This is my first post and I was wondering what do you call someone who studies Russia For a living like has an academic researcher or Scholar. A sentence would be I work has a -word-. Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Can I migrate it over here, or are these type of questions [also] offtopic here? It's now asked over at Bio and as a scientific stack we basically consider this opinion-based and therefore offtopic
@AliceD I'd say that it would be quite probably closed also here, either as too broad or as "The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others."
Those who claim that numerical calculations should have no role in exams probably have no idea of the frustration you get in an experimental field like mine when you get students and postdocs who are incapable of getting the numbers right, even with computers. And researchers that cannot understand the meaning of certain discrepancies.
@MassimoOrtolano If they cannot get it right with computers, I doubt that doing this in an exam would have helped them. I’d rather have them trained to use a computer under realistic circumstances, viz. not the insane stress and time pressure of an exam but project work, lab courses, and similar.
I also met a lot of people who are excellent at blindly computing things but completely incapable of performing anything beyond this, like analysing numerical problems.
@Wrzlprmft The point is that of forcing students at looking at the values. If one doesn't remove marks (or too few marks) for wrong calculations, students simply stop making reality checks on numbers. But if you are an engineer designing a device, you should get the numbers right and you should get them quickly.
@MassimoOrtolano I don’t think quickly is so important, though ideally you have a computer for this. Still, there are plenty and better opportunities outside of exams to learn and do sanity checks.
