polls
drorzel | February 9, 2010No substantive blogging for you today, as my alarm clock decided not to go off, causing me to oversleep by the hour that I usually spend on bloggy things. So that you're not left without blog-related entertainment, though, here's an appropriate poll topic:
How early do you have to set your alarm to get to work/class on time?(polling)
Of course, despite oversleeping by a full hour, I was still here twenty minutes before this morning's lab. And probably a good half-hour before the majority of my students. Their late arrival will do wonders for my mood.
drorzel | February 7, 2010We're mere hours away from the start of the Super Bowl, the biggest football game of the year. Obviously, the question of who will win has been the subject of much debate over the last couple of weeks on sports media and in offices around the country. What these discussions have lacked, though, is Science!!! (with any number of exclamation points).
So, let's employ science to determine the winner in advance, with a totally accurate Internet poll:
Who will win the Super Bowl?(polls)
The game kicks off around 6:30pm ET, so make sure you vote before then, if you want your vote to have predictive…
drorzel | February 5, 2010I'm safely back, well ahead of the Snowpocalypse!!! I'm kind of out of it, though-- yesterday was a very long day, and I find air travel draining at the best of times-- so in lieu of substantive blogging, I offer you this thematically appropriate poll:
Which of these travel-related songs is the best?(survey software)
(Strictly speaking, two of those are the same song, but the end results are different enough to list them separately.)
drorzel | February 5, 2010I have chickened out in the face of the Snowpocalypse, and moved my flight up to get out of DC before the storm. I'm too old to sleep in airports any more.
In honor of my spending another day on a plane, here's another airline-themed poll for you:
The flight crew insist I turn off and stow my iPod during take-off and landing because:(answers)
In the unlikely event of a loss of cabin pressure, please enter your own vote before assisting your fellow passengers in entering theirs.
(I can provide empirical evidence that at least one of these is wrong.)
drorzel | February 4, 2010I'm on the road today, so here's a poll for you, in honor of the question I will probably be getting asked right around when this posts:
Would you like a beverage?(surveys)
Please be sure that your comments are stowed beneath the seat in front of you, or in the overhead compartment. Thank you for flying Uncertain Principles.
drorzel | February 2, 2010Just about everybody has heard of the Twin Paradox in relativity: one twin becomes as astronaut and sets off for Alpha Centauri, the other remains on Earth at mission control. Thanks to time dilation, the two age at different rates, and the one who made the trip out and back ends up younger than the one who stayed behind.
Of course, the paradox is not that the two twins have different ages-- rather, it's that from a simple approach to special relativity, you would think that each twin should see the other's clock running slow, since it seems like getting into a rocket and flying off into…
drorzel | February 2, 2010Tuesday is a heavy teaching day for me-- I'm in lab from 9-4, basically-- so here's something to occupy the time. Oh, no! It's a pop quiz:
Pop quizzes are:(survey software)
(In case the phrase is an American idiom, a "pop quiz" refers to a short test given in class with no advance warning.)
This was inspired by Dermot O'Brien at Inside Higher Ed, who reports on taking his first quiz as a science student. The general topic of quizzes is one that generates a fair bit of heat, though, so I thought I'd see what my readers think of it.
My quiz policy as of a year or so ago was to give many short…
drorzel | January 29, 2010We had a parent-teacher conference this morning with SteelyKid's teacher at day care, who confirmed that she is the cutest and cleverest baby in the universe. OK, not in those words, but that's how I interpreted them. In honor of that, here's a poll:
Fish?(poll)
There's probably another stanza worth of choices, but unlike my parents, I don't have this one memorized. This ought to do for now.
drorzel | January 28, 2010I have to go to the Happy Fun Meeting this afternoon, which will be both Happy! and Fun! To keep things lively while I'm there, here's a question that is dorky, but not in the usual way for this blog: What superpower would you most like to have to help you deal with annoying meetings?
The most useful meeting-related superpower to have would be:(survey software)
Bonus essay question: How does the Justice League/ Legion of Doom function when all the attendees at their regular meetings have superpowers? Wouldn't that get out of hand in a hurry?
drorzel | January 22, 2010The NSF's Science and Engineering Indicators report came out not too long ago, and the bulk of it is, as usual, spent on quasi-quantitative measures of scientific productivity-- numbers of degrees granted, numbers of patent applications for various countries, etc. I find all of those things pretty deeply flawed, so I tend to skip past them and go straight to the stuff about public knowledge and understanding (chapter 7, available as a PDF at the link above).
This doesn't get much press, probably because the results are depressing. They've asked a bunch of factual knowledge questions of people…
drorzel | January 21, 2010I'm getting considerably more email from people I don't know these days, which has me wondering about the ways people address one another. Hence, a poll:
You are writing an email to a person you have never met before, who you know to be employed by a college or university. What salutation do you use?(survey software)
All of the serious answers are risky:
1) Not all doctors are professors.
2) Not all professors are doctors.
3) Some misters and mizzes strongly prefer to be doctors or professors.
4) Many people react poorly to the automatic first-name basis.
5) Some dawgs you shouldn't "Hey."
It…
drorzel | January 15, 2010I'm just about finished packing up, then I'm meeting a former student for lunch, then heading off to the airport to spend the next eight hours or so making my way home to Kate and SteelyKid and Emmy. Which is a good excuse for a non-dorky poll:
Are you checking any bags today?(answers)
(Bag fees are not an option in this poll, because I'm flying Southwest. They're my airline of choice, precisely because they minimize the hassle of flying through things like not charging checked bag fees.)
drorzel | January 12, 2010My flight to Texas tomorrow leaves ungodly early, requiring me to leave for the airport around 6:30 or so. That's earlier than I like to be up, but it's a bit late by my father's standards-- he always books flights that leave at 7am or thereabouts. This seems like a good topic for a poll:
When do you like to fly?(surveys)
This is an ideal-world situation, where you have your choice of flights leaving at any time of day, so don't leave comments complaining about the lack of "whenever the airlines say I can go."
drorzel | January 6, 2010I forgot to include an option about this in the previous Dorky Poll, but this is one of the best ways I know to sort out righteous physicists from heathen mathematicians:
How do you like your angular coordinates?(polls)
Choose wisely.
drorzel | January 6, 2010Today's lecture in intro mechanics is a whirlwind survey of vectors. While I struggle to clear my head enough to be able to teach this stuff, here's a Dorky Poll to pass the time:
What's your favorite three-dimensional coordinate system?(survey)
This is a strictly classical subject, so please choose only one.
drorzel | December 31, 2009Everybody with an opinion seems to be doing a decadal wrap-up of one sort or another, but I'm too tired to do anything serious. So, I'll let you do it for me: here's a list of ten songs that are, in my mind, inextricably bound up with the events of the decade. Which of them do you like the best?
Which of these songs of 2000-2009 is your favorite?(survey)
I'm not claiming that these are necessarily the best songs of the decade-- some of them aren't even the best song on their album-- but these are songs that, years from now, I'll hear and it will instantly be 200x in my head. Which ought to…
drorzel | December 18, 2009I continue to be boggled by the Bob Dylan Christmas album. Thus, a deeply silly poll:
Having recorded a Christmas album, what should Bob Dylan's next project be?(polls)
Happy Holidays!
drorzel | December 15, 2009I'm spending today doing some Christmas shopping, god help me. So here's a seasonally-appropriate poll for you all:
The worst part of going to a mall in December is:(polls)
Please choose only one. No returns or exchanges.
drorzel | December 10, 2009A purely hypothetical situation for today's poll. Purely.
You have agreed to read and review six grant proposals by Sunday. Today is Thursday, and you have not read them yet. What do you do?(poll)
If anybody needs me, I'll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
drorzel | December 9, 2009I just finished shoveling six-plus inches of snow off our cars and driveway (the forecast called for something like 3-5", but we've got more than that, with no slowing in the fall). In honor of the first significant snowfall of the year, a poll:
It's snowing:(survey)
This one has ticky-boxes, which will play hell with the percentages, but I'm too tired to deal with complaints about radio buttons.