Academia
Category archives for Academia
The Visual Presentation of Misleading Information, Anti-Asian Bias Edition
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 28, 2012 
In which the skewing of a data plot in Ron Unz’s epic investigation of college admissions makes me more skeptical of his overall claim, thanks to the misleading tricks employed. ———— Steve Hsu has a new post on a favorite topic of his, bias against Asians in higher ed admissions. This is based on a…
Why Are Physics Classes Full of Old Stuff?
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 15, 2012 
Everybody and their siblings have been linking to this Minute Physics video, an “open letter” to President Obama complaining about the way that most high school and even intro college physics classes don’t teach anything remotely modern: I’m not entirely sure where the date of 1865 comes from, but it’s true, the standard intro physics…
Twilight of the Elites and the Rise of the Culture
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 9, 2012 In which I use my double license as a physicist and a science fiction fan to engage in some half-assed futurism spinning off Chris Hayes’s much-discussed book. ————- I don’t read a lot of political books, because I tend to find them frustrating. They’re usually surprisingly ephemeral, trying to spin Deep Meaning out of a…
Science Is Our Human Heritage
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 18, 2012 
In which I get a little rant-y about yet another proud display of ignorance from the Washington Post’s education blog. ———— Some time back, I teed off on a school board member who couldn’t pass a simple math test, who proudly told the world about his ignorance via a post at the Washington Post‘s education…
How Would You Do a Gender-Blind Faculty Search?
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 25, 2012 There’s been a lot of bloggage recently about a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicating bias toward male students on the part of faculty who thought they were evaluating an application for a laboratory manager. Half of the faculty in the study were given an application with “Jennifer” at…
The “Ballistic” Story
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 13, 2012 Last week, in the post about fermion conduction, I left a reference hanging: There’s nothing physically blocking the atoms from flying right through the channel– in fact, an atom that enters the channel will always exit the other side without slowing down along the way. This is termed “ballistic,” a term that will always have…
Graduation 2012
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 13, 2012 I just realized that I forgot to do the annual congratulatory post for our graduates this year. I plead jet lag– my flight back from DAMOP didn’t get in until after midnight, and graduation was first thing Sunday morning. I didn’t march in the procession for only the third time– instead, I snuck around back…
How Did the arXiv Succeed?
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 12, 2012 In which we look again at the question of why, despite the image of physicists as arrogant bastards, biologists turn out to be much less collegial than physicists. ———— While I was away from the blog, there was a spate of discussion of science outreach and demands on faculty time, my feelings about which are…
Excellent Approximations and Lying to Children
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 31, 2012 In which I talk about the common complaint that we teach students physics that “isn’t true,” and the limits on that statement. ———— Frequent commenter Ron sent me an email pointing to this post by David Reed on “What we “know” that t’aint so…. and insist on teaching to kids!”: he science we teach is…
What Does It Take to Evaluate Teaching?
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 30, 2012 In which we compare a couple of different systems for evaluating teachers, looking at what’s involved in doing a fair assessment of a teacher’s performance. ——– Another casualty of the great blog upgrade, in the sense of a post that was delayed until the inspiration for it has been forgotten by most of the people…
