.

When you need more space, throw away any documents that you consider “unnecessary.”

via: communicationnation (via: noguchi.co.jp)

…the for-profit weather forecasters rarely predict exactly a 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy and indecisive to consumers.  Instead, they’ll flip a coin and round up to 60, or down to 40, even though this makes the forecasts both less accurate and less honest.

From the new book: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t.

via MarginalRevolution

The detection of interstellar boron sulfide: A Motivational Correspondance →

jjcharfman:

Does everyone remember the famous letter from Caltech chemist Erick Carreira to his unruly, unmotivated, and apparently unprincipled laboratory assistant? Or subsequent  discussion about the compulsory workaholic culture of academic chemistry which followed the letter’s publication in 2010?

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/i-expect-you-to-correct-your-work-ethic.html

http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2010/06/22/something-deeply-wrong-with-chemistry/

I was recently reminded of Carreira’s letter by the latest masterpiece to come out of this genre of management style. This somewhat longer communication was recently (~ 2 weeks ago?) sent to the entire graduate student body enrolled in the well-regarded astronomy program at Unnamed Academy: 

Dear Grads,

The Academic Program Committee (Professor A, Professor B, Professor C, Professor D, Professor E , Professor F, Professor G, Professor H, Professor I, Professor J, Professor K) just completed its review of the grads.  Below is a long letter (which is usually better than several shorter ones) summarizing that review, some information for graduate students, and the concerns that you expressed in your department evaluations.

In general, we are pleased with how our students are progressing through our program.

There are, however, several areas of concern that we want to bring to your attention.

First, while some students are clearly putting their hearts and souls into their research, and spending the hours at the office or lab that are required, others are not.  We have received some questions about how many hours a graduate student is expected to work.  There is no easy answer, as what matters is your productivity, particularly in the form of good scientific papers.  However, if you informally canvass the faculty (those people for whose jobs you came here to train), most will tell you that they worked 80-100 hours/week in graduate school.  No one told us to work those hours, but we enjoyed what we were doing enough to want to do so.  We were almost always at the office, including at night and on weekends.  Nowadays, with the internet, it is fine to work from home sometimes, but you still miss out on learning from and forming collaborations with other graduate students when everyone does not work in the same place at the same time.  

We realize that students with families will not have 80-100 hours/week to spend at work.  Again, what matters most is productivity.  Any faculty member or mentoring/thesis committee will be more than happy to work with any student to develop strategies to maximize productivity, even in those cases where the student is unable to devote more than 60 hours to their work per week.

You were all admitted to our program because you expressed the ambition of becoming a research astronomer.  We know that you are concerned about the market for post-docs and faculty positions.  Yet the market is no worse or better than it is has been for at least a decade or two.  The people who will get the best jobs are the type of people who always get the best jobs, those with a truly exceptional level of dedication to science, who seize ownership of their research and careers, and who fix problems instead of blaming others for them.  If you find yourself thinking about astronomy and wanting to work on your research most of your waking hours, then academic research may in fact be the best career choice for you.

Second, a related problem is that some students are not reading enough of the literature.  All students should read at least several papers/week.  You do not have to read the entire paper, as sometimes just the abstract, intro, figures, and conclusions will provide you with sufficient information.  Nevertheless, please read.  Knowing what is going on, right now, in your field and other fields is crucial to your development as a scientist.  We would like to see more students engaged in defining their research projects and theses.  We would like to receive more telescope proposals from students and post-docs that do not include faculty members.  To do so, a detailed knowledge of the literature is a must.

Third, we are pleased with how Science Coffee and Journal Club are going and thank the many students who help make both of those opportunities available to everyone.  We also recognize that we as a faculty need to do a better job at participating.  Yet we have received some student comments about the way in which faculty do participate.  Namely, that some faculty-student interactions have become too intense.  In these cases, it is not the faculty member’s intention to make the student uncomfortable.   The faculty member means to interact with the student as he or she would a peer.  That should be flattering to the student!  Faculty questions (at least in this department) do not arise from a desire to embarrass a student speaker, but from a real scientific interest in the answer.  In such cases, the student should do his or her best to respond and, frankly, to consider the experience good (and relatively gentle) training for any discussion at Caltech or at Tuesday Lunch at the Princetitute.

Fourth, in their evaluations for the APC, some students alluded to research or advisor problems that other students were having and that “no one else knew about.”  If you have a problem of any kind, or know someone who does, please come and talk with me or another faculty member.  Encourage the other student to do so.  Use your mentoring/thesis committees with or without your advisor present.  It makes no sense for someone to be struggling and not seek help.  These problems can be solved, but only after they are uncovered.  

Fifth, while we welcome the thoughtful, honest, and insightful comments that we generally receive from students in their department evaluations, a few students are somewhat rude.  In those cases, it is hard to draw sympathy for your problem.  In your career, providing constructive criticism to your department and colleagues is important and should be valued.  Being negative and disrespectful will generally not fix the problems and will make colleagues less likely to work with you.

Sixth, grant budgets are now tighter than ever before.  If we are to maintain the typically high levels of funding that our graduate program receives, it would be helpful to have more grads on fellowships.  Obtaining a fellowship is also helpful to your career, as having one adds to the sparkle of your CV.  For new funding opportunities, please check out:

[link to other department at Unnamed Academy]

Some of these funds are available only though [other dept] (so you are not eligible), but others are general.  We realize that we need one of these pages on our website.  Any volunteers to work to compile it and to make sure that Staff Member P lists it on our webpages?

Seventh, please set up your mentoring/thesis committee meetings for this term if you have not already done so. 

Check out the graduate program webpage:

[link to webpage at Unnamed Academy]

to learn about these committees.  

Here are some important words about mentoring committees written by a graduate student:

“One thing we do require, and only require b/c it can be so very helpful, is a mentoring committee. A MC is a group of people the student chooses.  Students are supposed to have them once/semester (so schedule yours now).  We want you to benefit from the guidance/expertise/support of more than just your one advisor.

Most 1st-semester students have no idea who to put on a MC. You choose people by asking your advisor for suggestions (although, it is ultimately your call), asking other grad students, looking at the faculty webpages to see who works on subjects you like, or, failing all that, just guess. If nothing else, try a few people initially, and you can always change it later… .

A MC meeting can be very informal, and everyone understands it’s early in the work, so you may not have much to talk about. Basically, pick some people, pick a time, get a conference room reserved (email Staff Member Q), show up, and talk about your work for 30min or so.  Let people ask you questions (or maybe they’ll ask your advisor), don’t be afraid if you don’ t know the answers, and try to get to know the faculty and have them get to know you & your project so they can help you.”

Eighth, by the end of the 5th semester, each student is *required* to submit a thesis plan and timeline to the department office, Graduate Advisor, and their thesis committee. The thesis plan can be modified and made more detailed as the student’s thesis research continues. The initial plan should include rough outlines of the thesis chapters. For each chapter that is a science research paper, the student should summarize the science question being addressed, why that question is important, why it hasn’t already been addressed by others, and how his/her work will lead potentially to a resolution. Later iterations of the thesis plan, prepared before and revised after thesis committee meetings, should include detailed outlines and figures for each chapter.

The timeline can also be modified over time based on how the direction and/or scope of the research changes. Graduate students are guaranteed funding for five years. Given that the average time to graduation is 5.5 years, any extension of the thesis defense date beyond the sixth year of graduate study requires the approval of the Academic Program Committee.  Current fifth and sixth year students will shortly be receiving a letter from the APC noting these requirements.

Ninth, please send Staff Member P an update of your Areas of Interest and brief summary of current research for the department webpages.  This is important for potential employers who are checking our our graduate student population and also for showing prospective graduate students all the interesting stuff we’re doing.

Tenth, your evaluations of our program identified some concerns, including a lack of computer support, inadequate representation of women and minorities among the faculty and colloquium speakers, and poor attendance by faculty at various department talks and functions.  We are working on all three.  Professor E has developed a plan for better student support of student computing.  The faculty hiring committee is developing a detailed plan to make sure that the best women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply and carefully considered for the job.  The colloquium organizers have been made aware of your concerns.  All faculty are being strongly encouraged to participate more in the intellectual atmosphere of the department.  Do not ease up on reminding us of these points.

Lastly, please discuss any or all of these issues in the Graduate Student Council.  I would like a representative from the council to get back to me about that discussion.  

We would also appreciate it if the Graduate Student Council could provide us with a list of all students who have served or would like to serve in a service role and what that role is/was.

All the best,

Professor Z

I would normally be happy to identify the institution and professors named to anyone truly interested in knowing them; however I am unlikely to have time to respond to any e-mails sent, due to the ~60 additional hours I will be putting in at my job. (Oh, and let’s not forget that grad students are usually half-time employees, working well into their first decade of adulthood at poverty-level wages. Typically with only the most minimal health insurance, no dental, and certainly no other benefits. Even in STEM fields. If that doesn’t say dedication, I don’t know what does.)

please give me milk of your warmth darling

I know no one uses tumblr to actually ‘blog’ anymore

Today was the third consecutive day of hail-producing thunderstorms 
in the sj valley...which could be a record in itself considering how 
rare it is to even have two back to back days of thunderstorms in 
the valley. Perhaps the only saving Grace this afternoon was that 
no thunderstorm in the valley became severe (produced large hail or 
spawned a tornado.) This was largely due to the fact that much of 
the valley was rain-cooled and remained too cloudy. Otherwise...the 
precipitation during the past few days has overall been a Blessing. 
Although the replenishment of water has been beneficial...the 
seasonal precipitation deficit remains large. We would need two or three 
more storm systems like this one to bring US to normal. That said... 
the forecast looks pretty grim for the next 7 days as the models 
keep the storm track to our north.

In what is perhaps a call to my dream of being a meteorologist, one of my guilty pleasures has always been keeping track of the weather. Specifically, I like to follow the National Weather Service Scientific Forecaster Discussion for whatever area I’m in.

In a rare break in ‘character’, I noticed this brief lapse in deadpan objectivity in today’s discussion. It made me happy for a moment, but then it made me very, very sad. I still don’t think our generation is taking this climate change thing very seriously.

‘Facebook is an international parasitism project’.

Richard Stallman from the CSAIL Mailing List

    I like how you think not using Facebook is more important than supporting
    an initiative that helps international development projects... 

Facebook is an international parasitism project.

I don't know the details of the development projects
so I won't try to  estimate how much good any of them might do.
But it is clear they could have done this in some
other way, instead of Facebook.  In other words, the question
of comparing the good of these projects against the harm of Facebook
arises because someone made an snap choice.

If people involved now complain and say, politely, "I'm staying
away from Facebook", next time they will think about the question
and they will do it in some other way.

[source]

Curious about the nature of the information handed over to the authorities when your Facebook account is subpoenaed? Have a look for yourself.

A Wall Street Journal examination of 100 of the most popular Facebook apps found that some seek the email addresses, current location and sexual preference, among other details, not only of app users but also of their Facebook friends.

…

Facebook requires apps to ask permission before accessing a user’s personal details. However, a user’s friends aren’t notified if information about them is used by a friend’s app. An examination of the apps’ activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn’t enforcing its own rules on data privacy.

[source]

Take it as you will.