It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer. If I feel like compiling my Linux distro from scratch, I'll do it. Take your environmentalist rants elsewhere.
I graduated with a Physics BS recently and agree heartily that programming should be part of the physics curriculum. By not teaching programming you're depriving students of the ability to conduct sophisticated numerical experiments required to gain intuition for cutting edge problems. Not to mention programming skills puts you a step above cleaning glassware when you start doing 'research.'
I actually have experience using Excel for programming. I was never exposed to programming languages in middle school and instead started writing basic cyphers in Excel. I can imagine one could do some basic research in that environment and it offers a convent format for data entry BUT THAT'S IT. Now that I know half a dozen languages, I would never go back.
As far as preferred languages, I can recommend what I learned: a mixture of C, C++, and Matlab/Octave. I generally prototype in Matlab and if performance is too slow, drop into C/C++. I've also learned MPI and PETSc but haven't found occasion to use them in my research to date.
One final note. Any teaching of programming should be coupled with linear algebra and numerical analysis. Far too frequently I see students use very naive algorithms in their thesis work. One that particularly sticks out in my mind was a student using a rk45 algorithm to solve a 2D boundary value problem (shutter).
Good luck with the committee.
(P.S. My school required an intro to programming in Matlab, but no numerical methods courses for the Physics BS.)
Notice the drastic difference in public discourse in Britain where the BBC is taxpayer funded but not owned by the interest of any corporate entity, and America where the truth comes second to the dollar. In my opinion, as long as state-owned industries are open and easily reformed by the populace, they are far superior to the closed door dealings of private corporations. As opposed to the closed door meetings of a publicly funding corporations who extract a tax on your TV and Radio. At least a private company you can boycott.
Not everyone thinks the BBC is all dandy. Take for example: Paul Dacre and the
Telegraph .
Granted these have their own biases, but we have the right to choose whose views we fund.
Maybe you get promoted in experimental physics by making waves and smoking pot with the boss. [You] want your name in a magazine so you spin some half-assed idea as though it was a real possibility.
From my experiences with contemporary particle physicists (including two who work at the LHC), your not far off.
I have to grant you that the DX1 is pretty neat, however my personal favorite is the DataHand. The idea is to place each finger in a little well with buttons in four directions and one at the bottom so your fingers never move more than a half inch in any direction. Using the mouse is handled by switching modes which then enables each index finger to control the mouse, one finger controls slow movement and the other fast movement. One of my coworkers picked it up to help deal with his Carpal Tunnel and swears by it. I would pick one up to if they weren't so expensive.
There is a subtile difference between the perturbations in Uranus' orbit and current dark matter. With Uranus, we had very fine measurements - thousand's of arcseconds precision. They actually were able to say 'there must be a planet about there' -- and it was. With dark matter the data is much sloppier. Part of this is no fault of the astronomer: dust clouds and individual variation in stars make it hard to get good data that is accurate to 10%. The other part is the astronomer's fault - their data analysis can be sloppy. As I saw in thesis class: published research on B-V vs stellar magnitude fits can be very poorly done, throwing out far too many outliers or using too many coefficients. This data then feeds distance measurements, which feed galactic rotation measurements, and so on. There is an unsound foundation for most work past a few thousand light years.
The worst part is no one wants to correct this foundational work. There is not much glory in changing coefficients and contradicting published work only invites enemies.
My main point is that a certain amount of non-luminous matter is to be expected. I would not be supprised though, when that unglamorous job of correcting all these fits is done, that the quantity and location of 'dark matter' is revised downwards. That, or we find something more fundamentally wrong (like with the precession of Mercury's orbit).
Slashdot Mirror
It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer. If I feel like compiling my Linux distro from scratch, I'll do it. Take your environmentalist rants elsewhere.
Here here.
I graduated with a Physics BS recently and agree heartily that programming should be part of the physics curriculum. By not teaching programming you're depriving students of the ability to conduct sophisticated numerical experiments required to gain intuition for cutting edge problems. Not to mention programming skills puts you a step above cleaning glassware when you start doing 'research.'
I actually have experience using Excel for programming. I was never exposed to programming languages in middle school and instead started writing basic cyphers in Excel. I can imagine one could do some basic research in that environment and it offers a convent format for data entry BUT THAT'S IT. Now that I know half a dozen languages, I would never go back.
As far as preferred languages, I can recommend what I learned: a mixture of C, C++, and Matlab/Octave. I generally prototype in Matlab and if performance is too slow, drop into C/C++. I've also learned MPI and PETSc but haven't found occasion to use them in my research to date.
One final note. Any teaching of programming should be coupled with linear algebra and numerical analysis. Far too frequently I see students use very naive algorithms in their thesis work. One that particularly sticks out in my mind was a student using a rk45 algorithm to solve a 2D boundary value problem (shutter).
Good luck with the committee.
(P.S. My school required an intro to programming in Matlab, but no numerical methods courses for the Physics BS.)
Not everyone thinks the BBC is all dandy. Take for example: Paul Dacre and the Telegraph . Granted these have their own biases, but we have the right to choose whose views we fund.
Also remember the BBC brought us the nullity gem.
From my experiences with contemporary particle physicists (including two who work at the LHC), your not far off.
I have to grant you that the DX1 is pretty neat, however my personal favorite is the DataHand. The idea is to place each finger in a little well with buttons in four directions and one at the bottom so your fingers never move more than a half inch in any direction. Using the mouse is handled by switching modes which then enables each index finger to control the mouse, one finger controls slow movement and the other fast movement. One of my coworkers picked it up to help deal with his Carpal Tunnel and swears by it. I would pick one up to if they weren't so expensive.
They also sell a chair mounted version.
slashdot.
There is a subtile difference between the perturbations in Uranus' orbit and current dark matter. With Uranus, we had very fine measurements - thousand's of arcseconds precision. They actually were able to say 'there must be a planet about there' -- and it was. With dark matter the data is much sloppier. Part of this is no fault of the astronomer: dust clouds and individual variation in stars make it hard to get good data that is accurate to 10%. The other part is the astronomer's fault - their data analysis can be sloppy. As I saw in thesis class: published research on B-V vs stellar magnitude fits can be very poorly done, throwing out far too many outliers or using too many coefficients. This data then feeds distance measurements, which feed galactic rotation measurements, and so on. There is an unsound foundation for most work past a few thousand light years.
The worst part is no one wants to correct this foundational work. There is not much glory in changing coefficients and contradicting published work only invites enemies.
My main point is that a certain amount of non-luminous matter is to be expected. I would not be supprised though, when that unglamorous job of correcting all these fits is done, that the quantity and location of 'dark matter' is revised downwards. That, or we find something more fundamentally wrong (like with the precession of Mercury's orbit).
Remember people used to believe in caloric.