| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
22 Feb 2006 05:19:00 AM |
| Object: |
Teaching physics to biology students |
Hi,
I am currently in my first year of teaching an algebra-based
physics class to students who are primarily biology majors.
For whatever reason, most of the biology professors at our school tend
to "spoon-feed" these students, giving them review sheets that tell
them
exactly what they need to know. So they just memorize the information
on
these sheets. Most of these students do not put much effort into their
biology classes.
In the physics class, I am trying to emphasize the main concepts,
and then the students are expected to apply these concepts to novel
problems. My approach has been to assign
lots of practice problems, and to make the exam problems somewhat
different than any of the homework. The students need to put in much
more effort than their biology classes, and if they do not, they tend
to do poorly on the exams. I have had some low averages on class exams.
I am finding out the hard way this year that the students resent
this
approach alot. When they do bad, rather than concluding they need to
put more effort into the class, they think I am being unfair to them.
As a result, my teaching evaluations took a major nosedive this year,
and there was even a petition drive protesting my policies. So I was
hoping to get some advice on how I can improve my approach, or if I
just need to expect this kind of response as a result of making the
students think.
Thanks - Leon
.
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
03 Mar 2006 04:17:36 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
I just suggested we spin something around inside a cell and make a
measurement. The latest one was to try to spin an organelle, probably a
chloroplast. Easier said than done, of course.
I hope you do it. It sure would be nice to know a bit more about the
behavior of cytoplasm. Besides, winning the N/S lottery can't hurt
career-wise.
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
06 Mar 2006 01:56:50 PM |
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On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
I just suggested we spin something around inside a cell and make a
measurement. The latest one was to try to spin an organelle, probably a
chloroplast. Easier said than done, of course.
I hope you do it. It sure would be nice to know a bit more about the
behavior of cytoplasm. Besides, winning the N/S lottery can't hurt
career-wise.
I think it would be nice, and a cute trick. I don't know if it would tell
us anything useful, but that's what poking cells with sticks is all about.
Which reminds me, we said in the proposal for our current big grant that
we'd make little micro-sticks and poke cells with them. Literally.
The big problem with spinning things inside a cell is the cytoskeleton.
Organelles tend to be attached, and if you introduce something from the
outside, the damage that you have to do might make the results
meaningless. This, plus the difficulty of it, is why we haven't done it
yet. The more an experimentalist has done with cells, the more resistant
they are to the idea.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
|
| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
06 Mar 2006 02:18:52 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
I just suggested we spin something around inside a cell and make a
measurement. The latest one was to try to spin an organelle, probably a
chloroplast. Easier said than done, of course.
I hope you do it. It sure would be nice to know a bit more about the
behavior of cytoplasm. Besides, winning the N/S lottery can't hurt
career-wise.
I think it would be nice, and a cute trick. I don't know if it would tell
us anything useful, but that's what poking cells with sticks is all about.
Which reminds me, we said in the proposal for our current big grant that
we'd make little micro-sticks and poke cells with them. Literally.
The big problem with spinning things inside a cell is the cytoskeleton.
Organelles tend to be attached, and if you introduce something from the
outside, the damage that you have to do might make the results
meaningless.
Add some colchicine and cytochalasin D and Bob's your uncle. Or you
could introduce something through endocytosis.
This, plus the difficulty of it, is why we haven't done it
yet. The more an experimentalist has done with cells, the more resistant
they are to the idea.
Yeah, it's pretty easy for critics to make a long list of important
factors that are being ignored with any given experiment and then
write a scathing rejection letter. After collecting a few of those you
tend not to be so adventurous. The thing that almost all biologists
don't get is the idea that if you can recreate some idiosyncratic
behavior in a simple system, where that behavior is representative of
one aspect of behavior in a more complicated system, then you can use
the simple system to test hypotheses that may be important for
understanding the full system. In this case you *want* induction to
fail, to find out where your understanding fails, but biologists
always just want to confirm hypotheses (they don't mind showing
someone elses hypothesis to be false, but only when they're trying to
show why their own hypothesis is right).
When you talk to biologists, make sure that you say you want to
measure "behavior" rather than "properties", otherwise you may be
subjected to tedious and wholly unnecessary pedantry.
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
|
| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
06 Mar 2006 02:38:43 PM |
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On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
I just suggested we spin something around inside a cell and make a
measurement. The latest one was to try to spin an organelle, probably a
chloroplast. Easier said than done, of course.
I hope you do it. It sure would be nice to know a bit more about the
behavior of cytoplasm. Besides, winning the N/S lottery can't hurt
career-wise.
I think it would be nice, and a cute trick. I don't know if it would tell
us anything useful, but that's what poking cells with sticks is all about.
Which reminds me, we said in the proposal for our current big grant that
we'd make little micro-sticks and poke cells with them. Literally.
The big problem with spinning things inside a cell is the cytoskeleton.
Organelles tend to be attached, and if you introduce something from the
outside, the damage that you have to do might make the results
meaningless.
Add some colchicine and cytochalasin D and Bob's your uncle. Or you
could introduce something through endocytosis.
Maybe. Our current thinking is to get a _big_ cell, like an onion membrane
cell, and just blast a whole in it with a laser, and insert a vaterite
sphere. I don't think that's a terribly useful measurement, but a nice
proof-of-principle.
This, plus the difficulty of it, is why we haven't done it
yet. The more an experimentalist has done with cells, the more resistant
they are to the idea.
Yeah, it's pretty easy for critics to make a long list of important
factors that are being ignored with any given experiment and then
write a scathing rejection letter. After collecting a few of those you
tend not to be so adventurous. The thing that almost all biologists
don't get is the idea that if you can recreate some idiosyncratic
behavior in a simple system, where that behavior is representative of
one aspect of behavior in a more complicated system, then you can use
the simple system to test hypotheses that may be important for
understanding the full system. In this case you *want* induction to
fail, to find out where your understanding fails, but biologists
always just want to confirm hypotheses (they don't mind showing
someone elses hypothesis to be false, but only when they're trying to
show why their own hypothesis is right).
When you talk to biologists, make sure that you say you want to
measure "behavior" rather than "properties", otherwise you may be
subjected to tedious and wholly unnecessary pedantry.
We're (ie us physicists) are much more adventurous than the biologists we
collaborate with. We want to stick things inside the cells, the bio-folk
just want to gently tickle the cells and see where and when some
signalling protein gets expressed. The difference is, they know what
they're doing.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Gregory L. Hansen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
06 Mar 2006 03:47:10 PM |
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In article <20060307063528.N44888@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
We're (ie us physicists) are much more adventurous than the biologists we
collaborate with. We want to stick things inside the cells, the bio-folk
just want to gently tickle the cells and see where and when some
signalling protein gets expressed. The difference is, they know what
they're doing.
Maybe it's a cultural difference. I mean, look what physicists do to
atoms in machines build specifically to smash them!
I know what you really want. You really want to smash counter-rotating
microorganisms and measure the debris. But they just might let you get
away with poking them.
--
"Out of the way, you swine, a physicist is coming!"
.
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
07 Mar 2006 01:09:57 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
We're (ie us physicists) are much more adventurous than the biologists we
collaborate with. We want to stick things inside the cells, the bio-folk
just want to gently tickle the cells and see where and when some
signalling protein gets expressed. The difference is, they know what
they're doing.
It's indicative of a larger difference as well. In molecular biology,
the approach is to consider cells to be solely computational, with no
physical limits whatsoever to that computational capability. Classical
biophysics considers cells as strictly physical systems
(non-computational). There should be a brilliant mixing of the two
cultures because the computational mechanisms used by cells
(interactions between individual molecules) are exactly where the
physical limits of computation become really important. Unfortunately,
doing physical measurements on single molecules is really quite
difficult, and there isn't any good theoretical framework that mixes
non-equilibrium thermo with computation (yet).
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
07 Mar 2006 01:54:49 PM |
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On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
We're (ie us physicists) are much more adventurous than the biologists we
collaborate with. We want to stick things inside the cells, the bio-folk
just want to gently tickle the cells and see where and when some
signalling protein gets expressed. The difference is, they know what
they're doing.
It's indicative of a larger difference as well. In molecular biology,
the approach is to consider cells to be solely computational, with no
physical limits whatsoever to that computational capability. Classical
biophysics considers cells as strictly physical systems
(non-computational). There should be a brilliant mixing of the two
cultures because the computational mechanisms used by cells
(interactions between individual molecules) are exactly where the
physical limits of computation become really important. Unfortunately,
doing physical measurements on single molecules is really quite
difficult, and there isn't any good theoretical framework that mixes
non-equilibrium thermo with computation (yet).
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
There was a nice paper about the modern evolution of electromagnetics -
alas, I can't find it at the moment; I'd like to give it to my students.
As of circa 1900, it was about finding the exact solutions for the simple
geometries for which exact solutions can be found. Rayleigh did all the
basic theory for optical fibres, 60 years before anybody could make them
well enough for practical use. Lorenz, Mie, Debye did spheres. Plane
interfaces managed to get done much earlier, by Fresnel.
Then enter variational methods, stage left.
Then exit, pursued by the bear of computational methods.
It's isn't all good. Almost every problem has become a nail to be hit by
the FDTD hammer :)
And then the growth of computational power hit genetics. It used to be a
matter of growing peas, looking at mutations, maybe zapping seeds with
gamma rays and planting them. Being able to deal with a CD-ROM of data
makes a difference. Next stop, biophysics!
A former housemate of mine couldn't get into the physics honours course,
having bombed out in some considered-to-be-important subjects. So he went
into computational genetics, just when it was starting to be possible. He
probably has better job prospects by now :)
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
11 Mar 2006 07:11:27 AM |
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In article <20060308053927.F5256@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
We're (ie us physicists) are much more adventurous than the biologists we
collaborate with. We want to stick things inside the cells, the bio-folk
just want to gently tickle the cells and see where and when some
signalling protein gets expressed. The difference is, they know what
they're doing.
It's indicative of a larger difference as well. In molecular biology,
the approach is to consider cells to be solely computational, with no
physical limits whatsoever to that computational capability. Classical
biophysics considers cells as strictly physical systems
(non-computational). There should be a brilliant mixing of the two
cultures because the computational mechanisms used by cells
(interactions between individual molecules) are exactly where the
physical limits of computation become really important. Unfortunately,
doing physical measurements on single molecules is really quite
difficult, and there isn't any good theoretical framework that mixes
non-equilibrium thermo with computation (yet).
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
You (generic you) need to shout this at the right people. I'm
having troubles kicking bit gods into realizing that personal
computation has even begun taking its baby steps. I still
find people stuck in Cray-mode thinking.
There was a nice paper about the modern evolution of electromagnetics -
alas, I can't find it at the moment; I'd like to give it to my students.
As of circa 1900, it was about finding the exact solutions for the simple
geometries for which exact solutions can be found. Rayleigh did all the
basic theory for optical fibres, 60 years before anybody could make them
well enough for practical use. Lorenz, Mie, Debye did spheres. Plane
interfaces managed to get done much earlier, by Fresnel.
Then enter variational methods, stage left.
Then exit, pursued by the bear of computational methods.
It's isn't all good. Almost every problem has become a nail to be hit by
the FDTD hammer :)
And then the growth of computational power hit genetics. It used to be a
matter of growing peas, looking at mutations, maybe zapping seeds with
gamma rays and planting them. Being able to deal with a CD-ROM of data
makes a difference. Next stop, biophysics!
A former housemate of mine couldn't get into the physics honours course,
having bombed out in some considered-to-be-important subjects. So he went
into computational genetics, just when it was starting to be possible. He
probably has better job prospects by now :)
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
<GRIN>
I suspect that one of the things biology has to overcome is to
be able to know when to suspend "first, do no harm" clauses.
/BAH
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
11 Mar 2006 02:22:56 PM |
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On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
You (generic you) need to shout this at the right people. I'm
having troubles kicking bit gods into realizing that personal
computation has even begun taking its baby steps. I still
find people stuck in Cray-mode thinking.
Perhaps what should be done is to attempt to convey more understanding and
intuition in the earlier courses that will be taken by people who won't
necessarily specialise in physics or even science. "Plug the number into
the formula" still has its place, even at that level, since, for example,
it's the easiest way to pick which resistor you want to use in your
circuit. Problems such as, for example, integrating current elements
around a ring to find the magnetic field of the ring, are of considerably
less utility, since one would look up the formula in practice rather than
DIY.
Advanced courses need a lot more on numerical methods, and more
importantly, stuff about when to attack numerically, when to approximate
to the closest known analytical solution, and which computational method
should be used when (things which, in my experience, aren't covered at all
adequately in courses on numerical methods/computational physics).
There has been some progress towards this, but curricula change slowly
(perhaps for the best, as it makes them resistant to idiotic whims of
fashion). Part of the reason for the slowness of change is that it's much
harder to teach understaning and intuition, which require real thought,
than methods of solution, which a generally just technical skills (in a
classical mechanics course I once did, one just needed to memorise the
checklist of steps required to solve the standard problem - one could pass
and even do well on the exam without having ever actually done such a
problem beforehand. Such was the power of the crank-the-handle method. Of
course, people could get a good grade for such a course and have no idea
about what or why or when a Hamiltonian actually was or was for, despite
having used them.).
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
14 Mar 2006 08:14:18 AM |
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In article <20060312060548.A70045@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
You (generic you) need to shout this at the right people. I'm
having troubles kicking bit gods into realizing that personal
computation has even begun taking its baby steps. I still
find people stuck in Cray-mode thinking.
Perhaps what should be done is to attempt to convey more understanding and
intuition in the earlier courses that will be taken by people who won't
necessarily specialise in physics or even science. "Plug the number into
the formula" still has its place, even at that level, since, for example,
it's the easiest way to pick which resistor you want to use in your
circuit. Problems such as, for example, integrating current elements
around a ring to find the magnetic field of the ring, are of considerably
less utility, since one would look up the formula in practice rather than
DIY.
This is probably where the problem lies. Let me try to explain.
A wannabe medico is going to immediately decide, after reading
the above paragraph, that none of that applies to the medical
field and will write off retaining any knowledge in the class.
Your paragraph talked about knowledge needed to manufacture
equipment. This almost ignores any application of that
equipment (how it should be used and how it should not be
used).
I don't think I'm writing this clearly.
Advanced courses need a lot more on numerical methods, and more
importantly, stuff about when to attack numerically, when to approximate
to the closest known analytical solution, and which computational method
should be used when (things which, in my experience, aren't covered at all
adequately in courses on numerical methods/computational physics).
This is a different lack. The problem is that the current
system is trying to stuff a 10 lb turkey with 1000 cups
of stuffing in a microsecond with the expectation that the
student will learn how to make the turkey, the stuffing,
the cooking and the eating just from having the dressed
turkey in one pan and the dressing in another bowl on his
desk and no one to demonstrate what goes where.
There has been some progress towards this, but curricula change slowly
(perhaps for the best, as it makes them resistant to idiotic whims of
fashion).
Yes, that's where slow is good. The problems I had with biology
in the 70s and 80s (haven't checked out the last two decades)
is that it was going completely socialist, and forgetting about
the science part.
Part of the reason for the slowness of change is that it's much
harder to teach understaning and intuition, which require real thought,
than methods of solution, which a generally just technical skills (in a
classical mechanics course I once did, one just needed to memorise the
checklist of steps required to solve the standard problem - one could pass
and even do well on the exam without having ever actually done such a
problem beforehand. Such was the power of the crank-the-handle method. Of
course, people could get a good grade for such a course and have no idea
about what or why or when a Hamiltonian actually was or was for, despite
having used them.).
Yes, this is merely learning a new programming language. However,
this kind of learning can only be done when there is no lab involved.
IOW, the real work has to be done :-).
I've been having great guilt pangs because I said that
I was going to leave the work to you and Andy.
In between expending my brain power trying to figure out how to
do my state tax forms, I've been trying to think of a lab
that would have the student use physics in setting up a feeding
tube. So far, I've failed because I don't seem to be able to
break out of my mold-y thinking about the labs I did as a student.
Every lab was supposed to make calculate something. I don't know
if this is the goal of a physics lab. I suppose one could
have the kid calculate the rate of flow. That seemed to be
something nurses and doctors couldn't do when delivering chemo
intraveneously.
/BAH
.
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| User: "Andy Resnick" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
15 Mar 2006 08:12:14 AM |
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wrote:
<snip>
This is probably where the problem lies. Let me try to explain.
A wannabe medico is going to immediately decide, after reading
the above paragraph, that none of that applies to the medical
field and will write off retaining any knowledge in the class.
Your paragraph talked about knowledge needed to manufacture
equipment. This almost ignores any application of that
equipment (how it should be used and how it should not be
used).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I would guess that a major
deficiency in hospital care (excepting trauma) is that the MD must rely
on patient self-reporting in order to figure out what is wrong. That,
coupled with the current poor quality of diagnostic equipment (poor,
when compared to say, the ability to measure physical properties to many
decimal points) forces docs to require skills other than quantitative
thinking.
In physics terms, medical measurements are very 'coarse-grained'. Think
about blood pressure measurements, and what is really being probed. And
trying to determine a cellular basis for (for example) a particular
hypertensive b.p. reading- a reading that may have 10% variability
during an exam, and another 10% daily variation, when in reality, actual
blood concentration of sodium (which is what drives blood pressure) is
tightly controlled- less than 1%, probably around 0.1%. Biological
systems seem to work on logarithmic scales, not linear- it can be
difficult to 'convert' between the two.. at least it is for me.
If you want to make best friends with a doc, offer to come up with a way
of allowing him to see inside a body (without cutting it open), in real
time, at arbitrary locations and at arbitrary length scales.
<snip>
I've been having great guilt pangs because I said that
I was going to leave the work to you and Andy.
Eh, go on... that's what 'division of labor' is all about.
In between expending my brain power trying to figure out how to
do my state tax forms, I've been trying to think of a lab
that would have the student use physics in setting up a feeding
tube. So far, I've failed because I don't seem to be able to
break out of my mold-y thinking about the labs I did as a student.
Every lab was supposed to make calculate something. I don't know
if this is the goal of a physics lab. I suppose one could
have the kid calculate the rate of flow. That seemed to be
something nurses and doctors couldn't do when delivering chemo
intraveneously.
To pick on your example, part of it is that AFAIK, nobody really knows
what the correct rate of flow 'should' be- too much patient-to-patient
variation.
--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
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| User: "PD" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
15 Mar 2006 10:09:04 AM |
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Andy Resnick wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
This is probably where the problem lies. Let me try to explain.
A wannabe medico is going to immediately decide, after reading
the above paragraph, that none of that applies to the medical
field and will write off retaining any knowledge in the class.
Your paragraph talked about knowledge needed to manufacture
equipment. This almost ignores any application of that
equipment (how it should be used and how it should not be
used).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I would guess that a major
deficiency in hospital care (excepting trauma) is that the MD must rely
on patient self-reporting in order to figure out what is wrong. That,
coupled with the current poor quality of diagnostic equipment (poor,
when compared to say, the ability to measure physical properties to many
decimal points) forces docs to require skills other than quantitative
thinking.
In physics terms, medical measurements are very 'coarse-grained'. Think
about blood pressure measurements, and what is really being probed. And
trying to determine a cellular basis for (for example) a particular
hypertensive b.p. reading- a reading that may have 10% variability
during an exam, and another 10% daily variation, when in reality, actual
blood concentration of sodium (which is what drives blood pressure) is
tightly controlled- less than 1%, probably around 0.1%. Biological
systems seem to work on logarithmic scales, not linear- it can be
difficult to 'convert' between the two.. at least it is for me.
If you want to make best friends with a doc, offer to come up with a way
of allowing him to see inside a body (without cutting it open), in real
time, at arbitrary locations and at arbitrary length scales.
<snip>
I've been having great guilt pangs because I said that
I was going to leave the work to you and Andy.
Eh, go on... that's what 'division of labor' is all about.
In between expending my brain power trying to figure out how to
do my state tax forms, I've been trying to think of a lab
that would have the student use physics in setting up a feeding
tube. So far, I've failed because I don't seem to be able to
break out of my mold-y thinking about the labs I did as a student.
Every lab was supposed to make calculate something. I don't know
if this is the goal of a physics lab. I suppose one could
have the kid calculate the rate of flow. That seemed to be
something nurses and doctors couldn't do when delivering chemo
intraveneously.
To pick on your example, part of it is that AFAIK, nobody really knows
what the correct rate of flow 'should' be- too much patient-to-patient
variation.
A chemistry professor once related to me his scariest moment in a
hospital, when he overheard two nurses discussing the dosage of his
medication. "It says 'micro'. Is 'micro' millionths, thousandths, or
hundredths?" The chemist refused the medication until he was allowed to
read the label himself and consult on the dosage.
PD
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
16 Mar 2006 07:50:38 AM |
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In article <1142438944.849787.40660@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"PD" <TheDraperFamily@gmail.com> wrote:
Andy Resnick wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
This is probably where the problem lies. Let me try to explain.
A wannabe medico is going to immediately decide, after reading
the above paragraph, that none of that applies to the medical
field and will write off retaining any knowledge in the class.
Your paragraph talked about knowledge needed to manufacture
equipment. This almost ignores any application of that
equipment (how it should be used and how it should not be
used).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I would guess that a major
deficiency in hospital care (excepting trauma) is that the MD must rely
on patient self-reporting in order to figure out what is wrong. That,
coupled with the current poor quality of diagnostic equipment (poor,
when compared to say, the ability to measure physical properties to many
decimal points) forces docs to require skills other than quantitative
thinking.
In physics terms, medical measurements are very 'coarse-grained'. Think
about blood pressure measurements, and what is really being probed. And
trying to determine a cellular basis for (for example) a particular
hypertensive b.p. reading- a reading that may have 10% variability
during an exam, and another 10% daily variation, when in reality, actual
blood concentration of sodium (which is what drives blood pressure) is
tightly controlled- less than 1%, probably around 0.1%. Biological
systems seem to work on logarithmic scales, not linear- it can be
difficult to 'convert' between the two.. at least it is for me.
If you want to make best friends with a doc, offer to come up with a way
of allowing him to see inside a body (without cutting it open), in real
time, at arbitrary locations and at arbitrary length scales.
<snip>
I've been having great guilt pangs because I said that
I was going to leave the work to you and Andy.
Eh, go on... that's what 'division of labor' is all about.
In between expending my brain power trying to figure out how to
do my state tax forms, I've been trying to think of a lab
that would have the student use physics in setting up a feeding
tube. So far, I've failed because I don't seem to be able to
break out of my mold-y thinking about the labs I did as a student.
Every lab was supposed to make calculate something. I don't know
if this is the goal of a physics lab. I suppose one could
have the kid calculate the rate of flow. That seemed to be
something nurses and doctors couldn't do when delivering chemo
intraveneously.
To pick on your example, part of it is that AFAIK, nobody really knows
what the correct rate of flow 'should' be- too much patient-to-patient
variation.
A chemistry professor once related to me his scariest moment in a
hospital, when he overheard two nurses discussing the dosage of his
medication. "It says 'micro'. Is 'micro' millionths, thousandths, or
hundredths?" The chemist refused the medication until he was allowed to
read the label himself and consult on the dosage.
During JMF's last days, the nurses decided that the number
that described the codeine in Co-Tylenol was the number
to use when measuring out liquid Tylenol.
/BAH
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| User: "Andy Resnick" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
15 Mar 2006 12:02:28 PM |
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PD wrote:
<snip>
A chemistry professor once related to me his scariest moment in a
hospital, when he overheard two nurses discussing the dosage of his
medication. "It says 'micro'. Is 'micro' millionths, thousandths, or
hundredths?" The chemist refused the medication until he was allowed to
read the label himself and consult on the dosage.
Lovely. One of my lectures to the pre-meds was on temperature, so I
brought in an IR camera, and showed them things like my handprints on
the blackboard- when I showed them the veins in my arms, I heard a
roomfull of gasps and "Ew! Gross!". These are going to be doctors?
--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
16 Mar 2006 07:52:23 AM |
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In article <dv9kvk$ftf$1@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>,
Andy Resnick <andy.resnick@op.case.edu> wrote:
PD wrote:
<snip>
A chemistry professor once related to me his scariest moment in a
hospital, when he overheard two nurses discussing the dosage of his
medication. "It says 'micro'. Is 'micro' millionths, thousandths, or
hundredths?" The chemist refused the medication until he was allowed to
read the label himself and consult on the dosage.
Lovely. One of my lectures to the pre-meds was on temperature, so I
brought in an IR camera, and showed them things like my handprints on
the blackboard- when I showed them the veins in my arms,
Kewl! I didn't you could do that.
I heard a
roomfull of gasps and "Ew! Gross!". These are going to be doctors?
Yup. They also cannot deal with dead and/or rotting bodies.
/BAH
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
16 Mar 2006 07:16:16 AM |
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In article <dv97fu$jl6$1@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>,
Andy Resnick <andy.resnick@op.case.edu> wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
This is probably where the problem lies. Let me try to explain.
A wannabe medico is going to immediately decide, after reading
the above paragraph, that none of that applies to the medical
field and will write off retaining any knowledge in the class.
Your paragraph talked about knowledge needed to manufacture
equipment. This almost ignores any application of that
equipment (how it should be used and how it should not be
used).
I don't have any data to back this up, but I would guess that a major
deficiency in hospital care (excepting trauma) is that the MD must rely
on patient self-reporting in order to figure out what is wrong.
And this verbal input is ANDed to previous verbal input which
sets a pattern that increases the time efficiency of diagnosis.
I would think that the patient's input is used to exclude
possibilities, e.g., if his hair hurts the problem won't be
a missing toe nail.
That,
coupled with the current poor quality of diagnostic equipment (poor,
when compared to say, the ability to measure physical properties to many
decimal points) forces docs to require skills other than quantitative
thinking.
This kind of thinking is closer to an OS developer debugging a problem
than a physicist measuring an effect. ...I think. This might be
where biology and physics clash.
In physics terms, medical measurements are very 'coarse-grained'. Think
about blood pressure measurements, and what is really being probed. And
trying to determine a cellular basis for (for example) a particular
hypertensive b.p. reading- a reading that may have 10% variability
during an exam, and another 10% daily variation, when in reality, actual
blood concentration of sodium (which is what drives blood pressure) is
tightly controlled- less than 1%, probably around 0.1%. Biological
systems seem to work on logarithmic scales, not linear- it can be
difficult to 'convert' between the two.. at least it is for me.
On paper it is difficult. Humans make leaps w.r.t. data assessment;
it's called educated guess which is another word for experience.
My mother has to train a doctor everytime her old one retires to
believe that her normal temperature is lower and her normal BP
is lower than the average. I've encountered the same kind of
thinking. If my temp is 98.6 I have a pretty good fever.
So this measurement without knowing about SDs would be learned
in any physics class.
If you want to make best friends with a doc, offer to come up with a way
of allowing him to see inside a body (without cutting it open), in real
time, at arbitrary locations and at arbitrary length scales.
Presumedly, there is a hint of this in reflexology (I think that's
the correct word) and acupuncture. My hypothesis was it must have
something to do with electrical patterns or something. I stopped
thinking about this stuff 8 years ago.
<snip>
I've been having great guilt pangs because I said that
I was going to leave the work to you and Andy.
Eh, go on... that's what 'division of labor' is all about.
You are very kind :-).
In between expending my brain power trying to figure out how to
do my state tax forms, I've been trying to think of a lab
that would have the student use physics in setting up a feeding
tube. So far, I've failed because I don't seem to be able to
break out of my mold-y thinking about the labs I did as a student.
Every lab was supposed to make calculate something. I don't know
if this is the goal of a physics lab. I suppose one could
have the kid calculate the rate of flow. That seemed to be
something nurses and doctors couldn't do when delivering chemo
intraveneously.
To pick on your example, part of it is that AFAIK, nobody really knows
what the correct rate of flow 'should' be- too much patient-to-patient
variation.
Oh, in JMF's case, the nurse had this brain vapor lock such
that, if the ***** wasn't completely pumped into Jim based
on her time calculation, instead of resetting the pump
to contine, she dumped the rest of the chemo in the waste basket.
The huge sin in this action was that Jim was a guinea pig and
this nurse undermined the whole experiment by not knowing
anything about how experiments are supposed to work.
In an example of a food tube, it seemed like all first bags
hung was set to take all afternoon. I understand that the
stomach capacity and rate of digestion is different for
each person, but I never understood setting up a drip each
minute; the guy was starving until I bitched two days later
and they increased his calories.
I am assuming that tube feeding should be some form of
Calories/time-unit.
/BAH
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
07 Mar 2006 05:41:37 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
"Much of the mathematical analysis that was developed over the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries originated in attempts to
circumvent arithmetic. With our ability to do large-scale arithmetic,
...., we can employ simple, direct methods requiring much less
old-fashioned mathematical training. This ability means that we have
more time to present newer, more powerful, and more elegant methods,
which in turn implies that across the scientific board the scientist
is at last in a position to test theories and hypotheses without a
roundabout route through the mathematician."
But for those who think that Abaqus can solve any physical problem, he
cautions:
"The point must be emphasized that the existence of the computer
simultaneously broadens the domain of the mathematician and enhances
his role. But I cannot emphasize enough that using a computer properly
requires more mathematics, not less. The most difficult part of
analysis--that requiring the greatest combination of knowledge,
sophistication, experience, and ingenuity--centers about numerical
solution."
And then he takes a delicious shot at the medievalism of overly formal
mathematicians,
"Unfortunately, many mathematicians produced by several distinguished
schools--the faithful disciples at a distance of the Bourbaki--have a
peculiar, supercilious attitude toward numerical solution of
functional equations."
Then enter variational methods, stage left.
Then exit, pursued by the bear of computational methods.
It's isn't all good. Almost every problem has become a nail to be hit by
the FDTD hammer :)
Oh, I'm sure you have quite a collection of horror stories.
A former housemate of mine couldn't get into the physics honours course,
having bombed out in some considered-to-be-important subjects. So he went
into computational genetics, just when it was starting to be possible. He
probably has better job prospects by now :)
Claude Shannon's PhD thesis was on computational genetics (but it all
had to be rediscovered as the field consisted solely of statistical
analysis at the time). At least his MSc thesis was influential.
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
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| User: "Andy Resnick" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
13 Mar 2006 07:56:20 AM |
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Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
"Much of the mathematical analysis that was developed over the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries originated in attempts to
circumvent arithmetic. With our ability to do large-scale arithmetic,
..., we can employ simple, direct methods requiring much less
old-fashioned mathematical training. This ability means that we have
more time to present newer, more powerful, and more elegant methods,
which in turn implies that across the scientific board the scientist
is at last in a position to test theories and hypotheses without a
roundabout route through the mathematician."
But for those who think that Abaqus can solve any physical problem, he
cautions:
"The point must be emphasized that the existence of the computer
simultaneously broadens the domain of the mathematician and enhances
his role. But I cannot emphasize enough that using a computer properly
requires more mathematics, not less. The most difficult part of
analysis--that requiring the greatest combination of knowledge,
sophistication, experience, and ingenuity--centers about numerical
solution."
And then he takes a delicious shot at the medievalism of overly formal
mathematicians,
"Unfortunately, many mathematicians produced by several distinguished
schools--the faithful disciples at a distance of the Bourbaki--have a
peculiar, supercilious attitude toward numerical solution of
functional equations."
<snip>
Clifford Truesdell, in "Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science: Methods,
Criticism, Training, Circumstances" has a chapter on the computer as the
downfall of science. Now, Truesdell is a bit of a old-school guy and
may have overstated things a bit, but his point is well taken.
Basically, it's garbage-in, garbage-out. But, when performing "science"
with the computer, there's sometimes no possible check on the numerical
results- for example, how can one verify (either by measurement or by
theory) the output of a turbulence calulation? We assume the code is
written properly, the boundary conditions are properly accounted for,
numerical error bounds are set, etc. etc. But, sometimes not even this
is done.
So we are treated to ream after ream of colorful pictures in journal
articles, purporting to show all manner of "results", when in reality we
have no way to know if the results have any meaning at all. So I think
the concerns of biologists are well-founded; there is no underlying
theory, and so computational models of, for example proteomics and
metabolomics, are not really that useful.
--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 06:11:21 AM |
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On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
It'll (ie "will" = "just maybe") get there. It's a matter of how much
computational power we can throw at the problem. Computational power had a
big impact on engineering and physics in the '70s to the '90s - people
used to spend years calculating things I can now program in minutes and
get numbers for in seconds (after spending months grokking the maths).
Imagine! A whole 1940 PhD of work spat out of a computer in 0.05 seconds!
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
"Much of the mathematical analysis that was developed over the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries originated in attempts to
circumvent arithmetic. With our ability to do large-scale arithmetic,
..., we can employ simple, direct methods requiring much less
old-fashioned mathematical training. This ability means that we have
more time to present newer, more powerful, and more elegant methods,
which in turn implies that across the scientific board the scientist
is at last in a position to test theories and hypotheses without a
roundabout route through the mathematician."
But for those who think that Abaqus can solve any physical problem, he
cautions:
"The point must be emphasized that the existence of the computer
simultaneously broadens the domain of the mathematician and enhances
his role. But I cannot emphasize enough that using a computer properly
requires more mathematics, not less. The most difficult part of
analysis--that requiring the greatest combination of knowledge,
sophistication, experience, and ingenuity--centers about numerical
solution."
And then he takes a delicious shot at the medievalism of overly formal
mathematicians,
"Unfortunately, many mathematicians produced by several distinguished
schools--the faithful disciples at a distance of the Bourbaki--have a
peculiar, supercilious attitude toward numerical solution of
functional equations."
And what might this book be called? Worth reading, or did you quote the
only worth-reading bits?
One of the fun things about the numerical methods I mainly use these days
is that the rigorous foundations are essentially non-existent. Some recent
papers apparently proved something useful about convergence, at least in
the far field, and perhaps even under certain conditions and algorithms in
the near field. IANAM, but I will listen to what they say. (The details:
expansion of fields in bases obtained from separation of variables, but
extended outside their known domain of validity - the joys of the Rayleigh
hypothesis/conjecture!)
I confused my bosses in a meeting today by talking about numerically
obtaining an analytical solution, but that's essentially what it's about.
Then enter variational methods, stage left.
Then exit, pursued by the bear of computational methods.
It's isn't all good. Almost every problem has become a nail to be hit by
the FDTD hammer :)
Oh, I'm sure you have quite a collection of horror stories.
I wouldn't call them horror stories, but I am bemused when I see a paper
where they 2D FDTD a problem that's really a 3D problem, and the 3rd D
matters, and it still takes longer to crunch the numbers, and with less
accuracy than my code.
We plan to release it to the world this year (heh! we planned to do that
last year), we just need to find the time to clean it up and make it
usable by other people. Perhaps it's a vain hope, but I do hope it will
reduce the incidence of such papers.
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Gregory L. Hansen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 08:57:57 AM |
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In article <20060308214057.O3201@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
That must have been a lot of coordinates.
--
"You're not as dumb as you look. Or sound. Or our best testing
indicates." -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
11 Mar 2006 07:30:35 AM |
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In article <dumrdl$u47$1@rainier.uits.indiana.edu>,
(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote:
In article <20060308214057.O3201@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
That must have been a lot of coordinates.
It sounded like he had to find them as the first step :-).
That would be trying to find all the straight rigid
lines in spaghetti after it's cooked.
/BAH
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 02:44:31 PM |
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In article <440f374d.14151930@news.ucalgary.ca>, (Ken Muldrew) writes:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
And what might this book be called? Worth reading, or did you quote the
only worth-reading bits?
Some Vistas of Modern Mathematics: Dynamic programming, invariant
imbedding, and the mathematical biosciences. Richard Bellman.
University of Kentucky Press. 1968.
It's just light reading; he describes some of his work in mathematics
(mainly dynamic programming and invariant imbedding) without going
into detail. I enjoyed the whole book but that quote from the first
chapter seemed like a nice fit in this thread (and who can resist
taking a swing at Bourbaki from time to time).
Heck, yes. I'm with you here:-)
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 02:06:20 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
And what might this book be called? Worth reading, or did you quote the
only worth-reading bits?
Some Vistas of Modern Mathematics: Dynamic programming, invariant
imbedding, and the mathematical biosciences. Richard Bellman.
University of Kentucky Press. 1968.
It's just light reading; he describes some of his work in mathematics
(mainly dynamic programming and invariant imbedding) without going
into detail. I enjoyed the whole book but that quote from the first
chapter seemed like a nice fit in this thread (and who can resist
taking a swing at Bourbaki from time to time).
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
12 Mar 2006 01:55:56 PM |
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On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Quoting from a book by Richard Bellman from the 60's:
And what might this book be called? Worth reading, or did you quote the
only worth-reading bits?
Some Vistas of Modern Mathematics: Dynamic programming, invariant
imbedding, and the mathematical biosciences. Richard Bellman.
University of Kentucky Press. 1968.
It's just light reading; he describes some of his work in mathematics
(mainly dynamic programming and invariant imbedding) without going
into detail. I enjoyed the whole book but that quote from the first
chapter seemed like a nice fit in this thread (and who can resist
taking a swing at Bourbaki from time to time).
Nice book; haven't finished it yet. It's nice to see a book about
mathematics rather than containing mathematics.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Ken Muldrew" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 02:11:01 PM |
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Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
My first thought was that the engineers couldn't find the R<->P key on
their calculators but I guess your friend really had to work for his
money.
Ken Muldrew
kmuldrezw@ucalgazry.ca
(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
08 Mar 2006 02:37:36 PM |
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On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
My first thought was that the engineers couldn't find the R<->P key on
their calculators but I guess your friend really had to work for his
money.
Apparently the work as such was very simple, and he didn't exactly gain
any respect for the versatility of the engineers involved. IIRC (and this
constitutes a reply to Greg as well), the biggest problem was that the
data wasn't in any form amenable to just writing a script or such that
would automagically convert, and it had to be done on a calculator.
Clearly, the best choice, in terms of cost, would have been to hire
a flunky at $10/hour to do data entry, another flunky at $10/hour to check
the entered data and fix errors, and then pay a physics undergrad student
$100/hour for 1 hour to write code to convert. It's always all about
management failure, isn,t it?
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
11 Mar 2006 07:33:30 AM |
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In article <20060309062439.V3201@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Ken Muldrew wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
(He gave me a nice present once, after some engineers paid him lots of
money to convert polar coordinates to Cartesian.)
Good work, if you can get it. ;-)
They were in a hurry, so they paid a lot per hour, about 100, iirc. He
also worked 80 hour weeks. Only for about 2 weeks, but still, that's good
pay for a student.
My first thought was that the engineers couldn't find the R<->P key on
their calculators but I guess your friend really had to work for his
money.
Apparently the work as such was very simple, and he didn't exactly gain
any respect for the versatility of the engineers involved. IIRC (and this
constitutes a reply to Greg as well), the biggest problem was that the
data wasn't in any form amenable to just writing a script or such that
would automagically convert, and it had to be done on a calculator.
Clearly, the best choice, in terms of cost, would have been to hire
a flunky at $10/hour to do data entry, another flunky at $10/hour to check
the entered data and fix errors, and then pay a physics undergrad student
$100/hour for 1 hour to write code to convert. It's always all about
management failure, isn,t it?
But it would have taken somebody with $5000/hr. experience to
figure this out. It is much easier to have only one body to
beat up when things are late than a new employee sector.
/BAH
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
11 Mar 2006 02:24:54 PM |
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On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
Clearly, the best choice, in terms of cost, would have been to hire
a flunky at $10/hour to do data entry, another flunky at $10/hour to check
the entered data and fix errors, and then pay a physics undergrad student
$100/hour for 1 hour to write code to convert. It's always all about
management failure, isn,t it?
But it would have taken somebody with $5000/hr. experience to
figure this out. It is much easier to have only one body to
beat up when things are late than a new employee sector.
I hope not, since I thought it was plainly obvious. OTOH, maybe it means I
should increase my standard consultancy fee :)
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
12 Mar 2006 06:15:37 AM |
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In article <20060312062343.O70045@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
Clearly, the best choice, in terms of cost, would have been to hire
a flunky at $10/hour to do data entry, another flunky at $10/hour to check
the entered data and fix errors, and then pay a physics undergrad student
$100/hour for 1 hour to write code to convert. It's always all about
management failure, isn,t it?
But it would have taken somebody with $5000/hr. experience to
figure this out. It is much easier to have only one body to
beat up when things are late than a new employee sector.
I hope not, since I thought it was plainly obvious.
It's only obvious to those looking from the outside in.
IME, the people who owned the data would get too caught up
in the details. It's rather like a car. You own an old
car that you've nursed through all kinds of breakdowns,
tuneups, bandaids, gum and spit but the CEO of the company
that manufactured it didn't care about it at all.
People care about their data. Even converting it is traumatic.
OTOH, maybe it means I
should increase my standard consultancy fee :)
Perhaps you should :-). Somebody told the story of a guy hired
to fix a blockage of some sort. He walked around the plant for
a while then took out his wrench and hit a pipe. It fixed the
problem. Then he sent a bill for his work, $5000. The company
objected and asked for an itemized bill. He charged two bucks
for labor and $4998 for knowing where to hit.
I've told this story badly; the one I read was written better.
/BAH
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| User: "Gregory L. Hansen" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics to biology students |
12 Mar 2006 10:06:44 AM |
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In article <dv13d9$8qk_001@s929.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<> wrote:
In article <20060312062343.O70045@emu.uq.edu.au>,
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 wrote:
Timo Nieminen <uqtniemi@mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:
Clearly, the best choice, in terms of cost, would have been to hire
a flunky at $10/hour to do data entry, another flunky at $10/hour to check
the entered data and fix errors, and then pay a physics undergrad student
$100/hour for 1 hour to write code to convert. It's always all about
management failure, isn,t it?
But it would have taken somebody with $5000/hr. experience to
figure this out. It is much easier to have only one body to
beat up when things are late than a new employee sector.
I hope not, since I thought it was plainly obvious.
It's only obvious to those looking from the outside in.
IME, the people who owned the data would get too caught up
in the details. It's rather like a car. You own an old
car that you've nursed through all kinds of breakdowns,
tuneups, bandaids, gum and spit but the CEO of the company
that manufactured it didn't care about it at all.
People care about their data. Even converting it is traumatic.
OTOH, maybe it means I
should increase my standard consultancy fee :)
Perhaps you should :-). Somebody told the story of a guy hired
to fix a blockage of some sort. He walked around the plant for
a while then took out his wrench and hit a pipe. It fixed the
problem. Then he sent a bill for his work, $5000. The company
objected and asked for an itemized bill. He charged two bucks
for labor and $4998 for knowing where to hit.
I've told this story badly; the one I read was written better.
I got another story from an electronics newsgroup of a guy who was hired
as a consultant. He redesigned a particular circuit so that it used fewer
parts and could be manufactured more cheaply and reliably. And they
didn't want to pay him. They looked at the much-reduced circuit diagram
and said something like "We're paying you $xxxx for THIS?"
He gave them exactly what they asked for, and it can take a great deal of
skill to make something simple. But then it looks easy.
--
"When the fool walks through the street, in his lack of understanding he
calls everything foolish." -- Ecclesiastes 10:3, New American Bible
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