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[idontunderstand]

Guys... I am writing an "acknowledgments" part to my thesis right now. Can anyone give a good advice of saying "I would like to thank blah blah blah" without sounding really fucking corny and fake? The only thing I'm coming up with right now is "I am deeply grateful to..." which just sounds forced and stupid. I AM really grateful to the guy (my supervisor) and I want to let him know that. Hmm maybe posting this makes me even more fake and contrived... 

[Redball]

If "deeply grateful" is how you feel about the assistance, why not say that?

[Carl-E]

Keep it simple.  Just say you're grateful for his assistance / patience / time / whatever, and leave it at that. 

[idontunderstand]

Yeah... that's what I needed to hear. I always overthink stuff like this. Less is more, less is more, less is more..

[jwhouk]

Congrats to all who are graduating today or this weekend in the US. My alma mater is having its graduation ceremonies this weekend, as is UW-Madison.

[Barmymoo]

My first exam is tomorrow afternoon and I just realised that I haven't done any work since 11.30 this morning. Might need to put my laptop away for two days again.

[Welu]

Got an email from my tutor rounding up what is needed from me. Says everything but two modules needed. Handy enough, those two are the ones I was filming for yesterday and the other I'll be 90% done with filming tomorrow. Nice to know I'm on sort of top of things.

[Barmymoo]

I have an exam this afternoon. I'm spending the morning intermittently cramming facts, eating biscuits and reading about the occupation of Guernsey during the war.

[Welu]

Got another email from my tutor, starting with, "Sorry, this is actually what I need from you..." asking for basically every single task of every module we've done this year. Began freak out. Then finished email. It wasn't meant for me.

I have barely avoided the end of year freak out and little things like that aren't helping. 

[Barmymoo]

Silly tutor should proof-read her emails 

Just did my second exam. It was the one that could either have gone really well, or really badly. I think it went really badly. Ah well. Off to a picnic now, and then to a pontifical high mass followed by supper (I am mostly going to find out what a pontifical is). Then hard to work tomorrow, I have 1.5 days for each of my remaining exams.

[pwhodges]

One celebrated by a pontiff (bishop), of course.

[idontunderstand]

Just got my thesis defense done this morning and am now a bachelor of law and master of maritime law. Good going, me.

[Carl-E]

A lawyer who's also a boxer is definitely not one to be trifle with. 


Congratulations!

[Method of Madness]

Anytime I hear maritime law I think of Arrested Development.

[idontunderstand]

That's not what it makes me think of, but I'd rather not say what it makes me think of.... because that would be really, really boring.

And thank ye! 

[Jace]

Who's got 2 thumbs and got a D- in english instead of an F?
This guy. This guy right here. Also didn't show up to the last couple classes or do the final paper

[Redball]

It hurts just to read that. Brings up a memory of my worst semester like it was yesterday.

[Carl-E]

Redball, I think he's proud.  Don't spoil it for him! 


Although it reminds me of my freshman English class and the best paper I ever wrote.  We were assigned to do a two page analysis of a Robert Frost poem of our choice.  I wrote five pages on the futility of analyzing poetry.  It was a thing of beauty, Lucid, clear, well though out, and I even illustrated my points with poems by Frost, Dickinson, and (IIRC) Ogden Nash. 


The professor was a poet. 



Best D minus I ever got. 

[Jace]

I thought I was gonna fail and instead I got a D-, hell yeah I'm proud.

[Redball]

It was the semester I got 4 E's and a D. I think I skipped more than one final. Maybe 4. So I guess it's not quite like yesterday if I don't quite remember.

[Lupercal]

Redball, I think he's proud.  Don't spoil it for him! 


Although it reminds me of my freshman English class and the best paper I ever wrote.  We were assigned to do a two page analysis of a Robert Frost poem of our choice.  I wrote five pages on the futility of analyzing poetry.  It was a thing of beauty, Lucid, clear, well though out, and I even illustrated my points with poems by Frost, Dickinson, and (IIRC) Ogden Nash. 


The professor was a poet. 



Best D minus I ever got.

After having to study Modernism in English this year, learning all about how poetry of Ezra Pound and TS Eliot resists explication, I couldn't help but point out in my papers that trying to analyse something that resists meaning is pretty stupid.

Then we had an exam on it, too!

Those guys must be violently spinning in their graves.

[Method of Madness]

E

Wait, was an F even lower back then, they gave you guys an extra 10 points before you failed? 


(That being said, I always wondered why it went from D to F)

[Barmymoo]

You can still get Es in the UK at A level, I think. You can also get an N, or a U - U for ungraded, N for "nearly". I kid you not. My friend's A levels read N, U, D, E. Almost amusing enough to make it worthwhile having failed them all.

[Method of Madness]

So...do you also have A-D and F, or do you have completely different grades?

[Redball]

At my university, in the 1950s, the grading was A to E.

[Method of Madness]

Was an E considered a failing grade?

[Barmymoo]

At GCSE, which are the exams at the end of compulsory school (age 16 - General Certificate of Secondary Education), you can get A*-C as a good passing grade, D or E as a "well you sort of passed but not really" and F is a fail. U is "you're so crap we didn't even mark it" and N... I've only heard of it in the context of my friend.

[bainidhe_dub]

"You got every question half-right, but given that you clearly haven't grasped the material, we don't feel comfortable actually awarding you the grade that corresponds with a 50%"

[Barmymoo]

I'm not sure our percentage grades match up to yours, either. For instance, I was pretty thrilled when I got 132 on my mock exam, which was 66% - a high 2.ii, which is a good grade that most people are aiming for (only about 10% of people get a 1st, and that percentage is lower for some subjects). 50% is the cut-off for a 2.ii at degree level. I'm aiming for about 60% this year, which will be a good grade for me. It's almost unheard of for anyone to get 80% or higher; it's called a starred first and they're very rare.

In terms of A levels, 50% is a D so a passing grade is more like 60% really. An A is 80%. I don't know how that compares with the US.

[Jace]

In the US the letter system is:

A=100-90%
B=89-80%
C=79-70%
D=69-60%
F=59%-0%

But, as has been discussed elsewhere, sometimes the whole scale is thrown out for various programs where a B- (between 84-80%) actually means failure in that particular course. Or in the case of my girlfriend, where a single percentage point because of a medical absence (which, at the time, she didn't get a note for because she didn't think she would need that one point to pass) is the difference between passing a course and having to retake it, despite having otherwise passed the quizzes and tests.

[Papersatan]

Also we have a +- system, where those percents are broken into further categories.  I can tell you that in my Grad program an A+ is reserved for outrageously good work.  Most classes are not exam based, so the A+ is reserved for work that goes above and beyond what was asked.  I did have one class that was problem set/exam based and to get an A+ you had to do another project.  That is even if you did all the work 100% correct, and got 100% of the answers correct on the exams you would still end up with an A not an A+.  It was a programming class and the assignments were basically proof of concept things, to get the A+ you had to do a project that actually was something useful using what you had learned. 

[Barmymoo]

That makes sense - A is the best grade, A+ indicates you did something extra (or plus). Sensible.

[snalin]

I'm not sure our percentage grades match up to yours, either. For instance, I was pretty thrilled when I got 132 on my mock exam, which was 66% - a high 2.ii, which is a good grade that most people are aiming for (only about 10% of people get a 1st, and that percentage is lower for some subjects). 50% is the cut-off for a 2.ii at degree level. I'm aiming for about 60% this year, which will be a good grade for me. It's almost unheard of for anyone to get 80% or higher; it's called a starred first and they're very rare.

They used to do something like that here in the soft sciences, but the students got kinda frustrated when nobody studying language or law or such got perfect scores, but maths students got it all the time, because you can actually get everything as good as it can get on a maths exam, and it would be kinda stupid not to score that perfect just because the language students didn't get perfects.

Now it's expected that if you're good enough to get things that's a lot better than an A, you are good enough to just take more courses, and finish your PHD by 23.

[Carl-E]

They used to do something like that here in the soft sciences, but the students got kinda frustrated when nobody studying language or law or such got perfect scores, but maths students got it all the time, because you can actually get everything as good as it can get on a maths exam, and it would be kinda stupid not to score that perfect just because the language students didn't get perfects.

Really?  I mean, really??  When I went to Purdue (back in the 80's), the math and engineering and science programs were ridiculously hard.  Exam questions were long and complex, much more so than was reasonable for the amount of time given.  It took genuine talent to get an A. 

Meanwhile, the psychology and education programs were both under fire for having courses where no one got below a B.  If the interpretation of a "C" is supposed to be "average work", how can that happen?  It was not Lake Wobegon!* 

* - where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. 

[LTK]

That raises an interesting question. If your aim is to teach math students whatever they require to know, and you then test them to see if they do indeed know everything they require, then anything but a perfect score on their test would be unacceptable. If your aim is to discern the average students from the exceptional ones, you give a test that is beyond the average ability to complete, and accept less-than-perfect performances. I think, if this were a perfect world, the former would be more common than the latter, but since this isn't, it's not.

Speaking of perfect worlds, I'm about to find out how perfect mine exactly is. I was given an interview for the master's application procedure, and they told me that of 50 applicants, 20 were rejected, and 20 can be accepted. If I'm in the top 20, I'm offered a position. If I'm lower, then they have to wait for someone in the top 20 to reject their offer before I'm moved up in the rankings. I'm going to hear whether I made it next week. If I don't, it will be the first time I ever hit a snag in my (admittedly short) academic career. If I do, I might start feeling like Achilles (the one pronounced Ach-heel).

[Barmymoo]

I'm intrigued, why would a perfect world be one where everyone gets 100%?

I'm opposed to the idea of formalised education, but I do recognise that there is a merit in having a way to discern candidates for jobs based on roughly equal criteria, and that standardised testing can be a good tool for this. But if your aim is to get everyone achieving 100%, then you will have to do one of these things:

Reject everyone who isn't almost certain to manage a perfect grade
Throw people out mid-course if they are struggling
Make the test really easy

My view is that education is meant to inspire and nurture curiosity about whatever subject you're studying, so none of those options is ideal from this viewpoint. Also, if you're taking the American approach where people have to take several different courses and some are required even if you don't like them or aren't good at them, it would be very unfair.

It's also an interesting point that you say "whatever they require to know". I don't have a very deep understanding of maths, but as far as I know, it is a field where people are still discovering things and working things out for themselves. Here, graduate students have to do original research - if anyone else is doing the same thing, then the one who started first gets priority and the other has to change. Undergraduates don't have quite the same pressure, we're still at the "learn these things" stage, but the top grades are still reserved for people who go beyond what they're taught and think critically, developing their own ideas and theories. So even if you know everything perfectly and have a photographic memory, you should only get 100% if you have also produced a publication-standard argument which is totally flawless and references all the relevant academic debate. I have read published articles by my lecturers which would not achieve this.

[LTK]

I'm intrigued, why would a perfect world be one where everyone gets 100%?

I'm opposed to the idea of formalised education, but I do recognise that there is a merit in having a way to discern candidates for jobs based on roughly equal criteria, and that standardised testing can be a good tool for this. But if your aim is to get everyone achieving 100%, then you will have to do one of these things:

Reject everyone who isn't almost certain to manage a perfect grade
Throw people out mid-course if they are struggling
Make the test really easy

I don't understand the question. Do our definitions of 'perfect' differ?
If you require your students to possess complete knowledge and a thorough understanding of the required material, then you make the test just easy enough so someone who fits the requirements scores 100%. If they don't, they fill the gaps in their knowledge, and try again.

My view is that education is meant to inspire and nurture curiosity about whatever subject you're studying, so none of those options is ideal from this viewpoint. Also, if you're taking the American approach where people have to take several different courses and some are required even if you don't like them or aren't good at them, it would be very unfair.

It's also an interesting point that you say "whatever they require to know". I don't have a very deep understanding of maths, but as far as I know, it is a field where people are still discovering things and working things out for themselves. Here, graduate students have to do original research - if anyone else is doing the same thing, then the one who started first gets priority and the other has to change. Undergraduates don't have quite the same pressure, we're still at the "learn these things" stage, but the top grades are still reserved for people who go beyond what they're taught and think critically, developing their own ideas and theories. So even if you know everything perfectly and have a photographic memory, you should only get 100% if you have also produced a publication-standard argument which is totally flawless and references all the relevant academic debate. I have read published articles by my lecturers which would not achieve this.

Well, in this case I was only referring to teaching knowledge and skills. 'Whatever they require to know' then includes the knowledge and skills they need (on their level) to do original research. Since it's very hard to grade an answer to a question to which nobody knows the correct answer, you cannot expect someone to perform perfectly on a task that is not guaranteed to give you the opportunity to perform perfectly.

Anyway, as I said, perfect world, pure conjecture, hypotheticals, I am not a teacher, etc.

[Barmymoo]

What I was getting at is that the definition of "perfect" depends on your goal. Do you follow what I was saying about needing differentiate between people who have studied the same thing, and how if you make it possible for everyone to get 100%, you are necessarily making the test easier and cutting off the opportunity for outstanding students to shine?

I have friends who are studying the same subject as me, who know the material inside out. They have memorised all the cases and the points of law which they bring up, and can reference the statutes without looking. They have read academic arguments and can list points on each perspective. But they still don't have their own views and haven't applied their perfect knowledge in a way that contributes anything to the discussion, so I would say that they are not deserving of a perfect score.

[LTK]

Oh, yes, I get it. The question is whether the qualities you value in yourself as a student are actually measured by the tests they give you. Do you actually get better grades than your friends? While I'm sure every field benefits greatly by creative insight and unconventional thinking, I'm not entirely sure how well you can measure it on a test. I'm thinking back to the tests on neuroscience I've taken, and while I can't be entirely sure, I think I could have gotten a better grade than the aforementioned 7.1 GPA if I spent more time on the material, which does not necessarily mean I could apply that knowledge to learn more about Alzheimer's disease better than anyone else, for example.

One of the few times we, as students, were able to discuss the test answers directly with the lecturer, there was one question he asked about why you might fail to get readings from an implanted electrode. The correct answer was because it might be clogged. The material was about in-vivo electrophysiological measurements, something none of us had experience with, and so we had no idea that a clogged electrode was even a possibility, something we made extremely clear to the lecturer, yet he insisted that it was an 'insight question'. (The course coordinator was there the whole time, and thought it to be an amusing spectacle rather than a conflict that needed to be solved by an authority.) So I get the distinct idea that an insight is only obvious after you've had it, and asking students to have them is an unreliable way to test their knowledge or ability.

[Barmymoo]

No, I don't get better grades - I don't do very much work, so I don't know half of the material. It was just an example of how people can have different strengths which don't come out in testing.

It's hard because it really depends on what the point of the tests are. In the case of medicine, for example, I absolutely want to know that my doctor has learnt all the different systems of the body and know how to tell which thing is a kidney and which is a lung, etc. But most degrees are not part of a professional qualification, so it gets a little muddier.

My original point was more about the fact that if you make it possible for the majority of people to get 100%, you abolish the purpose of testing entirely - to distinguish between good students and excellent students. Or rather, perhaps I mean "people who understand the material well and people who understand the material excellently". If your definition of a good student is "someone who memorises everything" then I guess the form of testing you advocate does tell you who those people are. I just don't see the point, once you've left academia, of a piece of paper that says "I can memorise things".

[Redball]

One of the few times we, as students, were able to discuss the test answers directly with the lecturer, there was one question he asked about why you might fail to get readings from an implanted electrode. The correct answer was because it might be clogged. The material was about in-vivo electrophysiological measurements, something none of us had experience with, and so we had no idea that a clogged electrode was even a possibility, something we made extremely clear to the lecturer, yet he insisted that it was an 'insight question'.

If you knew the physical structure of an implantable electrode, might it be possible to see how organic matter could lodge in it, blocking conduction between tissue and the conductor in the electrode? In near-complete ignorance, I think of an electrode as a metallic object lodged in tissue, with nothing in between. That this could "clog" suggests that there's some structure that allows organic matter to accumulate and block conduction. Would the leap of insight have been possible with knowledge of the structure?
I looked for a diagram of such a structure and failed to find one. If anyone can point me, I'd appreciate it.

[Carl-E]

maths...is a field where people are still discovering things and working things out for themselves. Here, graduate students have to do original research - if anyone else is doing the same thing, then the one who started first gets priority and the other has to change. Undergraduates don't have quite the same pressure, we're still at the "learn these things" stage, but the top grades are still reserved for people who go beyond what they're taught and think critically, developing their own ideas and theories.

Quite true.  My doctoral thesis (as are all of them) was on a new area in mathematics, a new technique that had never been used before, creating a new way to interperet information and structure.  Ideally, pushing the frontier of kowledge a little further out. 

What's almost unique about math is that it's been developing for thousands of years, unlike most other fields (except, perhaps, philosophy).  Because of this, it's nearly impossible to have complete knowledge of any branch of mathematics.  There are nooks and crannies of calculus, dark alleyways in statistics, untouched clearings in algebra, all awaiting exploration.  The professor who inspired me to study math rather than physics (in my juior year, after failing a quantum physics lab) once told me that, after 40 years in the field, he could walk into the library, pull a journal a random off the shelf, look at the table of contents, and have no idea what 90% of it was about.  It's that kind of field - a lifetime isn't enough to scratch the surface. 

And it's always changing.  Those of us who grew up BC (before caculators) may remember learning an algorithm for calculating square roots by hand.  Guess what?  It's not taught any more.  Graphing calculators made sevral of the algebraic tricks for locating zeros of a polynomial obsolete.  It's a living language, like English, and nearly as inscrutible. 


With no native speakers. 

[snalin]

They used to do something like that here in the soft sciences, but the students got kinda frustrated when nobody studying language or law or such got perfect scores, but maths students got it all the time, because you can actually get everything as good as it can get on a maths exam, and it would be kinda stupid not to score that perfect just because the language students didn't get perfects.

Really?  I mean, really??  When I went to Purdue (back in the 80's), the math and engineering and science programs were ridiculously hard.  Exam questions were long and complex, much more so than was reasonable for the amount of time given.  It took genuine talent to get an A. 

By "all the time", I mean "it happened in some of the courses each semester", compared to it never happening in any "soft" courses. If you know all of the theorems that's taught, their proofs and  applications, AND are able to pull off some creative thinking for the more complex problems, you should probably get a perfect score, as there is really nothing more you can know that's related to the course in question. A "perfect" analysis of, say a poem, or why some historic event took place, or something like that is pretty much impossible. So if you require perfect answers for perfect grades, the best history students wouldn't get As, while the best maths students (or students in any other field where there are definite answers - legal translation would be another one, I've heard) would. And then the grades would mean different things depending on different courses, and averages, especially for cross-disciplinary degrees, would be meaningless.

To give an example - if I'm asked if x²-3 is a maximal ideal in Q[X], it is possible to give a perfect answer, with reference to a few theorems. I doubt there is a perfect answer to the differences between post-modern and Victorian art.

[Barmymoo]

Well, actually I think that isn't the case if you're saying "perfect regurgitation and analysis of the material taught". As Carl said, maths is a hugely untapped subject and you can certainly go into a lot more detail. I expect that even in the example you give, there are ways to expand and dig deeper (I know nothing about maths, I can barely multiply). So if all you look for in order to get 100% is the exact answer using the methods you were taught, then that is possible in other subjects too. If you've been attending a course on post-modern and Victorian art, and one of the lectures was on the differences between the two, then you could just repeat the list you were taught. By your logic, that would gain 100%. But of course it doesn't, because you're expected to apply some thought and your own ideas. You can do that in maths too.

[Papersatan]

I think a part of the discrepancy between grading in different subjects is that how you can find a grade is different.  So if my final exam in a math class is 10 problems, and they are worth ten points each even if you sub divide the problems to allow for partial credit, it is a lot clearer what level of work is an A, a B and so on.  I think it is easier to leave the room thinking "I nailed it" or "oh no..." and to be correct and when you get the test back it will be clear where you messed up.  For an English class my final exams were essays, and since my ability to write an essay was no longer being tested (that is it was not, 10 points for a clear thesis, 5 points each for supporting pieces of evidence... and so on) what is being tested is my analysis. What was my thesis, and was it convincingly supported, did I miss some other plot point which disputes my argument or even something major which seems to support it but which I ignored and so on.  I think it is a lot harder to leave the room knowing how well you did and when you get your grade back a lot harder to understand it sometimes, or to know how to study harder for the next one. 

I think that in math you get a percent grade, and then that is converted to an A,B,C,etc where as in an English class you are given a "average, above average, excellent" and then that is converted to an A,B,C etc.  Though I have had essays come back with percents on them, I always wondered what made this essay a 91 and not a 90 or a 90, what small part was worth that one point?

[Jace]

And that is why math is so much better than other courses. It is concrete, if you get something wrong, then you can be shown how and why precisely. Nothing is vague.

[Omega Entity]

Except for -why- something is done the way it is. That's what always frustrated me about math - no one could explain why something needed to be multiplied by a seemingly arbitrary number, or why a certain process was required to solve a certain equation. Math often left me in frustrated tears, even in college.

[Jace]

Some things have a good why, some things are just constants of the universe that you have to accept as truths for math to work.

[Papersatan]

That is why the humanities are better.  The world is not black and white, and you ability to navigate it depends on your ability to pull out important points analyse them and connect them in ways that are meaningful. :p

[Jace]

Q: What is the significance of the underlying themes in Poe's later works?
A: I'm sorry I forgot to add milk to your grande mocha java, sir.