How do you set out to learn something?

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Taking charge of your own education

rolls of filmThis week our photography consultant had the opportunity to watch as two young people developed their first rolls of film. Of course he enjoyed their excitement at actually using this unfamiliar old technology, and was reminded that his own first roll was a long time ago. (It’s still available in the archives, but is—understandably—not brought out for printing very often.) More important, though, are his observations on learning things, which is not the same as being taught.

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The webmaster builds character

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A physical scientist encounters social media

We mentioned, some weeks ago, that our webmaster had been assigned to develop the Five Colors S&T social media presence. This wasn’t because he’s an expert already, but because he wasn’t; in fact his inclinations tend toward weekends reading eighteenth-century essays by the light of a kerosene lamp. We thought that, apart from the fact that he generally does a decent job of anything, it would be good for him to do something unfamiliar and especially to have contact with people not like him. As Calvin’s dad (from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) would say, he’d build character.

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Mythology and cosmology

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bbcc1Our chief consultant writes:

Science is a part of our culture. It’s not just that the products of science are all around us, in our hands and in our lives; no less, the discoveries of scientists are covered in the mainstream news media (not always well) and the concepts widely known (not always accurately). It’s clear enough by comparing our world with that of other cultures, say in the particular case of astronomy. We have cosmology (the Big Bang and all that); the ancient Greeks, a series of stories about gods and Titans.

Studying humans, even as amateurs, one seeks out similarities across cultures, and so we see cosmology equated to cosmic mythology. This leads to assertions like, “Cosmology is only our way of explaining the universe to ourselves, exactly the same way other cultures use other explanations.” This is just true enough to be seriously misleading.

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Your future as a street performer

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Why passion is not a career

Our chief consultant writes:

15C03-20iAt left is a busker, a singer who performs on and near Washington, DC Metro stations. He is very, very good. His voice is rich, powerful (he sings a cappella) and educated; his choice of material is largely classical. He should be subsidized by all the companies with offices near where he performs, because a couple of minutes’ pause to listen to him on the way to work will raise employee morale more than any possible corporate vision statement.

He may in fact have other gigs. Indeed, it would be a massive waste if he didn’t. But running into him reminds us of the many areas in which people can be passionate and skilled, as well as hard-working and dedicated, and still not make a living. You can do what you love, but the money will follow someone else.

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Are selfies selfish?

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A subtle social effect of technology

lensOur photographic consultant was somewhat bemused by the rise of the “selfie,” that picture of one’s self possibly including others, possibly including a situation or location, taken normally with a smart-phone camera and distributed immediately and electronically. Self-portraits are as old as art and pictures of the family in front of the Grand Canyon as old as Kodak Brownies, but the enormous flood of “selfie” shots seems to be a new phenomenon. An older generation is inclined to blame the self-centered Millenials, using the newest of technology mostly in an adolescent game of self-promotion.

We think, however, that the “selfie” instead demonstrates an interesting example of how a simple technological change can result in a social phenomenon. This is not to say that technology is a cause, but it enables unexpected things—when people are included.

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How can you tell, if you’re not an expert?(3)

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Dueling PhDs

Our chief consultant writes:

gas-tube spectrumWe come to the hardest problem to set a layman: suppose there are two (or more) experts, that is, people who disagree strongly about some scientific or technical question, each of which has some claim to expertise. Call this “dueling PhDs.” You, as a layman, are called upon to decide between them. What do you do?

We assume that the matter is advanced or esoteric enough that there’s no question of you actually checking the math yourself. Also, that it’s not a matter of current research, where the answer really isn’t known. (That excludes, for instance, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose disagreeing about the Nature of Space and Time.)

You could try to evaluate the credentials of either side, working out whose PhD is stronger; or take of vote of scientists working on the matter; or, perhaps, decide on the basis of motivation, asking who is funded by whom. Slightly more useful is analyzing the rhetoric, on the assumption that someone with a poor scientific case is more likely to try to cover it with noise. All of these techniques leave us uneasy, and though we have some suggestions on how to use them we prefer a harder, more time-consuming method as a more reliable way of getting at something like the truth.

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Photography Perfected

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Contax 139 SLR camera
Contax 139

Our photography consultant writes:

This is the ubiquitous 35mm SLR, the single-lens reflex camera, the design you’re most likely to have actually seen and touched. (The Contax of the picture is a lesser-known name, but still recognizable as the same type as millions of Nikons, Yashikas, Pentaxes, etc.) With its many variations it dominated photography from the 1960s to the end of the film era. In fact, one can argue that the current master of the field is only a modification of this type, as its name implies: digital single-lens reflex, DSLR.

One could also argue that for overall flexibility, ease of use and quality of results the SLR has never really been surpassed and that (as far as such a thing is possible) in this design we see photography perfected. Of course pictures are made by photographers, the camera being only a tool, but after its invention more professional photographers chose this kind than any other.

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A Textbook Case

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textbook and calculationsOur astronomer writes:

Now and then I come across an interview of some Nobel prize-winning (or otherwise distinguished) scientist with the inevitable question, “What got you started on your path to fame?” Almost always it was an inspiring teacher or mentor, a person who imparted a love of or excitement in doing science. Somewhere in the years between High School and Grad School, between the time when our differences were mostly potential and the time we’re on our way in a particular direction, someone lit a fire. Often there’s a quote something like, “He/She showed me that [insert science here] is more than just a set of results in a dusty textbook, but something that I really enjoyed doing.”

Similarly, in accounts of some part of the history of science it’s almost inevitable that I encounter a sentence like, “so science proceeds in sometimes a roundabout and uncertain fashion, not at all as the textbooks tell you.” Textbooks are not often held up as good examples.

The message, sometimes explicit but often implied, is that our job as teachers and scientists is to inspire and excite. Trying to impart “textbook results” is deprecated. Well, this time I am standing up for the textbook and the type of learning it represents. There is a time when it is just what we should be teaching. We need to ask the question: what are we trying to do? What is the outcome we want in our students?

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The Fashionable Twin

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Our photography correspondent writes:

Rolleiflex TLR camera
Rolleiflex 3.5T

This time I’m singling out a type of camera that, while instantly recognizable and quite common in the days of film, was never ubiquitous. Most people preferred other kinds. But those who used them were very firmly attached to them and had definitely chosen them over whatever else might be on the market. This type found a particular home, among professional photographers, with those who specialized in portraits and fashion shoots.

This design is called the twin-lens reflex (TLR if you’re advertising to sell or buy one in the cost-per-word section of the photo magazine). “Reflex,” when used about cameras, means that there’s a mirror involved somewhere. “Twin lens” is obviously appropriate. But why twin lenses? It’s not a stereo or a panorama camera, a kind that takes two pictures at once. Well, the short answer is you need one lens to keep an eye on what the other is doing.

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How can you tell, if you’re not an expert? (2)

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How far can you trust a scientist?

 

Astronomy book and page of equationsOur chief consultant writes: It’s time to take up the question again of how a non-expert can evaluate an expert. In a previous post I introduced paradoxers, people from outside the field who claim to have made some highly important advance. Paradoxers are interesting in several ways and we’ll return to them later. Today we consider the case of some undoubted expert, a renowned or at least established scientist, describing something in his or her field. How much of it can you rely on to be true? How far can you actually trust a scientist?

This subversive-looking question occurred to our astronomer a while back. To try to answer it, he looked into the specific case of astronomy over the period 1833-1944, and wound up writing a well-regarded book with his conclusions. It’s 300 pages long, so I’m not going to try to include the whole thing in this post. His depressing conclusion is that even the best and most conscientious scientists may make statements as known fact, that turn out later to be wrong. His encouraging conclusion is that this is very rare, and for almost all scientists almost all the time, their presentations are reliable. In addition, there are a number of clues that help indicate the reliability, or otherwise, of what you’re being told.

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