May 07, 2009
Content to contribute: Wikipedia
From time to time I find pages in my areas of professional knowledge that seriously need improvement. On my long to-do list, editing Wikipedia never seems to make it to the top. But I might as well start a list in case I am looking for something to do in the future, or better yet, to suggest as an exercise for graduate students in my area.
Today I noticed:
- Incentive compatibility: For example, the article says that there are different "types" of IC (dominant strategy, Bayes-Nash). These aren't different types of IC. IC is a constraint (or sometimes a desideratum), and one can impose it on problems which we solve under different rationality assumptions. (This isn't a very good statement either!) Also, Bayes-Nash is defined incorrectly (the definition given is for Nash more generally.)
- Strategyproof: This one is really dreadful. The concept is defined incorrectly at least once (and the mere fact that it is defined more than once in a single entry is not good): the claim is made that "strategyproof" is equivalent to incentive compatibility + individual rationality. NOT. Also, the rather absurd claim is made that the concept is "most natural to the theory of payment schemes for network routing". I can't even fathom what metric one might use to measure whether a concept is more or less "natural" in various settings, but in any case, it seems absurd on its face to privilege network routing applications over all other applications for which dominant strategy constructs (such as strategyproofness) are useful. I actually looked this one up because I heard someone use the concept incorrectly in a research presentation, and that reminded me that a careful definition for strategyproofness is rarely stated, though it is used quite often.
If you happen to pick up on one of these and do some editing, be sure to note it here!
Posted by jmm at 01:32 PM | Comments (2)
May 05, 2008
Hamming: "You and your research"
Richard Hamming was a great mathematician and scientist. He is perhaps best known for developing the "Hamming code", a linear one-bit error-correcting code, widely used in computer RAM.
On 7 March 1986 he gave a talk in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, entitled "You and Your Research". It was transcribed by J. F. Kaiser. It is an insightful discussion of his years of study of the traits of scientists, their work habits, attitudes, etc., that seem to affect whether they make significant contributions. I strongly urge all scholars to read this essay.
One of his interesting, and perhaps surprising, observations: "One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage." "If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going to."
Another interesting point: to do important work, you have to be working on important problems. And at the very least, you need to be constantly asking what are the important problems?
Posted by jmm at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2008
Some plagiarism resources
There are many resources available concerning plagiarism, how to catch it, what to do about it, etc. Here are several:
- Assessment in Higher Education: Plagiarism
- American Historical Association: Standards of Professional Conduct
- JISC Internet Plagiarism Advisory Service
- Plagiarism.org
- The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue: Avoiding plagiarism
Posted by jmm at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
Plagiarism sucks
It has been my casual impression, as a teacher, that graduate students are plagiarizing more frequently than they use to (I haven't taught undergrads since the earlier 90s, so I have no opinion about them). This view is widely held, I sense, though I don't know if there is much careful evidence to support it. Certainly there is a sense that plagiarism is easier, now that there is so much text available on the Internet and cut-and-paste is so easy; the economist in me thinks that if the costs have gone down and the expected penalties are not much higher then the amount of plagiarism will increase.
(It is not immediately obvious that expected penalties have increased: it is also somewhat easier to catch Internet-based plagiarism, since search tools facilitate finding matching phrases. But as a teacher I think that the ease of catching has not increased as much as the ease of plagiarizing.)
In confronting students in the past few years, I also have the casual sense that there is less understanding of why plagiarism is unacceptable in academia. A typical response is "I did the research, I found the information, why should I have to rewrite it in my own words?"
Jack Shafer has published a column in Slate.com magazine entitled "Eight Reasons Plagiarism Sucks". He focuses on plagiarizing in journalism, but his concerns for the most part translate to academia as well, and are worth reading by scholars. Most people seem to understand that plagiarism is a type of theft (but doubt that original authors lose much or care much if they aren't cited in an unpublished term paper). But Shafer emphasizes harm to original authors is but one, and perhaps the least concern. His other concerns include "Journalism is about truth, not lies", "It corrupts the craft", "It promotes the dishonest".
When I try to educate straying students, I, too, emphasize the importance of trust between author and reader. I point out that if a boss finds that an employee is cutting corners and plagiarizing, even if the ideas presented are good, the boss will stop trusting the employee, and that is the beginning of the end.
There is another concern for students: You don't learn as much when you plagiarize. Learning is much more than learning to find what others have written on a topic. Even if you do nothing more than rewrite the ideas in your own words, cognitive psychologists have convincingly shown that the deeper processing and rehearsal that this entails greatly improves the writer's learning of the material. (Which is not to say that rewriting someone else's ideas is enough to avoid plagiarism: you need to provide attribution for the ideas, as well.) And there is also the not small matter of learning how to write in the first place!
Posted by jmm at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2008
Other online scholarship advice
I'd like to collect other places I find with useful advice to practicing scholars. The blogging platform I'm using (run by the University of Michigan Library) does not have an obvious way to create pages, or sidebar blogrolls, so for now I'll use this entry and add to it as I discover other resources (or until I figure out how to create a static page).
- Study Hacks, by Cal Newport. He has published two books on college success (well-reviewed at Amazon). The blog offers snippets of advice, many of which are useful for post-student scholars as well.
- Tomorrow's Professor, by Rick Reis. A Stanford professor who has been publishing this mailing list since publishing a book by the same name in 1997. There have been 847 postings to date. Most are short essays written by others. See also the Tomorrow's Professor Blog, which lists the postings and hosts discussions and comments about them.
- Getting Things Done in Academia, by Mike Kaspari, a professor at the University of Oklahoma. He offers "advice for graduate students on creativity, scholarlship, communication and time management".
Posted by jmm at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)
Time to write
Over the years, I have frequently seen advice from professional writers that to get writing done, it is best to:
- set aside some time to write every day, and
- force yourself to write something during that time.
One recent example was advice my colleague Yan Chen shared from a workshop she attended given by Jayne London, an "academic coach" who advises faculty members on writing. London advised that "Writing in short, regular sessions, e.g., 30-60 minutes every work day,leads to higher productivity than binge writing. Even ten minute sessions are better than binge writing."
Another academic coach, Mary McKinney, recommends:
The Tolerable TenIf you've been putting something off, it helps to start small. Begin working for just ten minutes on the daunting tasks of your life.
Almost any task, no matter how unpleasant, or anxiety provoking, can be tolerated for a short amount of time.
When you are having difficulty sitting down to work, set yourself the small but significant goal of working for just ten minutes on the project. After you've fulfilled that promise to yourself, you are free to either continue working or to stop.
For more of Mary's thoughts, see "Overcoming Procrastination".
Yet another coach, who focuses on advising college students, is Cal Newport, who writes the "Study Hacks" blog. In a 15 October 2007 article, he extracted writing advice from interviews (by others) of ten successful non-fiction writers.
- 9 out of 10 write in the morning, 4 in the afternoon, 3 at night. Only one reported writing all three times.
- Most set a specific starting time, and for most it is 8.30 am or earlier.
Posted by jmm at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)