Your best ideas don’t necessarily come while sitting at your computer ready to type. They might come while playing sport, taking a shower, lying in bed, or enjoying dinner at a restaurant. So you always need something to write on to capture the ideas before they float away. For about twenty years I carried a little spiral notepad and pen just for this purpose.
©
September 26, 2010
September 8, 2010
Top 200 world universities
Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings 2009
Source: QS, published October 1 2009.
© QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd.
 |  |  |  |
| 1 | 1 | Harvard University | US |
| 2 | 3 | University of Cambridge | UK |
| 3 | 2 | Yale University | US |
| 4 | 7 | University College London | UK |
| 5= | 6 | Imperial College London | UK |
| 5= | 4 | University of Oxford | UK |
| 7 | 8 | University of Chicago | US |
| 8 | 12 | Princeton University | US |
| 9 | 9 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | US |
| 10 | 5 | California Institute of Technology | US |
| 11 | 10 | Columbia University | US |
| 12 | 11 | University of Pennsylvania | US |
| 13 | 13= | Johns Hopkins University | US |
| 14 | 13= | Duke University | US |
| 15 | 15 | Cornell University | US |
| 16 | 17 | Stanford University | US |
| 17 | 16 | Australian National University | Australia |
| 18 | 20 | McGill University | Canada |
| 19 | 18 | University of Michigan | US |
| 20= | 23 | University of Edinburgh | UK |
| 20= | 24 | ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) | Switzerland |
| 22 | 19 | University of Tokyo | Japan |
| 23 | 22 | King’s College London | UK |
| 24 | 26 | University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 25 | 25 | Kyoto University | Japan |
| 26 | 29 | University of Manchester | UK |
| 27 | 21 | Carnegie Mellon University | US |
| 28 | 28 | Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris | France |
| 29 | 41 | University of Toronto | Canada |
| 30 | 30= | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
| 31 | 27 | Brown University | US |
| 32= | 30= | University of California, Los Angeles | US |
| 32= | 33 | Northwestern University | US |
| 34 | 32 | University of Bristol | UK |
| 35 | 39 | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | Hong Kong |
| 36= | 34= | Ecole Polytechnique | France |
| 36= | 38 | University of Melbourne | Australia |
| 36= | 37 | University of Sydney | Australia |
| 39 | 36 | University of California, Berkeley | US |
| 40 | 34= | University of British Columbia | Canada |
| 41 | 43 | University of Queensland | Australia |
| 42 | 50= | Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | Switzerland |
| 43= | 44 | Osaka University | Japan |
| 43= | 49 | Trinity College Dublin | Ireland |
| 45 | 47 | Monash University | Australia |
| 46 | 42 | Chinese University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 47= | 45 | University of New South Wales | Australia |
| 47= | 50= | Seoul National University | South Korea |
| 49= | 53 | University of Amsterdam | Netherlands |
| 49= | 56 | Tsinghua University | China |
| 51 | 48 | University of Copenhagen | Denmark |
| 52= | 40 | New York University | US |
| 52= | 50= | Peking University | China |
| 54 | 46 | Boston University | US |
| 55= | 78= | Technical University of Munich | Germany |
| 55= | 61 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | Japan |
| 57 | 57 | Heidelberg University | Germany |
| 58 | 69 | University of Warwick | UK |
| 59 | 74 | University of Alberta | Canada |
| 60 | 64 | Leiden University | Netherlands |
| 61= | 65 | University of Auckland | New Zealand |
| 61= | 55 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | US |
| 63= | 81= | Aarhus University | Denmark |
| 63= | 71 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | US |
| 65 | 72 | Katholieke Universiteit Leuven | Belgium |
| 66 | 75 | University of Birmingham | UK |
| 67= | 66 | London School of Economics | UK |
| 67= | 88 | Lund University | Sweden |
| 69 | 95 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | South Korea |
| 70= | 67 | Utrecht University | Netherlands |
| 70= | 81= | University of York | UK |
| 72 | 68 | University of Geneva | Switzerland |
| 73= | 77 | Nanyang Technological University | Singapore |
| 73= | 60 | Washington University in St Louis | US |
| 75 | 63 | Uppsala University | Sweden |
| 76= | 58 | University of California, San Diego | US |
| 76= | 70 | University of Texas at Austin | US |
| 78 | 102= | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | US |
| 79 | 73 | University of Glasgow | UK |
| 80 | 59 | University of Washington | US |
| 81 | 106= | University of Adelaide | Australia |
| 82 | 76 | University of Sheffield | UK |
| 83 | 78= | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands |
| 84 | 83= | University of Western Australia | Australia |
| 85 | 54 | Dartmouth College | US |
| 86 | 83= | Georgia Institute of Technology | US |
| 87= | 99= | Purdue University | US |
| 87= | 83= | University of St Andrews | UK |
| 89 | 108 | University College Dublin | Ireland |
| 90 | 62 | Emory University | US |
| 91 | 86 | University of Nottingham | UK |
| 92= | 120 | Nagoya University | Japan |
| 92= | 106= | University of Zurich | Switzerland |
| 94 | 137= | Free University of Berlin | Germany |
| 95= | 99= | University of Southampton | UK |
| 95= | 124= | National Taiwan University | Taiwan |
| 97 | 112 | Tohoku University | Japan |
| 98 | 93= | Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich | Germany |
| 99 | 104 | University of Leeds | UK |
| 100 | 78= | Rice University | US |
| 101 | 177= | University of Oslo | Norway |
| 102 | 93= | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Israel |
| 103= | 122= | Durham University | UK |
| 103= | 113 | Fudan University | China |
| 105 | 87 | University of Minnesota | US |
| 106 | 98 | University of California, Santa Barbara | US |
| 107 | 91= | Université de Montréal | Canada |
| 108= | 131 | University of Basel | Switzerland |
| 108= | 89 | University of California, Davis | US |
| 108= | 126 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | Netherlands |
| 108= | 91= | University of Helsinki | Finland |
| 112 | 102= | University of Southern California | US |
| 113 | 129 | University of Waterloo | Canada |
| 114= | 97 | University of Pittsburgh | US |
| 114= | 114 | Tel Aviv University | Israel |
| 116 | 111 | Maastricht University | Netherlands |
| 117 | 149 | Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie Paris VI | France |
| 118 | 117= | Queen’s University | Canada |
| 119 | 90 | Case Western Reserve University | US |
| 120= | 128 | Eindhoven University of Technology | Netherlands |
| 120= | 105 | Pennsylvania State University | US |
| 122= | 147= | Freiburg University | Germany |
| 122= | 122= | University of Maryland, College Park | US |
| 124 | 147= | City University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 125 | 124= | University of Otago | New Zealand |
| 126= | 116 | Université Catholique de Louvain | Belgium |
| 126= | 140 | Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon | France |
| 128 | 96 | University of Virginia | US |
| 129= | 153 | University of Aberdeen | UK |
| 129= | 110 | Georgetown University | US |
| 129= | 121 | Ohio State University | US |
| 132= | 109 | Technion – Israel Institute of Technology | Israel |
| 132= | 115 | University of Vienna | Austria |
| 134 | 188= | Pohang University of Science and Technology | South Korea |
| 135 | 133= | Cardiff University | UK |
| 136 | 136 | University of Ghent | Belgium |
| 137 | 133= | University of Liverpool | UK |
| 138= | 166= | Chulalongkorn University | Thailand |
| 138= | 144= | University of Groningen | Netherlands |
| 140 | 101 | Vanderbilt University | US |
| 141 | 119 | University of Rochester | US |
| 142 | 214 | Keio University | Japan |
| 143 | 117= | McMaster University | Canada |
| 144= | 152 | University of Bath | UK |
| 144= | 227 | University of Bergen | Norway |
| 146= | 179 | University of Cape Town | South Africa |
| 146= | 139 | Humboldt University of Berlin | Germany |
| 148 | 180= | Waseda University | Japan |
| 149= | 170= | University of Calgary | Canada |
| 149= | 155= | Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen | Germany |
| 151= | 159 | University of Western Ontario | Canada |
| 151= | 203 | Yonsei University | South Korea |
| 153 | 144= | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | China |
| 154 | 141 | University of Science and Technology of China | China |
| 155= | 158 | Kyushu University | Japan |
| 155= | 183= | Lomonosov Moscow State University | Russia |
| 155= | 142 | Wageningen University | Netherlands |
| 158 | 162= | Newcastle University | UK |
| 159 | 133= | Technical University of Denmark | Denmark |
| 160 | 157 | Tufts University | US |
| 161 | 132 | University of California, Irvine | US |
| 162 | 170= | Lancaster University | UK |
| 163 | 174= | Indian Institute of Technology Bombay | India |
| 164 | 160 | Queen Mary, University of London | UK |
| 165 | 155= | VU University Amsterdam | Netherlands |
| 166= | 146 | University of Arizona | US |
| 166= | 130 | University of Sussex | UK |
| 168= | 161 | University of Lausanne | Switzerland |
| 168= | 143 | Nanjing University | China |
| 168= | 224 | Saint-Petersburg State University | Russia |
| 171= | 186= | University of Barcelona | Spain |
| 171= | 174= | Hokkaido University | Japan |
| 173 | 127 | Stony Brook University | US |
| 174= | 192= | University of Bologna | Italy |
| 174= | 173 | KTH, Royal Institute of Technology | Sweden |
| 174= | 216 | University of Tsukuba | Japan |
| 177= | 195 | University of Antwerp | Belgium |
| 177= | 200= | University of Athens | Greece |
| 179 | 137= | Texas A&M University | US |
| 180 | 230 | Universiti Malaya | Malaysia |
| 181 | 154 | Indian Institute of Technology Delhi | India |
| 182 | 216 | Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen | Germany |
| 183 | 151 | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | US |
| 184 | 207 | University of Karlsruhe | Germany |
| 185 | 258 | University of Gothenburg | Sweden |
| 186= | 180= | University of Colorado at Boulder | US |
| 186= | 166= | University of Göttingen | Germany |
| 188 | 186= | University of Canterbury | New Zealand |
| 189 | 182 | Macquarie University | Australia |
| 190 | 150 | National Autonomous University of Mexico | Mexico |
| 191= | 183= | Université Libre de Bruxelles | Belgium |
| 191= | 194 | University of Reading | UK |
| 193= | 192= | University of Bern | Switzerland |
| 193= | 170= | Indiana University Bloomington | US |
| 195 | 224 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | Hong Kong |
| 196= | 177= | University of Leicester | UK |
| 196= | 164 | Simon Fraser University | Canada |
| 198 | 162= | Chalmers University of Technology | Sweden |
| 199 | 168 | University of Notre Dame | US |
| 200 | 200= | University of Twente | Netherlands |
Source: QS, published October 1 2009.
© QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd.
September 7, 2010
Где учат на совесть: лучшие школы Харькова
СЕГОДНЯ
Вторник, 29 Сентября, 2009
«Сегодня» составила рейтинг лучших и худших школ Харькова
Украинский центр оценивания качества образования (УЦ) обнародовал официальные данные независимого тестирования 2009 года. И наша газета вновь проводит собственный анализ его результатов, задавшись целью вывести рейтинги средних учебных заведений первой столицы — гимназий, лицеев, специализированных и обычных школ — по уровню знаний, показанных их выпускниками. Думается, такое исследование будет полезно в первую очередь для будущих поколений абитуриентов и их родителей, которым еще предстоит сделать свой выбор школы. А также для самих альма-матер, которым, несмотря на определенное сопротивление с их стороны, с введением внешнего тестирования придется работать в условиях неформального соревнования по уровню подготовки выпускников. Ведь не секрет, что последний зависит не от технического оснащения кабинетов, а от уровня преподавательского состава. В немалой степени срабатывает и фактор концентрации вундеркиндов в классе, когда все тянутся к верхней планке, а не высмеивают тех, кто корпит над книжками.
ПРИНЦИПЫ РЕЙТИНГА. Наше исследование проводилось по четырем основным предметам тестирования, в которых принимало участие наибольшее количество участников и которые были заявлены вузами как конкурсные на самых популярных специальностях, — украинскому языку и литературе (эти предметы обязательны для всех), истории Украины (51% от зарегистрированных), математике (39%) и английскому языку (12%). Всего, по данным УЦ, на тестирование-2009 зарегистрировался 461 981 потенциальный абитуриент. Но, как известно, каждый участник мог пройти испытание по 2—5 предметам, и потому от разных школ в тестировании по одной и той же дисциплине участвовало разное количество выпускников — от 1—5 до 140—160 человек. Поэтому для объективности мы исключили из выборки те школы, от которых хотя бы по одному предмету из трех основных (украинский, история Украины, математика) было представлено менее десяти человек. Также при рейтинговании по английскому языку не учитывались результаты школ, от которых по этому предмету было менее 10 учеников.
Мы вывели процент тех, кто заработал от 173 до максимальных 200 баллов, т.е. отличников, имеющих реальные шансы поступления на рейтинговые специальности топовых университетов страны (процент участников от каждой школы, которые не набрали минимально необходимые для участия в конкурсе любого вуза 124 балла, был взят из данных УЦ). На основании этих цифр в каждом районе и по каждой дисциплине мы выделили тройки школ-передовиков и школ-аутсайдеров. И плюс к тому, по данным всех районов, мы вывели топ-десятки лучших харьковских школ по каждому из четырех конкурсных предметов.
ОТЛИЧНИКОВ СТАНОВИТСЯ БОЛЬШЕ ПО УКРАИНСКОМУ. Сравнивая результаты тестирования-2009 с результатами прошлого года, можно отметить такие тенденции. Прошлогодние лидеры, т.е. школы, в которых было больше всего детей, набравших высокие балы, сохранили свои позиции, хотя отдельные рокировки все же есть. Например, Харьковский учебно-воспитательный комплекс №45 в прошлом году был явным лидером по знанию украинского языка и литературы (51,72%), в этом году результаты — 51,18. В этом году с этим предметом справились лучше всего Харьковский УВК №169 (59,65), Харьковский частный УВК «Авторская школа Бойко» (56,26) и Харьковская гимназия №6 (54,89). А вот знания истории Украины немного упали, если сравнивать с результатами прошлого года. Так, например, в Московском районе лидером по знаниям этого предмета в школе №123 100% учеников сдали предмет на отлично, да и результаты в 125-й и 124-й школах были такие же. В этом году в ОШ № 123 с отличными результатами — 0 учеников, в 125-й и вовсе сдавали предмет меньше десяти человек, а в № 124 — от 173 до 200 баллов набрало только 25%. 100-процентный отличный результат в этом году не удалось показать ни единой школе города.
Как всегда, радуют достижения в математике. Прошлогодний лидер — физико-математический лицей №27 — не сдал свои позиции и в этом году, результат даже был улучшен: в 2008-м «на отлично» справились 88,57% детей, в этом году — 92,3%. В основной массе школ, которые показали в 2008-ом году отличный результат, количество детей с 173—200 не превышало 66%, в этом году ситуация улучшилась: университетский лицей — 77,77, школа им. Ломоносова №46—74,4, гимназия №47—73,94, лицей «Профессионал» — 73,9.
ДВОЕЧНИКИ ПОДТЯНУЛИСЬ. На фоне увеличения числа отличников есть и некоторое увеличение числа двоечников по украинскому и истории. Возможно, это произошло из-за общего увеличения числа тестируемых, так как по «Условиям поступления 2009 г.» каждый абитуриент должен был иметь 2 сертификата, а не 1, как в 2008-м. Зато подтянулось (на 5—6%) большинство школ, лидировавших в прошлом году по двоечникам, например, в Орджоникидзевском районе. Немного портит общую картину новый тест по английскому, по которому во многих районах процент не набравших минимальные 124 балла зашкаливает за 15%, и даже иногда за 30 %. Правда, сделать вывод, насколько хорошо или плохо владеют ученики английским, сложно: в большинстве случаев рискнули протестироваться меньше 10 человек. С одной стороны, преподаватели говорят, что тесты по английскому слишком сложные, но скорее срабатывает недостаточный уровень подготовки.
ЧАСТНЫЕ. Частные школы, как и в прошлом году, написали тесты лучше обычных школ, но все же слабее, чем государственные лицеи и гимназии. Характерно, что среди их выпускников почти нет двоечников. Да и по отличникам есть высокие результаты, с которыми отдельные школы даже вошли в тройку лидеров рейтинга района. Например, «Авторская школа Бойко» (76,92% отличников по истории и 58,62 по английскому), лицей «Профессионал» (73,9% по математике, 40,73% по английскому и 36,37% по украинскому языку и литературе). Однако большинство частников все же автоматически выпало из нашего рейтинга ввиду того, что на тестирование пришло слишком мало их воспитанников (от 1 до 5 человек). Вероятно, это связано с тем, что в частных школах многие выпускники ориентированы на учебу за границей.
РЕЗЮМЕ. Тестирование-2009 прошло удачнее тестирования-2008: учителя уже набили руку на тестах и смогли лучше подготовить своих выпускников. Как и в прошлом году, самые сильные выпускники — именитых государственных гимназий, лицеев и специализированных школ. Как и прежде, свои глубокие знания харьковские школьники демонстрируют в математике. Собственно, Харьковская область — вторая в Украине по лидерству в наивысших оценках по этому предмету. Например, максимальную оценку 200 баллов по двум предметам (физика и математика) набрал ученик физико-математического лицея. Подкачала в этом году «мова» и иностранные языки — 200 баллов удалось набрать только одному человеку, да и то по французскому языку. По данным Харьковского регионального центра оценивания качества образования, с тестами в этом году лучше всего справились в Дзержинском, Коминтерновском и Киевском районах.
©
Вторник, 29 Сентября, 2009
«Сегодня» составила рейтинг лучших и худших школ Харькова
Украинский центр оценивания качества образования (УЦ) обнародовал официальные данные независимого тестирования 2009 года. И наша газета вновь проводит собственный анализ его результатов, задавшись целью вывести рейтинги средних учебных заведений первой столицы — гимназий, лицеев, специализированных и обычных школ — по уровню знаний, показанных их выпускниками. Думается, такое исследование будет полезно в первую очередь для будущих поколений абитуриентов и их родителей, которым еще предстоит сделать свой выбор школы. А также для самих альма-матер, которым, несмотря на определенное сопротивление с их стороны, с введением внешнего тестирования придется работать в условиях неформального соревнования по уровню подготовки выпускников. Ведь не секрет, что последний зависит не от технического оснащения кабинетов, а от уровня преподавательского состава. В немалой степени срабатывает и фактор концентрации вундеркиндов в классе, когда все тянутся к верхней планке, а не высмеивают тех, кто корпит над книжками.
ПРИНЦИПЫ РЕЙТИНГА. Наше исследование проводилось по четырем основным предметам тестирования, в которых принимало участие наибольшее количество участников и которые были заявлены вузами как конкурсные на самых популярных специальностях, — украинскому языку и литературе (эти предметы обязательны для всех), истории Украины (51% от зарегистрированных), математике (39%) и английскому языку (12%). Всего, по данным УЦ, на тестирование-2009 зарегистрировался 461 981 потенциальный абитуриент. Но, как известно, каждый участник мог пройти испытание по 2—5 предметам, и потому от разных школ в тестировании по одной и той же дисциплине участвовало разное количество выпускников — от 1—5 до 140—160 человек. Поэтому для объективности мы исключили из выборки те школы, от которых хотя бы по одному предмету из трех основных (украинский, история Украины, математика) было представлено менее десяти человек. Также при рейтинговании по английскому языку не учитывались результаты школ, от которых по этому предмету было менее 10 учеников.
Мы вывели процент тех, кто заработал от 173 до максимальных 200 баллов, т.е. отличников, имеющих реальные шансы поступления на рейтинговые специальности топовых университетов страны (процент участников от каждой школы, которые не набрали минимально необходимые для участия в конкурсе любого вуза 124 балла, был взят из данных УЦ). На основании этих цифр в каждом районе и по каждой дисциплине мы выделили тройки школ-передовиков и школ-аутсайдеров. И плюс к тому, по данным всех районов, мы вывели топ-десятки лучших харьковских школ по каждому из четырех конкурсных предметов.
ОТЛИЧНИКОВ СТАНОВИТСЯ БОЛЬШЕ ПО УКРАИНСКОМУ. Сравнивая результаты тестирования-2009 с результатами прошлого года, можно отметить такие тенденции. Прошлогодние лидеры, т.е. школы, в которых было больше всего детей, набравших высокие балы, сохранили свои позиции, хотя отдельные рокировки все же есть. Например, Харьковский учебно-воспитательный комплекс №45 в прошлом году был явным лидером по знанию украинского языка и литературы (51,72%), в этом году результаты — 51,18. В этом году с этим предметом справились лучше всего Харьковский УВК №169 (59,65), Харьковский частный УВК «Авторская школа Бойко» (56,26) и Харьковская гимназия №6 (54,89). А вот знания истории Украины немного упали, если сравнивать с результатами прошлого года. Так, например, в Московском районе лидером по знаниям этого предмета в школе №123 100% учеников сдали предмет на отлично, да и результаты в 125-й и 124-й школах были такие же. В этом году в ОШ № 123 с отличными результатами — 0 учеников, в 125-й и вовсе сдавали предмет меньше десяти человек, а в № 124 — от 173 до 200 баллов набрало только 25%. 100-процентный отличный результат в этом году не удалось показать ни единой школе города.
Как всегда, радуют достижения в математике. Прошлогодний лидер — физико-математический лицей №27 — не сдал свои позиции и в этом году, результат даже был улучшен: в 2008-м «на отлично» справились 88,57% детей, в этом году — 92,3%. В основной массе школ, которые показали в 2008-ом году отличный результат, количество детей с 173—200 не превышало 66%, в этом году ситуация улучшилась: университетский лицей — 77,77, школа им. Ломоносова №46—74,4, гимназия №47—73,94, лицей «Профессионал» — 73,9.
ДВОЕЧНИКИ ПОДТЯНУЛИСЬ. На фоне увеличения числа отличников есть и некоторое увеличение числа двоечников по украинскому и истории. Возможно, это произошло из-за общего увеличения числа тестируемых, так как по «Условиям поступления 2009 г.» каждый абитуриент должен был иметь 2 сертификата, а не 1, как в 2008-м. Зато подтянулось (на 5—6%) большинство школ, лидировавших в прошлом году по двоечникам, например, в Орджоникидзевском районе. Немного портит общую картину новый тест по английскому, по которому во многих районах процент не набравших минимальные 124 балла зашкаливает за 15%, и даже иногда за 30 %. Правда, сделать вывод, насколько хорошо или плохо владеют ученики английским, сложно: в большинстве случаев рискнули протестироваться меньше 10 человек. С одной стороны, преподаватели говорят, что тесты по английскому слишком сложные, но скорее срабатывает недостаточный уровень подготовки.
ЧАСТНЫЕ. Частные школы, как и в прошлом году, написали тесты лучше обычных школ, но все же слабее, чем государственные лицеи и гимназии. Характерно, что среди их выпускников почти нет двоечников. Да и по отличникам есть высокие результаты, с которыми отдельные школы даже вошли в тройку лидеров рейтинга района. Например, «Авторская школа Бойко» (76,92% отличников по истории и 58,62 по английскому), лицей «Профессионал» (73,9% по математике, 40,73% по английскому и 36,37% по украинскому языку и литературе). Однако большинство частников все же автоматически выпало из нашего рейтинга ввиду того, что на тестирование пришло слишком мало их воспитанников (от 1 до 5 человек). Вероятно, это связано с тем, что в частных школах многие выпускники ориентированы на учебу за границей.
РЕЗЮМЕ. Тестирование-2009 прошло удачнее тестирования-2008: учителя уже набили руку на тестах и смогли лучше подготовить своих выпускников. Как и в прошлом году, самые сильные выпускники — именитых государственных гимназий, лицеев и специализированных школ. Как и прежде, свои глубокие знания харьковские школьники демонстрируют в математике. Собственно, Харьковская область — вторая в Украине по лидерству в наивысших оценках по этому предмету. Например, максимальную оценку 200 баллов по двум предметам (физика и математика) набрал ученик физико-математического лицея. Подкачала в этом году «мова» и иностранные языки — 200 баллов удалось набрать только одному человеку, да и то по французскому языку. По данным Харьковского регионального центра оценивания качества образования, с тестами в этом году лучше всего справились в Дзержинском, Коминтерновском и Киевском районах.
©
September 6, 2010
A brilliant light source rises in South-East Asia
CERN Courier
Jun 7, 2010
The use of local expertise and a challenging construction site represent just two of the interesting characteristics of a project to build a new 3 GeV light source in South-East Asia.
Résumé
Et la lumière fut en Asie du Sud-Est
Le NSRRC, le centre national taïwanais de recherche sur le rayonnement synchrotron, a commencé la construction de sa seconde source de lumière synchrotron, nommée Taïwan Photon Source (TPS). À l'instar d'autres programmes de grande envergure, des années de préparation et de processus décisionnels ont été nécessaires pour atteindre cette étape cruciale. Pour respecter les échéances, il a fallu considérablement solliciter du personnel expérimenté qui avait déjà participé à la construction du premier accélérateur du NSSRC, Taiwan Light Source (TLS), en 1983. Ainsi, le projet a su tenir des délais ambitieux et a permis le transfert de connaissances à de jeunes ingénieurs.
The National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC), situated about one hour's drive from Taipei, has begun the construction of its second synchrotron-light source, the Taiwan Photon Source (TPS), with a ground-breaking ceremony that took place on 7 February. Like any other large-scale project, reaching this milestone involved years of preparation and intense decision-making. The project requirements left little room for even small deviations from delivery timetables or for cost increases. To meet its mandate on time, the NSRRC has relied on its experienced staff members, many of whom had previously participated in the construction of the Taiwan Light Source (TLS) in 1983 – the first accelerator at NSRRC. This is allowing the project to meet challenging deadlines and to transfer expertise to younger engineers.
The TPS is a $210 million project involving, at various times, more than 150 staff in charge of design, construction, administration and management of day-to-day operations. The official proposal for the TPS was submitted in 2006 and primary funding was provided by the National Science Council over a seven-year period, with $54 million for civil construction backed by the Council for Economic Planning and Development. Conceptual designs of the major systems were completed in 2009 and key systems are currently under construction. These include the linac, the cryogenic system, the magnets and the RF transmitters.
The TPS will be equipped with a 3 GeV electron accelerator and a low-emittance synchrotron-storage ring 518.4 m in circumference (see table). This will be housed in a doughnut-shaped building, 659.7 m in outer circumference, next to the smaller circular building that houses the existing 1.5 GeV accelerator, the TLS. The dual rings will serve scientists from South-East Asia and beyond who require an advanced research facility for conducting experiments with both soft and hard X-rays.
The storage ring
The TPS storage ring comprises 24 bending sections, 6 long straight sections and 18 short ones. A mock-up of a unit cell representing 1/24 of the storage ring has been constructed to test all systems before mass production, including the 14-m long vacuum pipe, prototype magnets and girders. This mock-up will be useful for evaluating and correcting – if necessary – specific design decisions. It has also served as a case study for the Machine Advisory Committee that reviewed the status of the TPS from technical and scheduling standpoints. One significant benefit gained from such a mock-up is that it allows for the spatial study of components that fit closely together, as well as of the cables and piping.
The vacuum chambers are made of aluminium alloy, based on the merits of lower impedance, lower heat resistance and its outgassing rate. There are two bending chambers per unit cell, each 4 m in length with, in some places, a 1 mm gap to the adjoining sextupole magnet in a bending section. In total there are 48 such units in the storage ring, with walls typically 4 mm thick in the straight sections. The beam pipes are made from aluminium extrusions with two cooling channels on each side. There are also several long vacuum chambers to cope with undulators installed between the magnet poles.
A 14-m long vacuum pipe was produced as part of the 1/24 mock-up. Foreseeable production challenges include the development of machining and cleaning, of welding and cooling systems for the bending-chambers, and of a means to transport the finished product from the assembly site to the TPS storage ring. To minimize the mechanical distortion caused by thermal irradiation of the vacuum chambers, cooling-water channels are attached on both sides of the pipe and where the beam-position monitors (BPMs) are located. To transport the 14-m long vacuum pipe, a "hanger" of equivalent size was built to carry the assembled unit. A successful rehearsal, moving the transportation gear along 8 km of busy streets took place in March. The next step will be to ensure that no damage occurs to the vacuum pipe during the process.
To achieve optimal performance, the TPS accelerator will be mounted on metal girders placed on pedestals that can be adjusted via remote-control. The mock-up has demonstrated the sophistication reached in the design of these girders. Metal girders often suffer from rather low eigenfrequencies compared with concrete girders, especially when heavy magnets are placed on them. The TPS girders, however, are very stiff, which pushes up the eigenfrequencies. Measurements so far are in close agreement with predicted performance.
The TPS is designed for "top-up" operation, which is the standard operation mode in the TLS. The TPS injector complex will consist of a 150 MeV linear accelerator and a full-energy booster that will share the tunnel with the storage ring. Because this is a new facility with a low-emittance injector, the opportunity exists for using pulsed multipole injection, which may have significant benefits for quiet top-up. To allow acceptance tests of the linac before the storage-ring tunnel becomes available, construction work is under way on a bunker that will see future use for a Free-Electron-Laser (FEL) injector test facility.
Each of the 24 achromatic bending sections (unit cells) in the TPS contains 2 dipoles, 10 quadrupoles and 7 sextupoles. A further 168 skew quadrupoles, 1 injection septum-magnet and 4 kicker magnets, bring the total number of magnets to be installed to 629. All of the magnetic cores are made of silicon-steel sheet. The shaping of the iron laminations are made by wire cutting with computer numerical control machines to within 10 μm accuracy and are shuffled to ensure uniform magnetic properties. Accuracy in the magnet assembly is to be controlled to within 15 μm. The upper half of the magnet can be removed to install the vacuum chamber and the whole magnet can be detached without removing the vacuum chamber. The entire design for the magnet was performed in house with prototypes produced during phase I for thorough testing and measurement.
The TPS adopts the KEK approach to superconducting RF (SRF) to cope with future operational modes. Collaboration and technology transfer on the 500 MHz SRF module, as used at KEK for KEKB, is a de facto requirement to ensure the timely development of the SRF modules (including the 1.8 K cryostat for the harmonic SRF modules) and of technology-transfer for a higher-order-mode damped superconducting cavity suited to high-intensity storage rings. Conventional PETRA-type cavities will be considered as an alternative for commissioning in case the SRF cavities are not available in time.
Construction challenges
The complexity and cost of constructing a new accelerator facility adjoined to an existing one is much higher than for one built on undeveloped land. However, to optimize resources and personnel, and the use of common equipment, as well as to allow a versatile research facility for users of both accelerators, the decision was taken to build the TPS at the NSRRC home base.
The site slopes down from south to north and abruptly descends 5 to 10 m at the northern edge, where the TPS will be built. The geology around the site is simple with gravel as the main formation. Ideally, the platform for the storage ring would be created above ground or by digging underground. The first approach is expensive and risks instability in an area known for frequent earthquakes; the latter will magnify the humidity problems in land soaked with rain and may cause a partial, if not total, subsidence of the existing TLS. To keep the civil construction cost within budget, the solution has been to meet both alternatives half way. The TPS storage-ring building will have its floor at the beamline area 12.5 m underground near the south side, and 4 m above ground at the north side. A beamline for medical imaging will be located on the west side next to the busiest traffic of the Hsinchu Science Park, while beamlines demanding nanoscale resolution will be located away from the possible sources of vibration.
Building a new accelerator next to an existing one involves continual challenges. Because the TPS building cuts into the edge of the TLS, the prevention of instability and vibration in the TLS caused by the construction work is a critical issue. To prepare for this daunting task, the NSRRC held workshops on ambient ground motion and civil engineering for the TPS in 2005 and 2008, so as to study the methods and strategic solutions used at other synchrotron facilities. These resulted in mechanical approaches to eliminate or reduce amplification of the floor motion by the girder system for the TPS, while also adding steel piles to prevent the adjacent TLS foundations from gradually crumbling.
Tearing down the walls
Various methods to protect the TLS foundations and building centre on supporting the ground soil with in situ reinforcing and shoring-up the longitudinal sections that are exposed by excavation work. Taking advantage of the fact that the site is mainly of gravel formation, the TLS beam columns were reinforced with additional frames. In addition, seven H-beam, Type-L steel piles, 17.5 m long, were inserted in places where parts of walls of the TLS storage ring previously stood. Each pile was also equipped with a 200 cm × 120 cm × 60 cm concrete beam laid horizontally against the TLS foundations. These piles provide pressure to prevent the TLS from rising through elastic deformation occurring when the suppression disappears as a result of the 10 m-deep excavation.
To meet the target milestone of commissioning by the end of 2013, civil construction and accelerator installation will proceed concurrently. Partial occupancy of the linac building and ring tunnel needs to occur by the beginning of 2012 to meet the installation timetable for ring components. Power and other utilities will be brought in once pedestal paving and the installation of piping and cable trays begins. This will allow the setting up of the booster ring and subsystems in the storage ring. The SRF cavity will be the final component to move in and tests for TPS commissioning will follow accordingly.
With the accumulated expertise from the past, the design of the TPS has been achieved by the NSRRC's own members. With their capability in developing insertion devices for the TLS and systems to cope with their operation established since 1993, the photon energy of the TPS should reach 30 keV. With a maximum brightness of 1021 photons/s/0.1%BW/mm2/mrad2 at 10 keV it will be among the brightest light-sources available.
About the author
Diana Lin and Gwo-huei Luo, National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center.
©
Jun 7, 2010
The use of local expertise and a challenging construction site represent just two of the interesting characteristics of a project to build a new 3 GeV light source in South-East Asia.
Résumé
Et la lumière fut en Asie du Sud-Est
Le NSRRC, le centre national taïwanais de recherche sur le rayonnement synchrotron, a commencé la construction de sa seconde source de lumière synchrotron, nommée Taïwan Photon Source (TPS). À l'instar d'autres programmes de grande envergure, des années de préparation et de processus décisionnels ont été nécessaires pour atteindre cette étape cruciale. Pour respecter les échéances, il a fallu considérablement solliciter du personnel expérimenté qui avait déjà participé à la construction du premier accélérateur du NSSRC, Taiwan Light Source (TLS), en 1983. Ainsi, le projet a su tenir des délais ambitieux et a permis le transfert de connaissances à de jeunes ingénieurs.
The National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC), situated about one hour's drive from Taipei, has begun the construction of its second synchrotron-light source, the Taiwan Photon Source (TPS), with a ground-breaking ceremony that took place on 7 February. Like any other large-scale project, reaching this milestone involved years of preparation and intense decision-making. The project requirements left little room for even small deviations from delivery timetables or for cost increases. To meet its mandate on time, the NSRRC has relied on its experienced staff members, many of whom had previously participated in the construction of the Taiwan Light Source (TLS) in 1983 – the first accelerator at NSRRC. This is allowing the project to meet challenging deadlines and to transfer expertise to younger engineers.
The TPS is a $210 million project involving, at various times, more than 150 staff in charge of design, construction, administration and management of day-to-day operations. The official proposal for the TPS was submitted in 2006 and primary funding was provided by the National Science Council over a seven-year period, with $54 million for civil construction backed by the Council for Economic Planning and Development. Conceptual designs of the major systems were completed in 2009 and key systems are currently under construction. These include the linac, the cryogenic system, the magnets and the RF transmitters.
The TPS will be equipped with a 3 GeV electron accelerator and a low-emittance synchrotron-storage ring 518.4 m in circumference (see table). This will be housed in a doughnut-shaped building, 659.7 m in outer circumference, next to the smaller circular building that houses the existing 1.5 GeV accelerator, the TLS. The dual rings will serve scientists from South-East Asia and beyond who require an advanced research facility for conducting experiments with both soft and hard X-rays.
The storage ring
The TPS storage ring comprises 24 bending sections, 6 long straight sections and 18 short ones. A mock-up of a unit cell representing 1/24 of the storage ring has been constructed to test all systems before mass production, including the 14-m long vacuum pipe, prototype magnets and girders. This mock-up will be useful for evaluating and correcting – if necessary – specific design decisions. It has also served as a case study for the Machine Advisory Committee that reviewed the status of the TPS from technical and scheduling standpoints. One significant benefit gained from such a mock-up is that it allows for the spatial study of components that fit closely together, as well as of the cables and piping.
The vacuum chambers are made of aluminium alloy, based on the merits of lower impedance, lower heat resistance and its outgassing rate. There are two bending chambers per unit cell, each 4 m in length with, in some places, a 1 mm gap to the adjoining sextupole magnet in a bending section. In total there are 48 such units in the storage ring, with walls typically 4 mm thick in the straight sections. The beam pipes are made from aluminium extrusions with two cooling channels on each side. There are also several long vacuum chambers to cope with undulators installed between the magnet poles.
A 14-m long vacuum pipe was produced as part of the 1/24 mock-up. Foreseeable production challenges include the development of machining and cleaning, of welding and cooling systems for the bending-chambers, and of a means to transport the finished product from the assembly site to the TPS storage ring. To minimize the mechanical distortion caused by thermal irradiation of the vacuum chambers, cooling-water channels are attached on both sides of the pipe and where the beam-position monitors (BPMs) are located. To transport the 14-m long vacuum pipe, a "hanger" of equivalent size was built to carry the assembled unit. A successful rehearsal, moving the transportation gear along 8 km of busy streets took place in March. The next step will be to ensure that no damage occurs to the vacuum pipe during the process.
To achieve optimal performance, the TPS accelerator will be mounted on metal girders placed on pedestals that can be adjusted via remote-control. The mock-up has demonstrated the sophistication reached in the design of these girders. Metal girders often suffer from rather low eigenfrequencies compared with concrete girders, especially when heavy magnets are placed on them. The TPS girders, however, are very stiff, which pushes up the eigenfrequencies. Measurements so far are in close agreement with predicted performance.
The TPS is designed for "top-up" operation, which is the standard operation mode in the TLS. The TPS injector complex will consist of a 150 MeV linear accelerator and a full-energy booster that will share the tunnel with the storage ring. Because this is a new facility with a low-emittance injector, the opportunity exists for using pulsed multipole injection, which may have significant benefits for quiet top-up. To allow acceptance tests of the linac before the storage-ring tunnel becomes available, construction work is under way on a bunker that will see future use for a Free-Electron-Laser (FEL) injector test facility.
Each of the 24 achromatic bending sections (unit cells) in the TPS contains 2 dipoles, 10 quadrupoles and 7 sextupoles. A further 168 skew quadrupoles, 1 injection septum-magnet and 4 kicker magnets, bring the total number of magnets to be installed to 629. All of the magnetic cores are made of silicon-steel sheet. The shaping of the iron laminations are made by wire cutting with computer numerical control machines to within 10 μm accuracy and are shuffled to ensure uniform magnetic properties. Accuracy in the magnet assembly is to be controlled to within 15 μm. The upper half of the magnet can be removed to install the vacuum chamber and the whole magnet can be detached without removing the vacuum chamber. The entire design for the magnet was performed in house with prototypes produced during phase I for thorough testing and measurement.
The TPS adopts the KEK approach to superconducting RF (SRF) to cope with future operational modes. Collaboration and technology transfer on the 500 MHz SRF module, as used at KEK for KEKB, is a de facto requirement to ensure the timely development of the SRF modules (including the 1.8 K cryostat for the harmonic SRF modules) and of technology-transfer for a higher-order-mode damped superconducting cavity suited to high-intensity storage rings. Conventional PETRA-type cavities will be considered as an alternative for commissioning in case the SRF cavities are not available in time.
Construction challenges
The complexity and cost of constructing a new accelerator facility adjoined to an existing one is much higher than for one built on undeveloped land. However, to optimize resources and personnel, and the use of common equipment, as well as to allow a versatile research facility for users of both accelerators, the decision was taken to build the TPS at the NSRRC home base.
The site slopes down from south to north and abruptly descends 5 to 10 m at the northern edge, where the TPS will be built. The geology around the site is simple with gravel as the main formation. Ideally, the platform for the storage ring would be created above ground or by digging underground. The first approach is expensive and risks instability in an area known for frequent earthquakes; the latter will magnify the humidity problems in land soaked with rain and may cause a partial, if not total, subsidence of the existing TLS. To keep the civil construction cost within budget, the solution has been to meet both alternatives half way. The TPS storage-ring building will have its floor at the beamline area 12.5 m underground near the south side, and 4 m above ground at the north side. A beamline for medical imaging will be located on the west side next to the busiest traffic of the Hsinchu Science Park, while beamlines demanding nanoscale resolution will be located away from the possible sources of vibration.
Building a new accelerator next to an existing one involves continual challenges. Because the TPS building cuts into the edge of the TLS, the prevention of instability and vibration in the TLS caused by the construction work is a critical issue. To prepare for this daunting task, the NSRRC held workshops on ambient ground motion and civil engineering for the TPS in 2005 and 2008, so as to study the methods and strategic solutions used at other synchrotron facilities. These resulted in mechanical approaches to eliminate or reduce amplification of the floor motion by the girder system for the TPS, while also adding steel piles to prevent the adjacent TLS foundations from gradually crumbling.
Tearing down the walls
Various methods to protect the TLS foundations and building centre on supporting the ground soil with in situ reinforcing and shoring-up the longitudinal sections that are exposed by excavation work. Taking advantage of the fact that the site is mainly of gravel formation, the TLS beam columns were reinforced with additional frames. In addition, seven H-beam, Type-L steel piles, 17.5 m long, were inserted in places where parts of walls of the TLS storage ring previously stood. Each pile was also equipped with a 200 cm × 120 cm × 60 cm concrete beam laid horizontally against the TLS foundations. These piles provide pressure to prevent the TLS from rising through elastic deformation occurring when the suppression disappears as a result of the 10 m-deep excavation.
To meet the target milestone of commissioning by the end of 2013, civil construction and accelerator installation will proceed concurrently. Partial occupancy of the linac building and ring tunnel needs to occur by the beginning of 2012 to meet the installation timetable for ring components. Power and other utilities will be brought in once pedestal paving and the installation of piping and cable trays begins. This will allow the setting up of the booster ring and subsystems in the storage ring. The SRF cavity will be the final component to move in and tests for TPS commissioning will follow accordingly.
With the accumulated expertise from the past, the design of the TPS has been achieved by the NSRRC's own members. With their capability in developing insertion devices for the TLS and systems to cope with their operation established since 1993, the photon energy of the TPS should reach 30 keV. With a maximum brightness of 1021 photons/s/0.1%BW/mm2/mrad2 at 10 keV it will be among the brightest light-sources available.
About the author
Diana Lin and Gwo-huei Luo, National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center.
©
September 4, 2010
10 reasons Ph.D. students fail
The attrition rate in Ph.D. school is high.
Anywhere from a third to half will fail.
In fact, there's a disturbing consistency to grad school failure.
I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.
Read on for the top ten reasons students fail out of Ph.D. school.
Focus on grades or coursework
No one cares about grades in grad school.
There's a simple formula for the optimal GPA in grad school:
Optimal GPA = Minimum Required GPA + ε
Anything higher implies time that could have been spent on research was wasted on classes. Advisors might even raise an eyebrow at a 4.0
During the first two years, students need to find an advisor, pick a research area, read a lot of papers and try small, exploratory research projects. Spending too much time on coursework distracts from these objectives.
Learn too much
Some students go to Ph.D. school because they want to learn.
Let there be no mistake: Ph.D. school involves a lot of learning.
But, it requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis.
Taking (or sitting in on) non-required classes outside one's focus is almost always a waste of time, and it's always unnecessary.
By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis.
Of course, some students go too far with the related work search, reading so much about their intended area of research that they never start that research.
Advisors will lose patience with "eternal" students that aren't focused on the goal--making a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.
In the interest of personal disclosure, I suffered from the "want to learn everything" bug when I got to Ph.D. school.
I took classes all over campus for my first two years: Arabic, linguistics, economics, physics, math and even philosophy. In computer science, I took lots of classes in areas that had nothing to do with my research.
The price of all this "enlightenment" was an extra year on my Ph.D.
I only got away with this detour because while I was doing all that, I was a TA, which meant I wasn't wasting my advisor's grant funding.
Expect perfection
Perfectionism is a tragic affliction in academia, since it tends to hit the brightest the hardest.
Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in the limit.
Students that polish a research paper well past the point of diminishing returns, expecting to hit perfection, will never stop polishing.
Students that can't begin to write until they have the perfect structure of the paper mapped out will never get started.
For students with problems starting on a paper or dissertation, my advice is that writing a paper should be an iterative process: start with an outline and some rough notes; take a pass over the paper and improve it a little; rinse; repeat. When the paper changes little with each pass, it's at diminishing returns. One or two more passes over the paper are all it needs at that point.
"Good enough" is better than "perfect."
Procrastinate
Chronic perfectionists also tend to be procrastinators.
So do eternal students with a drive to learn instead of research.
Ph.D. school seems to be a magnet for every kind of procrastinator.
Unfortunately, it is also a sieve that weeds out the unproductive.
Procrastinators should check out my tips for boosting productivity.
Go rogue too soon/too late
The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a degree.
Early on, the advisor should be hands on, doling out specific topics and helping to craft early papers.
Toward the end, the student should know more than the advisor about her topic. Once the inversion happens, she needs to "go rogue" and start choosing the topics to investigate and initiating the paper write-ups. She needs to do so even if her advisor is insisting she do something else.
The trick is getting the timing right.
Going rogue before the student knows how to choose good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions and a grumpy advisor.
On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start seeing a "return" on an investment of time and hard-won grant money.
Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their field. They should be capable of selecting and attacking research problems of appropriate size and scope.
Treat Ph.D. school like school or work
Ph.D. school is neither school nor work.
Ph.D. school is a monastic experience. And, a jealous hobby.
Solving problems and writing up papers well enough to pass peer review demands contemplative labor on days, nights and weekends.
Reading through all of the related work takes biblical levels of devotion.
Ph.D. school even comes with built-in vows of poverty and obedience.
The end brings an ecclesiastical robe and a clerical hood.
Students that treat Ph.D. school like a 9-5 endeavor are the ones that take 7+ years to finish, or end up ABD.
Ignore the committee
Some Ph.D. students forget that a committee has to sign off on their Ph.D.
It's important for students to maintain contact with committee members in the latter years of a Ph.D. They need to know what a student is doing.
It's also easy to forget advice from a committee member since they're not an everyday presence like an advisor.
Committee members, however, rarely forget the advice they give.
It doesn't usually happen, but I've seen a shouting match between a committee member and a defender where they disagreed over the metrics used for evaluation of an experiment. This committee member warned the student at his proposal about his choice of metrics.
He ignored that warning.
He was lucky: it added only one more semester to his Ph.D.
Another student I knew in grad school was told not to defend, based on the draft of his dissertation. He overruled his committee's advice, and failed his defense. He was told to scrap his entire dissertaton and start over. It took him over ten years to finish his Ph.D.
Aim too low
Some students look at the weakest student to get a Ph.D. in their department and aim for that.
This attitude guarantees that no professorship will be waiting for them.
And, it all but promises failure.
The weakest Ph.D. to escape was probably repeatedly unlucky with research topics, and had to settle for a contingency plan.
Aiming low leaves no room for uncertainty.
And, research is always uncertain.
Aim too high
A Ph.D. seems like a major undertaking from the perspective of the student.
It is.
But, it is not the final undertaking. It's the start of a scientific career.
A Ph.D. does not have to cure cancer or enable cold fusion.
At best a handful of chemists remember what Einstein's Ph.D. was in.
Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was a principled calculation meant to estimate Avogadro's number. He got it wrong. By a factor of 3.
He still got a Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.
Impact is something students should aim for over a lifetime of research.
Making a big impact with a Ph.D. is about as likely as hitting a bullseye the very first time you've fired a gun.
Once you know how to shoot, you can keep shooting until you hit it.
Plus, with a Ph.D., you get a lifetime supply of ammo.
Some advisors can give you a list of potential research topics. If they can, pick the topic that's easiest to do but which still retains your interest.
It does not matter at all what you get your Ph.D. in.
All that matters is that you get one.
It's the training that counts--not the topic.
Miss the real milestones
Most schools require coursework, qualifiers, thesis proposal, thesis defense and dissertation. These are the requirements on paper.
In practice, the real milestones are three good publications connected by a (perhaps loosely) unified theme.
Coursework and qualifiers are meant to undo admissions mistakes. A student that has published by the time she takes her qualifiers is not a mistake.
Once a student has two good publications, if she convinces her committee that she can extrapolate a third, she has a thesis proposal.
Once a student has three publications, she has defended, with reasonable confidence, that she can repeatedly conduct research of sufficient quality to meet the standards of peer review. If she draws a unifying theme, she has a thesis, and if she staples her publications together, she has a dissertation.
I fantasize about buying an industrial-grade stapler capable of punching through three journal papers and calling it The Dissertator.
Of course, three publications is nowhere near enough to get a professorship--even at a crappy school. But, it's about enough to get a Ph.D.
©
Anywhere from a third to half will fail.
In fact, there's a disturbing consistency to grad school failure.
I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.
Read on for the top ten reasons students fail out of Ph.D. school.
Focus on grades or coursework
No one cares about grades in grad school.
There's a simple formula for the optimal GPA in grad school:
Optimal GPA = Minimum Required GPA + ε
Anything higher implies time that could have been spent on research was wasted on classes. Advisors might even raise an eyebrow at a 4.0
During the first two years, students need to find an advisor, pick a research area, read a lot of papers and try small, exploratory research projects. Spending too much time on coursework distracts from these objectives.
Learn too much
Some students go to Ph.D. school because they want to learn.
Let there be no mistake: Ph.D. school involves a lot of learning.
But, it requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis.
Taking (or sitting in on) non-required classes outside one's focus is almost always a waste of time, and it's always unnecessary.
By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis.
Of course, some students go too far with the related work search, reading so much about their intended area of research that they never start that research.
Advisors will lose patience with "eternal" students that aren't focused on the goal--making a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.
In the interest of personal disclosure, I suffered from the "want to learn everything" bug when I got to Ph.D. school.
I took classes all over campus for my first two years: Arabic, linguistics, economics, physics, math and even philosophy. In computer science, I took lots of classes in areas that had nothing to do with my research.
The price of all this "enlightenment" was an extra year on my Ph.D.
I only got away with this detour because while I was doing all that, I was a TA, which meant I wasn't wasting my advisor's grant funding.
Expect perfection
Perfectionism is a tragic affliction in academia, since it tends to hit the brightest the hardest.
Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in the limit.
Students that polish a research paper well past the point of diminishing returns, expecting to hit perfection, will never stop polishing.
Students that can't begin to write until they have the perfect structure of the paper mapped out will never get started.
For students with problems starting on a paper or dissertation, my advice is that writing a paper should be an iterative process: start with an outline and some rough notes; take a pass over the paper and improve it a little; rinse; repeat. When the paper changes little with each pass, it's at diminishing returns. One or two more passes over the paper are all it needs at that point.
"Good enough" is better than "perfect."
Procrastinate
Chronic perfectionists also tend to be procrastinators.
So do eternal students with a drive to learn instead of research.
Ph.D. school seems to be a magnet for every kind of procrastinator.
Unfortunately, it is also a sieve that weeds out the unproductive.
Procrastinators should check out my tips for boosting productivity.
Go rogue too soon/too late
The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a degree.
Early on, the advisor should be hands on, doling out specific topics and helping to craft early papers.
Toward the end, the student should know more than the advisor about her topic. Once the inversion happens, she needs to "go rogue" and start choosing the topics to investigate and initiating the paper write-ups. She needs to do so even if her advisor is insisting she do something else.
The trick is getting the timing right.
Going rogue before the student knows how to choose good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions and a grumpy advisor.
On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start seeing a "return" on an investment of time and hard-won grant money.
Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their field. They should be capable of selecting and attacking research problems of appropriate size and scope.
Treat Ph.D. school like school or work
Ph.D. school is neither school nor work.
Ph.D. school is a monastic experience. And, a jealous hobby.
Solving problems and writing up papers well enough to pass peer review demands contemplative labor on days, nights and weekends.
Reading through all of the related work takes biblical levels of devotion.
Ph.D. school even comes with built-in vows of poverty and obedience.
The end brings an ecclesiastical robe and a clerical hood.
Students that treat Ph.D. school like a 9-5 endeavor are the ones that take 7+ years to finish, or end up ABD.
Ignore the committee
Some Ph.D. students forget that a committee has to sign off on their Ph.D.
It's important for students to maintain contact with committee members in the latter years of a Ph.D. They need to know what a student is doing.
It's also easy to forget advice from a committee member since they're not an everyday presence like an advisor.
Committee members, however, rarely forget the advice they give.
It doesn't usually happen, but I've seen a shouting match between a committee member and a defender where they disagreed over the metrics used for evaluation of an experiment. This committee member warned the student at his proposal about his choice of metrics.
He ignored that warning.
He was lucky: it added only one more semester to his Ph.D.
Another student I knew in grad school was told not to defend, based on the draft of his dissertation. He overruled his committee's advice, and failed his defense. He was told to scrap his entire dissertaton and start over. It took him over ten years to finish his Ph.D.
Aim too low
Some students look at the weakest student to get a Ph.D. in their department and aim for that.
This attitude guarantees that no professorship will be waiting for them.
And, it all but promises failure.
The weakest Ph.D. to escape was probably repeatedly unlucky with research topics, and had to settle for a contingency plan.
Aiming low leaves no room for uncertainty.
And, research is always uncertain.
Aim too high
A Ph.D. seems like a major undertaking from the perspective of the student.
It is.
But, it is not the final undertaking. It's the start of a scientific career.
A Ph.D. does not have to cure cancer or enable cold fusion.
At best a handful of chemists remember what Einstein's Ph.D. was in.
Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was a principled calculation meant to estimate Avogadro's number. He got it wrong. By a factor of 3.
He still got a Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.
Impact is something students should aim for over a lifetime of research.
Making a big impact with a Ph.D. is about as likely as hitting a bullseye the very first time you've fired a gun.
Once you know how to shoot, you can keep shooting until you hit it.
Plus, with a Ph.D., you get a lifetime supply of ammo.
Some advisors can give you a list of potential research topics. If they can, pick the topic that's easiest to do but which still retains your interest.
It does not matter at all what you get your Ph.D. in.
All that matters is that you get one.
It's the training that counts--not the topic.
Miss the real milestones
Most schools require coursework, qualifiers, thesis proposal, thesis defense and dissertation. These are the requirements on paper.
In practice, the real milestones are three good publications connected by a (perhaps loosely) unified theme.
Coursework and qualifiers are meant to undo admissions mistakes. A student that has published by the time she takes her qualifiers is not a mistake.
Once a student has two good publications, if she convinces her committee that she can extrapolate a third, she has a thesis proposal.
Once a student has three publications, she has defended, with reasonable confidence, that she can repeatedly conduct research of sufficient quality to meet the standards of peer review. If she draws a unifying theme, she has a thesis, and if she staples her publications together, she has a dissertation.
I fantasize about buying an industrial-grade stapler capable of punching through three journal papers and calling it The Dissertator.
Of course, three publications is nowhere near enough to get a professorship--even at a crappy school. But, it's about enough to get a Ph.D.
©
How to fail a PhD
Research tips
I read an interesting post today by Matt Might on “10 reasons PhD students fail”, and I thought it might be helpful to reflect on some of the barriers to PhD completion that I’ve seen. Matt’s ideas are not all relevant to Australian PhDs, so I have come up with my own list below. Here are the seven steps to failure.
1. Wait for your supervisor to tell you what to do
A good supervisor will not tell you what to do. PhD students are not meant to be research assistants, and a PhD is not an extended undergraduate assignment. So waiting to be told what to do next will usually get you nowhere.
By the time you graduate with a PhD, you are supposed to be an independent researcher. That means having your own ideas, setting your own research directions, and choosing what to do yourself. In practice, your supervisor will usually need to tell you what to do for the first year, but eventually you need to set the research agenda yourself. By the third year you should certainly know more about your topic than your supervisor, and so are in a better position to know what to do next.
2. Wait for inspiration
Sitting around waiting for great ideas to pop into your ahead is unlikely to work. Most of my best ideas come after a lot of work trying different things and becoming totally immersed in the problem.
A good way to start is often to try to replicate someone else’s research, or apply someone’s method on a different data set. In the process you might notice something that doesn’t quite work, or you might think of a better way to do it. At the very least you will have a deeper understanding of what they have done than you will get by simply reading their paper.
Research often involves dead-ends, wrong turns, and failures. It’s a little like exploring a previously unmapped part of the world. You have no idea what you’ll find there, but unless you start wandering around you’ll never discover anything.
3. Aim for perfection
Perfection takes forever, and so students who are aiming for perfection never finish. Instead they spend years trying to make the thesis that little bit better, polishing every sentence until it gleams. Every researcher needs to accept that research involves making mistakes, often publicly. That’s the nature of the activity.
Don’t wait until your paper or thesis is perfect. Work through a few drafts, and then stop, recognizing that there are probably still some errors remaining.
4. Aim too high
Many students imagine they will write a thesis that will revolutionise the field and lead to wide acclaim and a brilliant academic career. Occasionally that does happen, but extremely rarely. A PhD is an apprenticeship in research, and like all apprenticeships, you are learning the craft, making mistakes, and you are unlikely to produce your best work at such an early stage in your research career.
It really doesn’t matter what your topic is provided you find it interesting and that you find something to say about it. Your PhD is a demonstration that you know how to do research, but your most important and high impact research will probably come later.
My own PhD research was on stochastic nonlinear differential equations and I haven’t touched them since. It showed I could do high level research, but I’d lost interest by the time I finished and I’ve moved onto other things. Few people ever cite the research that came out of my PhD, but it served its purpose.
5. Aim too low
My rule-of-thumb for an Australian PhD is about three to four pieces of publishable work. They don’t have to actually be published, but the examiners like to see enough material to make up three papers that would be acceptable in a reputable scholarly journal. Just writing 200 pages is not enough if the material is not sufficiently original or innovative to be publishable in a journal. Pointing out errors in everyone else’s work is usually not enough either, as most journals will expect you to have something to say yourself in addition to whatever critiques you make of previous work.
6. Follow every side issue
Just because you use a maximum likelihood method, doesn’t mean you have to read the entire likelihood literature. Of course you will learn something if you do, but that isn’t the point. The purpose of a PhD is not so that you can learn as much as you can about everything. A PhD is training in research, and researchers need to be able to publish their findings without having to be expert in every area that is somehow related to their chosen topic.
Of course, you do need to read as much of the relevant literature as possible. A key skill in research is learning what is relevant and what is not. Ask your supervisor if you are not sure.
7. Leave all the writing to the end
In some fields it seems to be standard practice to have a “writing up” phase after doing the research. Perhaps that works in experimental sciences, but it doesn’t work in the mathematical sciences. You haven’t a hope of remembering all the good ideas you had in first and second year if you don’t attempt to write them down until near the end of your third year.
I encourage all my students to start writing from the first week. In the first year, write a series of notes summarizing what you’ve learned and what research ideas you’ve had. It can be helpful to use these notes to show your supervisor what you’ve been up to each time you meet. In the second year, you should have figured out your specific topic and have a rough idea of the table of contents. So start writing the parts you can. You should be able to turn some of your first-year notes into sections of the relevant chapters. By the third year you are filling in the gaps, adding simulation results, tidying up proofs, etc.
©
I read an interesting post today by Matt Might on “10 reasons PhD students fail”, and I thought it might be helpful to reflect on some of the barriers to PhD completion that I’ve seen. Matt’s ideas are not all relevant to Australian PhDs, so I have come up with my own list below. Here are the seven steps to failure.
1. Wait for your supervisor to tell you what to do
A good supervisor will not tell you what to do. PhD students are not meant to be research assistants, and a PhD is not an extended undergraduate assignment. So waiting to be told what to do next will usually get you nowhere.
By the time you graduate with a PhD, you are supposed to be an independent researcher. That means having your own ideas, setting your own research directions, and choosing what to do yourself. In practice, your supervisor will usually need to tell you what to do for the first year, but eventually you need to set the research agenda yourself. By the third year you should certainly know more about your topic than your supervisor, and so are in a better position to know what to do next.
2. Wait for inspiration
Sitting around waiting for great ideas to pop into your ahead is unlikely to work. Most of my best ideas come after a lot of work trying different things and becoming totally immersed in the problem.
A good way to start is often to try to replicate someone else’s research, or apply someone’s method on a different data set. In the process you might notice something that doesn’t quite work, or you might think of a better way to do it. At the very least you will have a deeper understanding of what they have done than you will get by simply reading their paper.
Research often involves dead-ends, wrong turns, and failures. It’s a little like exploring a previously unmapped part of the world. You have no idea what you’ll find there, but unless you start wandering around you’ll never discover anything.
3. Aim for perfection
Perfection takes forever, and so students who are aiming for perfection never finish. Instead they spend years trying to make the thesis that little bit better, polishing every sentence until it gleams. Every researcher needs to accept that research involves making mistakes, often publicly. That’s the nature of the activity.
Don’t wait until your paper or thesis is perfect. Work through a few drafts, and then stop, recognizing that there are probably still some errors remaining.
4. Aim too high
Many students imagine they will write a thesis that will revolutionise the field and lead to wide acclaim and a brilliant academic career. Occasionally that does happen, but extremely rarely. A PhD is an apprenticeship in research, and like all apprenticeships, you are learning the craft, making mistakes, and you are unlikely to produce your best work at such an early stage in your research career.
It really doesn’t matter what your topic is provided you find it interesting and that you find something to say about it. Your PhD is a demonstration that you know how to do research, but your most important and high impact research will probably come later.
My own PhD research was on stochastic nonlinear differential equations and I haven’t touched them since. It showed I could do high level research, but I’d lost interest by the time I finished and I’ve moved onto other things. Few people ever cite the research that came out of my PhD, but it served its purpose.
5. Aim too low
My rule-of-thumb for an Australian PhD is about three to four pieces of publishable work. They don’t have to actually be published, but the examiners like to see enough material to make up three papers that would be acceptable in a reputable scholarly journal. Just writing 200 pages is not enough if the material is not sufficiently original or innovative to be publishable in a journal. Pointing out errors in everyone else’s work is usually not enough either, as most journals will expect you to have something to say yourself in addition to whatever critiques you make of previous work.
6. Follow every side issue
Just because you use a maximum likelihood method, doesn’t mean you have to read the entire likelihood literature. Of course you will learn something if you do, but that isn’t the point. The purpose of a PhD is not so that you can learn as much as you can about everything. A PhD is training in research, and researchers need to be able to publish their findings without having to be expert in every area that is somehow related to their chosen topic.
Of course, you do need to read as much of the relevant literature as possible. A key skill in research is learning what is relevant and what is not. Ask your supervisor if you are not sure.
7. Leave all the writing to the end
In some fields it seems to be standard practice to have a “writing up” phase after doing the research. Perhaps that works in experimental sciences, but it doesn’t work in the mathematical sciences. You haven’t a hope of remembering all the good ideas you had in first and second year if you don’t attempt to write them down until near the end of your third year.
I encourage all my students to start writing from the first week. In the first year, write a series of notes summarizing what you’ve learned and what research ideas you’ve had. It can be helpful to use these notes to show your supervisor what you’ve been up to each time you meet. In the second year, you should have figured out your specific topic and have a rough idea of the table of contents. So start writing the parts you can. You should be able to turn some of your first-year notes into sections of the relevant chapters. By the third year you are filling in the gaps, adding simulation results, tidying up proofs, etc.
©
Why God never received tenure
Research tips
Why God never received tenure
1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn’t published in a refereed journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
7. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
8. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
9. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
10. When subjects didn’t behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
11. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
12. Some say he had his son teach the class.
13. He expelled his first two students for learning.
14. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
15. His office hours were infrequent and often held on limited access mountain tops.
16. No record of working well with colleagues.
©
Why God never received tenure
1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn’t published in a refereed journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
7. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
8. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
9. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
10. When subjects didn’t behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
11. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
12. Some say he had his son teach the class.
13. He expelled his first two students for learning.
14. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
15. His office hours were infrequent and often held on limited access mountain tops.
16. No record of working well with colleagues.
©
September 1, 2010
Twenty rules for good graphics
Research tips
One of the things I repeatedly include in referee reports, and in my responses to authors who have submitted papers to the International Journal of Forecasting, are comments designed to include the quality of the graphics. Recently someone asked on stats.stackexchange.com about best practices for producing plots. So I thought it might be helpful to collate some of the answers given there and add a few comments of my own taken from things I’ve written for authors.
The following “rules” are in no particular order.
1. Use vector graphics such as eps or pdf. These scale properly and do not look fuzzy when enlarged. Do not use jpeg, bmp or png files as these will look fuzzy when enlarged, or if saved at very high resolutions will be enormous files. Jpegs in particular are designed for photographs not statistical graphics.
2. Use readable fonts. For graphics I prefer sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial. Make sure the font size is readable after the figure is scaled to whatever size it will be printed.
3. Avoid cluttered legends. Where possible, add labels directly to the elements of the plot rather than use a legend at all. If this won’t work, then keep the legend from obscuring the plotted data, and make it small and neat.
4. If you must use a legend, move it inside the plot, in a blank area.
5. No dark shaded backgrounds. Excel always adds a nasty dark gray background by default, and I’m always asking authors to remove it. Graphics print much better with a white background. The ggplot for R also uses a gray background (although it is lighter than the Excel default). I don’t mind the ggplot version so much as it is used effectively with white grid lines. Nevertheless, even the light gray background doesn’t lend itself to printing/photocopying. White is better.
6. Avoid dark, dominating grid lines (such as those produced in Excel by default). Grid lines can be useful, but they should be in the background (light gray on white or white on light gray).
7. Keep the axis limits sensible. You don’t have to include a zero (even if Excel wants you to). The defaults in R work well. The basic idea is to avoid lots of white space around the plotted data.
8. Make sure the axes are scaled properly. Another Excel problem is that the horizontal axis is sometimes treated categorically instead of numerically. If you are plotting a continuous numerical variable, then the horizontal axis should be properly scaled for the numerical variable.
9. Do not forget to specify units.
10. Tick intervals should be at nice round numbers.
11. Axes should be properly labelled.
12. Use linewidths big enough to read. 1pt lines tend to disappear if plots are shrunk.
13. Avoid overlapping text on plotting characters or lines.
14. Follow Tufte’s principles by removing chart junk and keeping a high data-ink ratio.
15. Plots should be self-explanatory, so included detailed captions.
16. Use a sensible aspect ratio. I think width:height of about 1.6 works well for most plots.
17. Prepare graphics in the final aspect ratio to be used in the publication. Distorted fonts look awful.
18. Use points not lines if element order is not relevant.
19. When preparing plots that are meant to be compared, use the same scale for all of them. Even better, combine plots into a single graph if they are related.
20. Avoid pie-charts. Especially 3d pie-charts. Especially 3d pie-charts with exploding wedges. I promise all my students an instant fail if I ever see anything so appalling.
©
One of the things I repeatedly include in referee reports, and in my responses to authors who have submitted papers to the International Journal of Forecasting, are comments designed to include the quality of the graphics. Recently someone asked on stats.stackexchange.com about best practices for producing plots. So I thought it might be helpful to collate some of the answers given there and add a few comments of my own taken from things I’ve written for authors.
The following “rules” are in no particular order.
1. Use vector graphics such as eps or pdf. These scale properly and do not look fuzzy when enlarged. Do not use jpeg, bmp or png files as these will look fuzzy when enlarged, or if saved at very high resolutions will be enormous files. Jpegs in particular are designed for photographs not statistical graphics.
2. Use readable fonts. For graphics I prefer sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial. Make sure the font size is readable after the figure is scaled to whatever size it will be printed.
3. Avoid cluttered legends. Where possible, add labels directly to the elements of the plot rather than use a legend at all. If this won’t work, then keep the legend from obscuring the plotted data, and make it small and neat.
4. If you must use a legend, move it inside the plot, in a blank area.
5. No dark shaded backgrounds. Excel always adds a nasty dark gray background by default, and I’m always asking authors to remove it. Graphics print much better with a white background. The ggplot for R also uses a gray background (although it is lighter than the Excel default). I don’t mind the ggplot version so much as it is used effectively with white grid lines. Nevertheless, even the light gray background doesn’t lend itself to printing/photocopying. White is better.
6. Avoid dark, dominating grid lines (such as those produced in Excel by default). Grid lines can be useful, but they should be in the background (light gray on white or white on light gray).
7. Keep the axis limits sensible. You don’t have to include a zero (even if Excel wants you to). The defaults in R work well. The basic idea is to avoid lots of white space around the plotted data.
8. Make sure the axes are scaled properly. Another Excel problem is that the horizontal axis is sometimes treated categorically instead of numerically. If you are plotting a continuous numerical variable, then the horizontal axis should be properly scaled for the numerical variable.
9. Do not forget to specify units.
10. Tick intervals should be at nice round numbers.
11. Axes should be properly labelled.
12. Use linewidths big enough to read. 1pt lines tend to disappear if plots are shrunk.
13. Avoid overlapping text on plotting characters or lines.
14. Follow Tufte’s principles by removing chart junk and keeping a high data-ink ratio.
15. Plots should be self-explanatory, so included detailed captions.
16. Use a sensible aspect ratio. I think width:height of about 1.6 works well for most plots.
17. Prepare graphics in the final aspect ratio to be used in the publication. Distorted fonts look awful.
18. Use points not lines if element order is not relevant.
19. When preparing plots that are meant to be compared, use the same scale for all of them. Even better, combine plots into a single graph if they are related.
20. Avoid pie-charts. Especially 3d pie-charts. Especially 3d pie-charts with exploding wedges. I promise all my students an instant fail if I ever see anything so appalling.
©
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