No, I'd argue the exact opposite. We live in an age where the most advanced topics are increasingly interdisciplinary. Neuroscience, biomedical engineeringm, robotics, artificial intelligence, biochemistry, nanotechnology, materials science.... these are all inherently interdisciplinary fields. Moreover, when you delve deep enough into a subject, if you have some breadth of knowledge, you begin to recognize how your work is readily applicable in a different fields. In some cases, what you are working on in your physics research might be much more useful in say chemistry or materials science.
It is up to the individual person to decide if that is what they want (or should be, in my opinion). I find no value in such classes.
That's fine, I guess. But it if you really don't value a liberal arts education then you really shouldn't be going to college. It sounds like what you're looking for is a vocational institute.
Oh wow, you can talk with a lot more people! I sure feel a lot better about my education stalling.
You should... I don't know how old you are but by your tone you sound pretty young. You're going to meet a lot of people in your life, some of whom you might need help from one day. Most of them aren't going to care about anything you do or are passionate about. However, if there's one thing I've learned it's that people love talking about themselves and what they like. I know enough about psychology, philosophy, history, and art to have a conversation with someone about their field and ask them relevant poignant questions without sounding like an ignoramus.
It's really true that highschool never ends. If you're an engineer and all you know is engineering and all you can talk about is engineering, you're only interesting to engineers. To everyone else you're just a nerd. Do humanity and society a favor by culturing yourself a little.
That's your own opinion. Some people find no value in some classes because they believe that they'll never use them.
And that is their folly. If you want to be a leader in your field, you pretty much have to be multidisciplinary. Knowledge does not exist in a discipline vacuum; it's all connected. You may not know it, but probably most of the techniques and methods that are core to your specialization have roots in other fields. Look at the development of Computer Science itself for an example of this! Personally I've incorporated ideas from psychology, statistical mechanics, and industrial engineering into my own research in robotics with tremendous success.
My philosophy is that you never know when what you know will come in handy, so learn as much as possible. You seem to feel that that you are prescient enough to anticipate every turn and challenge in your life and know exactly what you need to and no more. That's fine I guess, but when someone upstages you by pulling out some crazy shit you never considered because it wasn't interesting enough, you might feel differently.
Ah. That wasn't the case at my university. All the top students in my department were legit. The frat boys were the ones supplying and using drugs. It obviously varies school to school.
Pretty much correct. I knew someone who cheated on homeworks... basically copied all the answers. Then the test comes around and she realized she didn't actually know much of anything and ended up failing it. So she did well on the homeworks but failed the exam. Probably would have been better off not cheating at all.
More likely than not the people who are taking these drugs are using them because the spend the rest of their time partying and socializing, not just to compete on an even playing ground. The people who budget their time properly and take their education seriously still end up with As. The people who want to party all week and take drugs to do better on the test end up with a C. Perhaps without the drugs they would have completely failed. But it's not like in sports where the drugs are creating super humans that people who play by the rules can't compete with.
It seems you're complaining more about the quality of a particular course. My university had an English 101 type requirement and my writing style definitely improved as a consequence of that course. Since it was a university requirement there were students from all disciplines in my (smallish) size class and I heard a lot of complaining like "this is BS I shouldn't have to be here." We had to do a lot of peer review and from what I could tell, the ones who complained the most were the ones who needed the course the most. It seemed they didn't want to take the course because they weren't good at the material... which is understandable to some degree, but at the same time it's probably healthier to treat it as a learning experience rather than a chore.
You usually only take one breadth course a semester. It's not that big a deal. In my experience people who complain they don't have enough time really mean they don't know how to properly manage their time and prioritize their life. I dual majored in physics and computer engineering at at top ten university and worked part time on the side and yet managed to find time to write history papers. People who resort to cheating either deserve the lower grade for being weaker or should spend less time partying or playing video games.
If group work leads to better learning and is like the REAL WORK place
I'm sorry, what the parent is talking about is not group work. But you are correct in that it is more like the real world, where few people do the majority of the work, and the rest marginally contribute and get full credit
You have to be very careful with "group" work. I was lucky enough to find a group of students who could bounce ideas off each other to finish homework asignments in advanced physics classes. We would each contribute pretty equally to the solution, and we each learned how to think like the other. But then there's the other side where you have one people who is just coming up with all the answers and the rest copy. There's no learning going on there. It's just copying down the answer.
Unfortunately I've found in the countless group projects I've been involved with, the later situation is most often the case. This is probably why most professors have a policy that you can talk generally about the assignment with classmates, but you have to do the rest on your own.
Is it racism or is it an observation of what's going on? I've seen this behavior first hand at 3 different universities in dozens of classes spanning different disciplines.
Since you posted AC I just wanted to echo what you said. I'm at a Computer Science graduate school where 90% of the students are Chinese. The other day in class homework was due, and I saw students copying homework in class, just passing it down the row. They all turned it in at the end of class. Best part is, the TAs are all Chinese grad students as well, and are friends with the students. The professor didn't even come to the exam, and the Chinese TAs were almost overtly helping their friends cheat on the exam. It was absolutely infuriating. I saw it in my undergrad too, but there it was Indians. It just seems like something that these people aren't taught.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time. At a time I did too, but instead of going into those classes with a bad attitude I went in and learned as much as possible. Sure I wasn't interested in things like social psychology, medieval history or graphic media, but I can talk with a lot more people about topics they're interested in because of taking courses like that.
And at most schools, if you have enough foresight you can craft your breadth courses to reinforce your major. One of my history courses I could take for my Physics breadth requirements just happened to be about the ethics of the Manhattan project... something every physicist should have to learn.
Regardless, people who choose to only expose themselves to a single subject or viewpoint are almost universally boring or close minded, or some combination of the two.
This is the correct answer, in my opinion. Television and cinema portrays scientists in these fast paced, high octane positions full or excitement. Look at shows like CSI, Bones, Numbers etc. where the scientist type characters make incredible dramatic insights or manipulate data on crazy 3D displays... or the classic scene in Jurassic Park comes to mind where Lex sits at the terminal and flies through a virtual 3d environment to turn on the door locks. This kind of depiction of a computer scientist is prevalent in American media, and it's so far from the truth.
Even we as scientists are guilty of hiding from young aspiring scientists what it means to actually be one. We show they the coolest results and the most wiz bang experiments but omit that this kind of thing happens about 1% of the time.
Also, we never tell kids interested in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. that if they want to do anything interesting they'll probably need a PhD... there's no real demand in advanced research institutions for a B.S. in Physics.
In the end I think that a lot of kids go into a science program thinking it's going to be a lot of really cool interesting stuff. Truth is a lot of it is pretty boring... and even research is exceedingly boring most of the time. And beyond being boring it's incredibly difficult and it just gets harder and harder.
But I don't know how to fix it. You tell kids that it's boring and hard and they certainly won't get into the sciences. Make it seem too amazing and you'll get a ton of kids who don't know what they're getting themselves into. Somewhere there's a sweet spot perhaps... or maybe we need to go about it completely different.
But you did give them permission... by choosing the fast install. If you had clicked through the advanced options you would be able to uncheck the search engine change and the toolbar change.
But then again, it's AVG's decision for the installer to work that way... doesn't that make AVG evil instead of Google? And if not, since AVG now installs Google search and toolbar by default, does that then make Google evil?
Microsoft uses feedback provideded by users who install Bing Bar on the searches they make from any source, if the user installs Bing Bar and makes a search on Google, Microsoft knows about it because the user agreed to share that information. That's a far cry from what you're implying, that Bing just returns Google results.
Actually I just installed AVG to see how you were fooled into it. Turns out it no longer installs a bing search and bar, but avg brands versions of both, which are powered by none other than Google. And for the record, IE asks you if you want the plugins installed, whereas Firefox goes right ahead and enables them.
Yes, Microsoft is so evil for paying AVG to include an optional install in your download... Much like Google pays to be the default search engine for Firefox, or how Google toolbar is included in a bazillion other products like adobe acrobat. Evil indeed!
Do you know much about Windows 8? It runs on ARM, uses less resources than Windows 7, and is designed specifically for touch. I think it will be amazing on tablets (in fact I'm already running the developer preview on my latitude XT and it's a pleasure to use).
Actually, it seems that most people are worried about how Windows 8 will run on desktops rather than tablets!
Yes I was very close to getting an Asus Transformer... only thing holding me back really was waiting to see what ICS will offer and I'm unsure if the apps will fit my needs. Most important is the ability to take notes and the ability to give presentations. There is one real killer app for Tablet PCs called OneNote, developed by Microsoft. It's pretty much the best note taking app out there, and I've tried them all including Evernote. So it would be hard to give up any of the features I'm used to in OneNote. As for presentations I really need a presenter view that I can ink on. Aside from that I'm really open to what platform I use.
I want one... well, I have one, and I want a Windows 8 tablet bad.
Let me back up. I've owned Windows Tablets since the HP TC1100. It was a pretty good machine for its day, but it was a little large. Then I owned a couple of convertibles, including the Dell Latitude XT with multitouch screen. This was a great computer, due in no small part to windows 7. The larger task bar is a perfect size for fingers, jump lists can be accessed by flicking, adjusting DPI allows for larger buttons, and there are a number of touch and pen features that most people don't even know about (flick shortcuts, single touch gestures, multitouch gestures, and bounce feedback) built right into the OS.
Sure not a lot of apps were built specifically for touch, but I got through my day to day activities using pen/touch in windows 7 without a huge amount of compromise. What's more, I got actual work done. I do research in robotics, and having a full PC + pen was absolutely crucial for my work. I used that computer for everything from taking notes (in meetings and in the field), writing technical reports (both in tablet and laptop mode), giving presentations and annotating the screen, and even reading technical papers and marking them up.
Contrast this with the iPad (I own the iPad 1) and similar modern tablets. I use my iPad for exactly 3 things: internet, email, and reading. I find it great for these tasks (maybe not the best internet machine, but still pretty good) but otherwise I can't do anything useful with it. I can't take notes on it mostly because they all lack styluses, I can't type documents because of the lack of a full-featured word processor (Pages mobile doesn't cut it) and likewise Powerpoint is much better than the mobile keynote, especially in terms of presenter features and annotation (although I'll admit I haven't tried it since it first came out so maybe they improved this).
In all, I can't wait for Windows 8 tablets because they promise to be very touch friendly but still offer power users like me the ability to actually get my work done, rather than simply entertain myself. As for this current tablet HP Slate 2, I think it looks like a great machine and am certainly considering buying it.
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No, I'd argue the exact opposite. We live in an age where the most advanced topics are increasingly interdisciplinary. Neuroscience, biomedical engineeringm, robotics, artificial intelligence, biochemistry, nanotechnology, materials science.... these are all inherently interdisciplinary fields. Moreover, when you delve deep enough into a subject, if you have some breadth of knowledge, you begin to recognize how your work is readily applicable in a different fields. In some cases, what you are working on in your physics research might be much more useful in say chemistry or materials science.
It is up to the individual person to decide if that is what they want (or should be, in my opinion). I find no value in such classes.
That's fine, I guess. But it if you really don't value a liberal arts education then you really shouldn't be going to college. It sounds like what you're looking for is a vocational institute.
Oh wow, you can talk with a lot more people! I sure feel a lot better about my education stalling.
You should... I don't know how old you are but by your tone you sound pretty young. You're going to meet a lot of people in your life, some of whom you might need help from one day. Most of them aren't going to care about anything you do or are passionate about. However, if there's one thing I've learned it's that people love talking about themselves and what they like. I know enough about psychology, philosophy, history, and art to have a conversation with someone about their field and ask them relevant poignant questions without sounding like an ignoramus.
It's really true that highschool never ends. If you're an engineer and all you know is engineering and all you can talk about is engineering, you're only interesting to engineers. To everyone else you're just a nerd. Do humanity and society a favor by culturing yourself a little.
That's your own opinion. Some people find no value in some classes because they believe that they'll never use them.
And that is their folly. If you want to be a leader in your field, you pretty much have to be multidisciplinary. Knowledge does not exist in a discipline vacuum; it's all connected. You may not know it, but probably most of the techniques and methods that are core to your specialization have roots in other fields. Look at the development of Computer Science itself for an example of this! Personally I've incorporated ideas from psychology, statistical mechanics, and industrial engineering into my own research in robotics with tremendous success.
My philosophy is that you never know when what you know will come in handy, so learn as much as possible. You seem to feel that that you are prescient enough to anticipate every turn and challenge in your life and know exactly what you need to and no more. That's fine I guess, but when someone upstages you by pulling out some crazy shit you never considered because it wasn't interesting enough, you might feel differently.
Ah. That wasn't the case at my university. All the top students in my department were legit. The frat boys were the ones supplying and using drugs. It obviously varies school to school.
Pretty much correct. I knew someone who cheated on homeworks... basically copied all the answers. Then the test comes around and she realized she didn't actually know much of anything and ended up failing it. So she did well on the homeworks but failed the exam. Probably would have been better off not cheating at all.
More likely than not the people who are taking these drugs are using them because the spend the rest of their time partying and socializing, not just to compete on an even playing ground. The people who budget their time properly and take their education seriously still end up with As. The people who want to party all week and take drugs to do better on the test end up with a C. Perhaps without the drugs they would have completely failed. But it's not like in sports where the drugs are creating super humans that people who play by the rules can't compete with.
It seems you're complaining more about the quality of a particular course. My university had an English 101 type requirement and my writing style definitely improved as a consequence of that course. Since it was a university requirement there were students from all disciplines in my (smallish) size class and I heard a lot of complaining like "this is BS I shouldn't have to be here." We had to do a lot of peer review and from what I could tell, the ones who complained the most were the ones who needed the course the most. It seemed they didn't want to take the course because they weren't good at the material... which is understandable to some degree, but at the same time it's probably healthier to treat it as a learning experience rather than a chore.
You usually only take one breadth course a semester. It's not that big a deal. In my experience people who complain they don't have enough time really mean they don't know how to properly manage their time and prioritize their life. I dual majored in physics and computer engineering at at top ten university and worked part time on the side and yet managed to find time to write history papers. People who resort to cheating either deserve the lower grade for being weaker or should spend less time partying or playing video games.
If group work leads to better learning and is like the REAL WORK place
I'm sorry, what the parent is talking about is not group work. But you are correct in that it is more like the real world, where few people do the majority of the work, and the rest marginally contribute and get full credit
You have to be very careful with "group" work. I was lucky enough to find a group of students who could bounce ideas off each other to finish homework asignments in advanced physics classes. We would each contribute pretty equally to the solution, and we each learned how to think like the other. But then there's the other side where you have one people who is just coming up with all the answers and the rest copy. There's no learning going on there. It's just copying down the answer.
Unfortunately I've found in the countless group projects I've been involved with, the later situation is most often the case. This is probably why most professors have a policy that you can talk generally about the assignment with classmates, but you have to do the rest on your own.
Is it racism or is it an observation of what's going on? I've seen this behavior first hand at 3 different universities in dozens of classes spanning different disciplines.
Since you posted AC I just wanted to echo what you said. I'm at a Computer Science graduate school where 90% of the students are Chinese. The other day in class homework was due, and I saw students copying homework in class, just passing it down the row. They all turned it in at the end of class. Best part is, the TAs are all Chinese grad students as well, and are friends with the students. The professor didn't even come to the exam, and the Chinese TAs were almost overtly helping their friends cheat on the exam. It was absolutely infuriating. I saw it in my undergrad too, but there it was Indians. It just seems like something that these people aren't taught.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time. At a time I did too, but instead of going into those classes with a bad attitude I went in and learned as much as possible. Sure I wasn't interested in things like social psychology, medieval history or graphic media, but I can talk with a lot more people about topics they're interested in because of taking courses like that.
And at most schools, if you have enough foresight you can craft your breadth courses to reinforce your major. One of my history courses I could take for my Physics breadth requirements just happened to be about the ethics of the Manhattan project... something every physicist should have to learn.
Regardless, people who choose to only expose themselves to a single subject or viewpoint are almost universally boring or close minded, or some combination of the two.
This is the correct answer, in my opinion. Television and cinema portrays scientists in these fast paced, high octane positions full or excitement. Look at shows like CSI, Bones, Numbers etc. where the scientist type characters make incredible dramatic insights or manipulate data on crazy 3D displays... or the classic scene in Jurassic Park comes to mind where Lex sits at the terminal and flies through a virtual 3d environment to turn on the door locks. This kind of depiction of a computer scientist is prevalent in American media, and it's so far from the truth.
Even we as scientists are guilty of hiding from young aspiring scientists what it means to actually be one. We show they the coolest results and the most wiz bang experiments but omit that this kind of thing happens about 1% of the time.
Also, we never tell kids interested in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. that if they want to do anything interesting they'll probably need a PhD... there's no real demand in advanced research institutions for a B.S. in Physics.
In the end I think that a lot of kids go into a science program thinking it's going to be a lot of really cool interesting stuff. Truth is a lot of it is pretty boring... and even research is exceedingly boring most of the time. And beyond being boring it's incredibly difficult and it just gets harder and harder.
But I don't know how to fix it. You tell kids that it's boring and hard and they certainly won't get into the sciences. Make it seem too amazing and you'll get a ton of kids who don't know what they're getting themselves into. Somewhere there's a sweet spot perhaps... or maybe we need to go about it completely different.
Shouldn't this story run after B&N releases their nook tablet? What's the point of comparing the Kindle Fire to this vapor tablet?
Wait, you're glad to hear this? So it's okay for them to thrust Google down your throat but not Bing... sounds like you have some double standards.
But you did give them permission... by choosing the fast install. If you had clicked through the advanced options you would be able to uncheck the search engine change and the toolbar change.
But then again, it's AVG's decision for the installer to work that way... doesn't that make AVG evil instead of Google? And if not, since AVG now installs Google search and toolbar by default, does that then make Google evil?
No, not so much. Add the plus and you'll still get back results without that term.
Microsoft uses feedback provideded by users who install Bing Bar on the searches they make from any source, if the user installs Bing Bar and makes a search on Google, Microsoft knows about it because the user agreed to share that information. That's a far cry from what you're implying, that Bing just returns Google results.
Actually I just installed AVG to see how you were fooled into it. Turns out it no longer installs a bing search and bar, but avg brands versions of both, which are powered by none other than Google. And for the record, IE asks you if you want the plugins installed, whereas Firefox goes right ahead and enables them.
Yes, Microsoft is so evil for paying AVG to include an optional install in your download... Much like Google pays to be the default search engine for Firefox, or how Google toolbar is included in a bazillion other products like adobe acrobat. Evil indeed!
+5 insightful, despite the fact that Bing Bar is NOT pre installed in windows 7.
Do you know much about Windows 8? It runs on ARM, uses less resources than Windows 7, and is designed specifically for touch. I think it will be amazing on tablets (in fact I'm already running the developer preview on my latitude XT and it's a pleasure to use).
Actually, it seems that most people are worried about how Windows 8 will run on desktops rather than tablets!
Yes I was very close to getting an Asus Transformer... only thing holding me back really was waiting to see what ICS will offer and I'm unsure if the apps will fit my needs. Most important is the ability to take notes and the ability to give presentations. There is one real killer app for Tablet PCs called OneNote, developed by Microsoft. It's pretty much the best note taking app out there, and I've tried them all including Evernote. So it would be hard to give up any of the features I'm used to in OneNote. As for presentations I really need a presenter view that I can ink on. Aside from that I'm really open to what platform I use.
I want one... well, I have one, and I want a Windows 8 tablet bad.
Let me back up. I've owned Windows Tablets since the HP TC1100. It was a pretty good machine for its day, but it was a little large. Then I owned a couple of convertibles, including the Dell Latitude XT with multitouch screen. This was a great computer, due in no small part to windows 7. The larger task bar is a perfect size for fingers, jump lists can be accessed by flicking, adjusting DPI allows for larger buttons, and there are a number of touch and pen features that most people don't even know about (flick shortcuts, single touch gestures, multitouch gestures, and bounce feedback) built right into the OS.
Sure not a lot of apps were built specifically for touch, but I got through my day to day activities using pen/touch in windows 7 without a huge amount of compromise. What's more, I got actual work done. I do research in robotics, and having a full PC + pen was absolutely crucial for my work. I used that computer for everything from taking notes (in meetings and in the field), writing technical reports (both in tablet and laptop mode), giving presentations and annotating the screen, and even reading technical papers and marking them up.
Contrast this with the iPad (I own the iPad 1) and similar modern tablets. I use my iPad for exactly 3 things: internet, email, and reading. I find it great for these tasks (maybe not the best internet machine, but still pretty good) but otherwise I can't do anything useful with it. I can't take notes on it mostly because they all lack styluses, I can't type documents because of the lack of a full-featured word processor (Pages mobile doesn't cut it) and likewise Powerpoint is much better than the mobile keynote, especially in terms of presenter features and annotation (although I'll admit I haven't tried it since it first came out so maybe they improved this).
In all, I can't wait for Windows 8 tablets because they promise to be very touch friendly but still offer power users like me the ability to actually get my work done, rather than simply entertain myself. As for this current tablet HP Slate 2, I think it looks like a great machine and am certainly considering buying it.