polls
drorzel | February 6, 2012So, my Giants edged out Kate's Patriots again in the Chateau Steelypips Bowl, in a game that was certainly not without its drama. I'm not going to gloat about it, because a couple of different bounces here or there easily could've changed the outcome. Also, I didn't see the third quarter at all, really, because it was SteelyKid's bedtime, and I was upstairs reading her stories.
But as good as the game was, we now have to turn toward the future, and specifically what wacky thing will go wrong to prevent the Giants from doing anything significant next year. "What do you mean?" you ask. Well,…
drorzel | February 5, 2012Like many Americans, I'm going to be hugely preoccupied today. Thus, a poll for your blog-like entertainment needs:
The Super Bowl is today. Who's going to win?
If you choose the last option, please arrange to have contacted me in the past to tell me who to have laid a significant bet on so I will have won a large sum of money.
drorzel | January 4, 2012It's the first day of class today (for me, anyway-- classes technically started yesterday, but I don't teach on Tuesdays this term). This, of course, means that something will go horribly wrong. The question is, what?
What will go wrong on the first day of class today?
This is a class for first-year students, so quantum superpositions of multiple answers are not allowed.
drorzel | August 18, 2011I've moved on to the second of three academic writing projects I wanted to work on this summer (yes, I know I'm rapidly running out of summer...), which is a sort of review article on which I will be the only author. This creates an awkward situation in the introductory material, because it just feels wrong to use the first-person singular pronoun in an academic context. This is not a new problem for me-- my advisor pointed out that the only place I used "I" in my Ph.D. thesis was in the acknowledgements-- and other people have the same issue, so this seems like a perfect topic for a poll:…
drorzel | July 15, 2011Prompted by this and this, among other things, one of the critical questions of the modern age:
Harry Potter is a:
Magic is a classical phenomenon, no matter what you may have heard, so you can choose one and only one option.
drorzel | July 13, 2011Last week Doug Natelson noted a drop-off in active physics blogs. This had not gone unnoticed hereabouts, though I couldn't immediately think of what to say about that. Yesterday, though, former ScienceBlogs wrangler Christopher Mims provided a possible answer: Google+ has destroyed blogging completely.
I would've liked to find a way to tie all this together into a deep and meditative blog post about the nature of blogging and the reasons for the decline of physics blogging specifically (to the extent that this is a decline, which is somewhat debatable). I have a faculty meeting to go to this…
drorzel | June 22, 2011A lot of people who rail against popular music (hipsters, classical music snobs, etc.) will cite the mere presence of one or more saxophones in a song as evidence that it sucks, as if saxophones are inherently evil. I've never really understood this attitude, and wonder how widespread it is. Thus, a poll:
Saxophone solos in popular music are:Market Research
(The proximate cause of this was some clueless ranting on a pseudonymous LiveJournal, and the recent death of Clarence Clemons, but it's something I've wondered about for a long while, and been keeping in reserve for a day when I needed a…
drorzel | April 27, 2011Union's edition of the chase-each-other-with-Nerf-guns game Humans vs. Zombies kicks off next week, and has prompted some discussion of whether this is just a harmless way of blowing off steam, or an existential threat to the core mission of academia. While some of this has been vaguely entertaining, it ignores the really important question:
Who would win:online surveys
We're talking classical movie-type zombies, here, not Schrödinger cats that are alive and dead at the same time, so you can only choose one answer at a time.
drorzel | April 17, 2011A very silly musical poll question, brought to you by the local classic rock station's music selection this morning:
Which of these makes more sense:online surveys
On an unrelated note, it's deeply unfair that sleeping really late puts SteelyKid into a worse mood than not getting enough sleep does.
drorzel | April 1, 2011Another day, another snowfall. Sigh. Thus, a poll:
Snow on April 1 is:online survey
Snow, even in springtime, is depressingly, boringly, classical, so you may choose one and only one option, not a quantum superposition of multiple answers.
drorzel | March 16, 2011I got home very late last night after my talk in New Paltz, the cold that I've been developing for the last week has hit full strength, and I'm giving an exam this morning. So here's something completely silly:
Which sister do you prefer?Market Research
For bonus points, guess which of these songs I have on my iPod.
drorzel | March 8, 2011It's the last week of the winter term here, so here is a totally serious and important music-related poll question:
Which do you prefer?survey software
(OK, maybe the end-of-term craziness is making me just a tiny bit punchy...)
drorzel | February 11, 2011The always fraught question of student course evaluations has come up again on campus. In discussions, the correlation between "expected grade" and "overall evaluation" has once again been noted-- that is, students who report expecting a higher grade are more likely to give a good overall score to their professors than students who expect a lower grade. Which, of course, does not indicate a causal relationship between those two things, but that doesn't stop us from spinning hypotheses. Thus, a poll question:
There is a positive correlation between the expected grade reported and the…
drorzel | January 20, 2011A pretty straightforward question: Which prime number do you like the best?
What's your favorite prime number?online surveys
This is a purely classical poll, so you only get to choose one favorite, not a superposition of multiple numbers. Your selection is legally binding, so choose wisely!
(There's actually a point to putting this up today, beyond providing some cheap and easy blog traffic... I'll explain later.)
drorzel | January 10, 2011A seasonally appropriate poll, brought to you by this morning's frigid dog walk (15F/ -9C), and the memory of a newscast back when I was in Maryland that referred to an overnight low temperature of 22F/-6C as "Bitter, bitter cold":
The maximum (daytime high) temperature I would characterize as "bitter cold" would be:survey software
For the purposes of this poll, assume a still day with no significant "wind chill." All of these temperatures are too high for quantum effects to be significant, so you may only choose one answer at a time, not a superposition of multiple answers.
drorzel | January 3, 2011The clock in my classroom for this term appears to be set five minutes slow. Which is an improvement over the one in the hall that's ten minutes slow, but kind of plays hell with starting and ending class on time. It is, however, a great excuse for a poll:
Clocks in academic buildings should be set:survey software
Combine the odd clock settings with our daft class schedule (to make our ten-week terms nominally equivalent to standard semester classes, we teach in 65-minute blocks instead of the more typical 50-minute blocks. This means that classes start and end at odd times, which I've never…
drorzel | January 3, 2011It's the first day of the new term, and the projector bulb that was working on Friday decided to stop working by Sunday. After that bit of excitement this morning, plus my lecture, I'm beat. I always forget how much talking is involved in intro physics lectures.
My class for the term is the first term of introductory physics, which seems like a good idea for a poll:
What is your favorite part of Newtonian physics?online survey
Given the book we use, "The Momentum Principle," "The Energy Principle," and "The Angular Momentum Principle" would be better names for what I've got in mind, but it's…
drorzel | December 28, 2010It's the last week of the (calendar) year, which means it's a good time to recap the previous twelve months worth of scientific news. Typically, publications like Physics World will publish a list of top ten physics stories of 2010, but we're all Web 2.0 these days, so it seems more appropriate to put this to a poll:
What is the top physics story of 2010?survey software
I've used the Physics World list as a starting point, because you have to start somewhere. I added a few options to cover the possibility that they left something out, and, of course, you know where the comments are.
This poll…
drorzel | December 11, 2010It's time now to talk about two of the greatest mentor figures in the literature of the fantastic. You know their stories well, I'm sure, but the parallels between them are eerie:
Both are gruff but kindly mentor figures who provide crucial guidance for the young and naive protagonist of the story as he moves out into a scary world to complete an important quest.
Both fall into a chasm while battling a fearsome monster to allow the protagonist time to flee.
Both return from their apparent death when least expected, just in time to save the day.
Both have awesomely impressive beards.
I am…
drorzel | December 9, 2010Over at Backreaction, Bee runs through the pros and cons of different presentation methods for academic talks. As she quite correctly notes, both PowerPoint presentations and chalk talks have strengths and weaknesses. You can give a good talk with either, and a bad talk with either.
This does suggest a topic for a reader poll, though, namely, if you have to sit through a bad presentation, which sort of bad presentation would you prefer:
What sort of bad presentation would you rather sit through:survey software
Please note that "I'd tune it out and watch good presentations on the TED website…