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Jochen Glueck

 Discussion on question by Learner: Wh…

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Jochen Glueck
Jul 22 18:23
@Learner: They have more slots because they wrote more applications. I'm really not sure what you find unfair here. Having roughly the same percentage of applications funded in each field implies that the odds of each applicant are roughly the same, independently of the discipline they work in. If a mathematician applies, their chances will be roughly the same as the chances of a physicist who applies. This seems very fair for the individual researchers. If we mathematicians would like to have a bigger part of the cake as a discipline - well, then we'll need to write more applications.
Jochen Glueck
Jul 22 18:23
@Learner: Another point to consider: You want to give the same amount of slots to each of the fields that occur in the list in your question. Now, we're talking about tax payers' money here. How precisely would you justify to give the same amount of money to each of the disciplines "math", "physics", "chemistry", "life sicences", and "information sciences and engineering"? Math is certainly important, but one should at least be somewhat realistic. (For the record: I'm saying this is a mathematician who is also paid by tax payers' money.)
Jochen Glueck
Jul 22 18:23
@Learner: "The number of slots should be more or less same for each disciplines." Ok, so how do we choose the fields then? Do way say "math" is one field and "social sciences and humanities" are another one? Or do way rather say each of the following is a separate field? Math, literature, linguistics, medieval studies, political theory, history, archaelogy, anthropology, law, ethnology, philosophy, journalism, behavioural sciences. And suddendly we're back at one slot in math per 12 slots in social sciences and humanities. Or at really any other ratio one wants to fabricate.
Jochen Glueck
Jul 22 18:23
@Nobody: I'm not sure what kind of bias you see here. The table in this answer shows quite clearly that there is no bias - the percentage of funded projects is similar in mathematics and in social sciences and humanities. There were 169 applicatrions in mathematics and 1977 applications from the social sciences and humanities.
 

 Discussion on question by ecr_things:…

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Jochen Glueck
Jul 3 03:27
(So I think what you got here was just a somewhat pointed "Dear friends in the United States, we really like you, but please be reminded now and then that there is a world outside the US" type of comment.)
Jochen Glueck
Jul 3 03:27
@cag51: I also think that a brief (let's say, very brief) explanation of those notions would be good for those of us who are not too familiar with the UK university system (and as a side effect, those people - for instance, me - would learn something new from such an explanation). I think what probably caused the comment by Yemon Choi as well as the upvotes it got (I also upvoted it) is that the specific wording in your comment sounds a bit (maybe unintentionally) as if the US way to categorize universities were somehow the generally accepted or most common way to do it.
 

 Discussion on answer by Moishe Kohan:…

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Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 19:26
@bm-2555: "But I'm curious to see whether this is a general take from other faculty on this forum as well." One more data point. I'm also a mathematician and I second the reactions of others. If I saw a PhD application of someone who claims to currently write a book in the topic they want to pursue a PhD in, I would be extremely skeptical. Depending on the rest of their application they might still get the position despite the book project, but most likely not because of it. (Caveat: I'm in pure math and don't know how things are in stastical learning theory.)
 

 Discussion on answer by Timur Shtatla…

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Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 01:29
@DawoodibnKareem: The question was closed on Jun 25 at 4:07 by close votes of Timur Shtatland and others; it was then reopend on Jun 25 at 7:34 by votes of other users. Only after that, Timur Shtatland posted his answer on Jun 25 at 14:32. If the community decides that a question should stay open, it is of course perfectly legitimate to answer it, even if the answerer was one of the close voters.
Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 01:29
(@llama: Just for the record: I upvoted your answer.)
Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 01:29
@llama: None of what you write is related to my comments. I have not mentioned death counts at all. I have pointed out that I do not consider information provided by Hamas controlled institutions to be reliable. "this is an absurd criticism. What else would they refer to for death tolls?" A source does not become reliable just because there is no other reliable source of information available. "living in a bubble" Knowing where I live is not sufficient to conclude whether or not a live in a certain bubble. Please refrain from such unwarranted insinuations in the future.
Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 01:29
@quarague: I agree that they are not only quoting Hamas - so the wording in my comment was too strong -, although quotes by Hamas controlled institutions are an important part of several of those articles. There are also some further issues with those sources (e.g. that the AP article says "[T]he shooting did not appear to be related to [the GHF]", which makes it a weird source for this specific question). But I agree with you that the reports strongly indicate that something (bad) has happened. I find it way less clear what precisely has happened.
Jochen Glueck
Jul 1 01:29
@quarague: Hmm. It didn't vote on this answer since I also see the issue that Honest Reporting is biased. But it is worth noting that most of the media reports about the alleged shootings refer explicitly to information provided by goverment controlled (i.e., Hamas controlled) institutions in Gaza. So a variety of Western media outlets essentially report "Hamas says this has happened", and in the comment section here this is interpreted as "Various reputable media say it happened and only Israel says it did not happen." Admittedly, I find this interpretation a bit bizarre.
 

 Discussion on answer by cag51: Is the…

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Jochen Glueck
May 13 15:42
@cmw: Whether "As an example" works, depends very much on the context. For instance, in math it's common do give examples in a separate "examples environment" that starts with the word "Example" (in bold or italic), followed by its number (e.g. Example 3.7). Depending on the context it might still make a lot of sense to write "We now give a concrete example of this phenomenon" before the example, but writing "as an example" does not work since the example itself starts in a separate paragraph.
Jochen Glueck
May 13 15:42
I downvoted (which I rarely do) because I think if someone follows this advice, it will make their writing worse instead of better. One more comment on "we now give a concrete example of this phenomenon": The "empty" words here actually provide context to the sentence, which is indispensable to make text easily comprehensible. My field is math, where there's really no shortage of bad writing - and one thing that drives me insane is when authors don't provide sufficient context, either because they want to be "concise" or because they don't know how to do better.
 

 Discussion on question by Learner: Wh…

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Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
@Learner: I see. If the rules are like this, there of course not much one can do (except for working for the rules to be changed - but whether this is a good idea and has any chance of success, depends highly on the circumstances, so I won't comment on it.)
Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
[...] and it is absolutely possible to make such an exam consist of problem solving only. The point is that one does not need to pose very many problems, nor does one need to pose difficult problems (except maybe for one problem that the students need to solve in order to get the best grade).
Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
@Learner: You're obviously free to make your own decisions for your exams. As you asked on this site for advice, though, I'll point out that I disagree. I never pose exam questions that are purely knowledge based. In fact, I allow my students to bring a sheet of paper to the exam (and use it during the exam) on which they can write whatever information they want beforehand, so asking to recite knowledge wouldn't work in this setting anyway. Most exams I posed lasted for two hours (unfortunately I often had no choice; I would prefer longer exams), [...]
Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
@Learner: "Should those be completely "new' questions?" It should indeed be 'new' problems in the sense that the students have not seen precisely the same problems before. The problems don't have to be completely new. I suggest a combination of some problems that are rather small modifications of problems that the students have done before with some problems that are slightly more different, with some problems where they have to combine different things they've done before (those things don't need to be difficult, but combining different things demonstrates understanding).
Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
@Learner: "proving theorems is not a memorizing activity" Of course not. "We can not ignore the proofs." I agree, and I did not say that you should ignore proofs. What I said is that asking to reproduce proofs in a written exam does not make much sense because many students will then just memorize the proofs rather than understanding them, and will readily forget them when the exam is over.
Jochen Glueck
May 7 20:03
"mostly focusing on definitions, [...] statements of theorems and asking partial proofs" By 'partial proofs', do you mean partial proofs of some of those big theorems? I am wondering what the purpose of those exam questions is: why do you want the students in the exam to write down definitions, theorem statements, and proofs that they have literally seen somewhere? The purpose of a math course is not to memorize definitions, theorems and proofs, but to gain understanding of those things. That can't be tested be asking to recite memorized contents.
 

 Discussion on answer by Arno: What do…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
[...] Editorial notes: The translations to English are automatic and were done by DeepL. In the second quote I corrected an obvious mistake in the translation that was due to a spelling error in Schmid's quote (he wrote "Kreissäle" instead of "Kreißsäle).
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
[...] Each of those three quotes can be found in this link that I provided above. Both links that I provided contain many more examples. [...]
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
[...] 2. A quote by Franz Schmid: "They were Turks. A piece of paper and German delivery rooms don't make you German!" 3. A quote by Nicole Höchst: "Even the best and most expensive education system cannot train the children of the Arab invasion [...] to become skilled workers, especially not if they do not speak sufficient German." [...]
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
@user76284: Since you insist, though, here are three concrete examples: 1) A quote by Alexander Gauland about the German politician Aydan Özoguz whose parents immigrated from Turkey: "That's what a German Turk [Özoguz] says. Invite her to Eichsfeld and then tell her what specifically German culture is. After that, she'll never come here again and, thank God, we'll be able to dispose of her in Anatolia." [...]
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
@user76284: "Quote the racist statements by leading AfD politicians."I gave you two links that contain several such statements. Your instance on getting information that you've already been provided with strikes me is rather disingenious.
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
[...] You can for instance have a look here or here. But we can't know which specific statements the Verfassungssschutz refers to in their report.
Jochen Glueck
May 7 01:01
@user76284: What information precisely are you asking for? In the link posted by Arno the Verfassungsschutz summarizes the reasons why they consider the AfD as extreme-right. As one of the reasons they do indeed list the amount of racist statements by leading AfD politicians. As the report is not publically available, you can't expect Arno to quote the statements they are referring to. If you are more generally interested in evidence for racist statements by AfD politicans, a simple online search will show you numerous examples. [...]
 

 Discussion on question by Researcher:…

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Jochen Glueck
Apr 5 23:26
I see. The situation seems to be so uncommon and specific that I don't think you can get really useful advice on this site about it. If it turns out that the university insists and you don't want to give in, then it might indeed be a good idea to contact a lawyer to get legal advice.
Jochen Glueck
Apr 5 23:26
And have you discussed this with the legal department of the university since then?
Jochen Glueck
Apr 5 23:26
Weird indeed. How are the publishers forcing you to solve this with the university? What if you just tell them "I was affiliated with this university when the work on those articles were done, here's a copy of my contract from this time, so there is nothing to solve"? Are they somehow implying that they'll remove your affiliation from the articles if you don't cooperate?
Jochen Glueck
Apr 5 23:26
I find this situation pretty weird. As this is not a common procedure, someone as the university has to be actively pushing this in order for it to happen, and it is probably important to understand who this someone is (i.e. who is "they" you're referring to when you talk about the university?).
 

 Discussion on question by Franck Dern…

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Jochen Glueck
Feb 7 01:18
I am having difficulties to make sense of the distinction between "instructional staff" and "research staff" (which appears both in the UC Berkeley data in the question and in the chart in Ian Sudbery's answer. If a full-time employee is employed both for teaching and research, to which category do they count? Could anyone familiar with the US university system and the data (or similar data) try to clarify this?
 

 Discussion on answer by Ben: Comparin…

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Jochen Glueck
Nov 22, 2024 12:32
@AdamPřenosil: Regarding the "general principle" that you mention: If find this to be less universal than you say. For instance, one will often leave a shared resource in a state where it is less ready for usage by others than it would be possible, but in turn has additional protection from damage.
People who share a car might agree to park it in a garage rather than in the yard because it's protected from the weather there, although it might be more ready to use (in the sense that you can leave with it more quickly) if it's parked in the yard. So people do not generally try to maximize the…
Jochen Glueck
Nov 22, 2024 12:30
@AdamPřenosil: Well, all the examples given by Ben do indeed include a mess in the sense that they are somehow about dirt. If the notion "mess" is not relevant to Ben's answer, I suggest that he remove the catch-phrase "clean up your own mess" from the answer and replace it with your sentence about shared resources. That might sound a bit less persuasive than talking about dirty toilets, though.
Jochen Glueck
Nov 22, 2024 12:08
@gerrit: Agreed, for white boards it really makes sense to clean right after using them, for the reason you mention. I was mainly thinking about blackboards (since, with very few exceptions, I fortunately wasn't required to teach on whiteboards so far).
Jochen Glueck
Nov 22, 2024 06:52
This answer seems to be based on a wrong premise encoded in the word "mess". All the examples you give do indeed include a "mess" in the sense that they involve dirt or hygienic issues (or even safety issues, if you spill coffee on the floor). Another example of a mess would be leaving one's tools scattered in a workshop (that would be a "mess" in the sense of "disorder"). The situation for a blackboard is different - there is no waste, it's not about hygiene, it's not about safety, and there is no disorder that would make cleaning other people's writing more time-consuming than one's own.
 

 Discussion on answer by Daniel R. Col…

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Jochen Glueck
Jun 18, 2024 02:05
@DikranMarsupial: " worrying about or having problems with having authority is not an indication that the authority has not been earned." I agree - and I don't think that I implied the contrary in my comment. I just pointed out that with the students at some institutions and in some courses authority is less likely to be an issue than with others.
Jochen Glueck
Jun 18, 2024 02:05
"Becoming over-familiar with students by way of personal details undermines the authority needed to run the room" I think this highly depends on the student body. I've never had the feeling that I need to care much about my authority in order to run a class room.
 

 Discussion on question by Michael Har…

Imported from a comment discussion on mathoverflow.net/questio...
Jochen Glueck
May 22, 2024 03:48
Just for the record, I'm wondering about the downvotes since this seems like a very reasonable and very useful question.
Jochen Glueck
May 22, 2024 03:48
I doubt that an article would be the right format for this. But there's a book by Haïm Brézis called "Functional analysis, Sobolev spaces and partial differential equations" (Springer 2011).
 

 Discussion on question by It'sMe: How…

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Jochen Glueck
Apr 5, 2024 21:21
Regarding "There are so many instances where people have been able to use some of these abstract concepts into the real world many years after their discovery": As a pure mathematician I have to say that I never found this narrative "we prove theorems now and in 50 or 100 years they will be useful in an application" particularly convincing. So I'm not surprised that applied mathematicians don't find it convincing either.
Jochen Glueck
Apr 5, 2024 21:21
Aren't expressions like "forgive these people" and "insult pure mathematics" a bit over the top?
 

 Discussion on question by Hydrazin: H…

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Jochen Glueck
Apr 1, 2024 16:31
"The meeting is during a lunch break." I second what @aqua said: it's quite likely that there you have the reason why many students don't attend and also why some of them leave at half time.
 

 Discussion on answer by Felix B.: Is …

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Jochen Glueck
Mar 31, 2024 14:17
[...] Well, strictly speaking that's correct - you don't need any of that. You can make a living - and a very good one at that - without understanding fractions, variables, calculus, without learning foreign languages, without good writing skills or historical knowledge. Just don't be surprised if the guy next door who has learnt all those things is more skilled in the usage of technology, has an easier time to convince other people of his ideas, has a better understanding of other cultures, and so on.
Jochen Glueck
Mar 31, 2024 14:17
I find it remarkable how some of the comments here resemble the most stereotyped excuses of a student who does not want to learn this or that topic. Why should I learn fractions if I have a calculator? Why should I learn how to use variables if there are computer algebra systems? Why should I learn calculus if I don't want to become a math teacher? Why should I learn German if all Germans learn English? Why should I practice my writing skills if ChatGPT can write nice texts? Why should I bother learn history if all the dates are on Wikipedia? [...]
Jochen Glueck
Mar 31, 2024 14:17
-1 Sorry, but this answer is way off. Students should indeed learn to do calculations in their head - not because a calculator (or smartphone) might be unavailable, but because it's essential for developing an intuition for numbers and for estimating the results of computations. Similarly, the point about essays is not that it were so important for most people to become great essay writers - essays are simply a tool for training certain language skills.
 

 Discussion on question by user186098:…

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Jochen Glueck
Mar 29, 2024 20:45
@User: I don't follow your first comment. In which way does the recruitment process for professors in Germany give an unfair advantage to German applicants?
 

 Discussion on question by user366312:…

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Jochen Glueck
Mar 29, 2024 15:36
Does "expenses" refer to publication fees? If yes, are there reputable jounals in your field that don't charge the authors any fees? "Since my supervisor doesn't have any contribution in it, I cannot request him to cover the expenses for this paper." Why not?
 

 Discussion on question by Nonalcoholi…

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Jochen Glueck
Mar 18, 2024 13:38
"But those methods did not work well." The good thing about this is that you'll hopefully refrain from employing such "methods" again in the future.
 

 Discussion on question by mapf: Do pe…

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Jochen Glueck
Feb 14, 2024 21:59
@mapf: I doubt that anyone can one "see" by looking at those plots whether the data in a given time interval is more accurately described by an exponential function than, for instance, by a polynomial of degree two or three. (Sorry for neing nitpicky, but I find the trope to describe every kind of growth behaviour that is fast and more or less convex as "exponential" rather misleading.)