Sardines in tomato sauce, like the cans

The Next Graduate: Progress

We met in the afternoon to discuss editing and comments about his methods section. Before lunch, I emailed a scanned copy of the chapter with my comments. The student was concerned that much of what he had written would need to be discarded. In reality, we consolidated two redundant sentences with their neighbours, and my substances questions generated replacement sentences of approximately the same length. (The student is being evaluated on the word length of the thesis in his home country.)

As we worked through the text, on several occasions we strayed far from my suggested edits since the student had made good suggestions when I pointed out the issues. This is good. (I had forgotten the usual "this catches my attention, please address it in some way, but not necessarily in the way I have suggested" that I inherited from my previous supervisor.)

We worked on singular/plural agreement, in/definite articles, it[']s (he was taught they were the same, but was himself looking for the distinction), shorter/clearer sentences, and formal and informal writing. (We also covered some technical details of writing about equipment and terminology from the field. I pointed out that he would have to learn some of that from the literature and from his proper supervisor. Even though I studied in the same discipline as the student years ago, our specializations do not overlap enough that I would catch everything specific to his specialization.) I pointed out that some of of his sentences ordered clauses in ways that followed the taught rules of English and would have been commonplace perhaps a few centuries ago, but which we don't deploy presently.

He showed me his notes (in his own language) taken while reading papers since our last meeting. He says that note-taking helps him connect and remember ideas among papers! This is good. He is now distinguishing between writing text from notes about literature for this thesis, and saving writing and notes that would be relevant for his next phase of research.

The student reports success taking notes about important passages (from English texts) in one of his other languages, and then successfully paraphrasing from those notes into English. He would like to do an all English process. I will need to devise or Google some possible techniques to help him with this.

As a start, we worked on some composition. Since our last meeting, he learned some more details about a potential source of experimental error. I had him write (first on paper and then on the computer) a sentence connecting the observation, inference, and consequence of the potential error. (I'm ramping up to the formal warrant argumentation structure.)

We repeated the exercise for a tricky part of the procedure that I did not fully comprehend (he explained in person that the experiment branched). His revised text made more sense to both of us, and was shorter! Hopefully some of those idea to writing skills will help him with paraphrasing. I think that asking/teaching him to take good notes in English will complete the circuit.

I suggested that we meet his local supervisor here. He mentioned a name I did not recognise (my fault for not being great with Finnish names...).

The student mentioned differences between writing up his methods section (easier because it's from memory) vs. the literature review (easier because someone else already did the research). I'm glad he recognises some differences there. He expects that his review chapter will get fewer red marks (I used blue!). Of note, the student tried to take notes about English as we reviewed his text. I pointed out and explained the usage notes I had included in my comments ("it's", etc.) so he didn't take that many notes. I might not write in the usage notes details the next time I provide comments, and instead relay them verbally so that he has the opportunity to take notes and learn from doing so.

We used online translation dictionaries several times to ensure that new words that I was suggesting meant what the student had intended. It appears to be a great way to learn new vocabulary. I wish I had thought of that last year.

I've also been thinking about formalities. I recognize that because I will have no role in evaluating this student's thesis, I have the opportunity to be differently critical of the writing and perhaps of the research. I don't know what to do with this yet.

The Next Graduate: International collaboration

Assorted information:

The student has approximately a year left in his program. It is formally split between his university in his home country, and this university in Finland. He is approximately eight months into his research. Although there are other supervisors involved, his primary supervisor is at this university. The student will return to his home country for the summer within the month. Before the student leaves, I would like to have a meeting with him and his supervisor.

The student had asked about paraphrasing. He does that successfully in several other languages. He was frustrated with trying to paraphrase another author's write-up of (basically) a CRC Handbook entry for a compound, and a paragraph from another author's literature review. His approach was to reword texts rather than to rewrite them in his own words. I suggested that he take more/better notes (he acknowledges that he does not remember in detail some articles he read in the fall), and paraphrase from those notes the points that relate to the research and arguments he is reporting. I also pointed out that simply rephrasing a review section could mean that he's missing out on details that the review author did not pick out, because the review was written from a different approach for a different purpose. He will try some different approaches this week.

The student has ambitions to do PhD research after completing this degree. I pointed out that it would be undesirable for him to miss important papers via his shortcut through review. I will possibly show him Booth, Williams and Colomb re: argumentation next week.

I've read and returned the student's methods section. It's good but incomplete. Prepositions are a concern, as is repetition, but the ideas are clear. The student uses a foreign version of Word, which apparently lacks English spell-check. Because the student will complete the writing from a different country, I will have to provide feedback via PDFs with scanned pages of my hand-written comments (we're trying this today), or annotated PDFs from his source files (we'll try this later this week). We should figure out a Skype thing also. Interestingly, at least half my comments are about the science.

The Next Graduate: Facebook as a supervisory tool... Let's see how this works

On my bike ride in this morning, I randomly encountered the student I will be advising on writing. For 3 km of the ride, we talked about work habits and schedules, and foreign language cliques in labs. He showed me a shortcut through a local community (which egresses 300m to the wrong side of campus for me, but I'm appreciative anyway). He asked to meet in the afternoon about using sources, which is fine since my schedule happens to be open today.  We will apparently use Facebook to arrange the meeting. I will adapt to this.

The Next Graduate: Clandestine(?) extra-departmental edition

It is Friday evening. A Master's student in a discipline in which I hold an undergraduate degree has asked me to be his language advisor. English is the student's fifth or sixth language. The student reports that his departmental supervisor lacks sufficient mastery of the English language to guide the him on language matters. The student recognises that his skills with tense and conjugation could be improved. I am to appear as an acknowledgement in the thesis.

I have tentatively agreed to the proposal, and will likely start receiving chapters shortly. The Master's thesis is to be approximately 70 pages (front matter, body, and back matter), to be completed in the next few months. The student and I understand that I will help through teaching by reviewing manuscripts and discussing reasons behind potential edits. Although I have some knowledge in the scientific subject matter, I am not qualified to evaluate the student's new research in this area. At most, I would try to ensure that the argumentation is logical, as I probably do not have time to gain a substantive understanding of the details. I have known the student for four months now in various social contexts. He is a solid individual.

When I meet with the student tomorrow, I will suggest that he or we discuss my role in this with his current supervisor, since this kind of editing/revision will affect the student's timeline. I don't know how the norms for supervision in my own department may be similar or different from the norms in the student's department.
I also do not want the supervisor to be offended by this arrangement. I am undecided as to how I would frame this arrangement for my own department, since we don't have the bureaucracy or accounting to recognize an extra-departmental language advisor role or activity.

I look forward to being able to focus on the finer points of scientific argumentation, rather than on strictly supervisory responsibilities!

The Next Graduate: Preface

This series of posts continues in the same spirit as my first series about supervising a Master's student at a research university. It is intended to help me organize my thoughts about supervising, but I also offer it as a potential resource to anyone who might want to conduct research into supervising. My colleagues tell me that such research is desperately needed (rather, knowledge translation between "research" and "how to supervise" seems broken), and this is my attempt to contribute something toward resolving that problem.

Although personality permeates the supervisory experience, personal and identifying details are deliberately obscured because, on the present Internet, their potential harms generalize more easily than their potential benefits.

Note: Unlike the previous Master's student, I am not officially supervising this student. The plan is for me to act as a language advisor with a suitable acknowledgement. The student already has multiple supervisors in different countries, and my department doesn't appear to have a formal accounting device to make this kind of formal inter-departmental supervisory relationship possible (although the paperwork does seem to exist at the doctoral level...). I also lack both the degrees and the up-to-date knowledge of the student's research area that would be required to do the substantial supervision properly.

As always, comments or questions in public or private are most welcome.

"A boost for quantum reality":

http://www.nature.com/news/a-boost-for-quantum-reality-1.10602

If this finding is correct, essentially that the universe is wavefunctions, one consequence would be that we'd have to re-examine what we think of as computing.

Classic computers model the universe as a collection of discreet states that interact in deterministic ways. There is no ambiguity in the parameter values or operations of ADD 1,1, or JNZ. If the universe is comprised of non-deterministic wave functions, we would be able to express both parameter values and operations as functions on input, and only collapse the answer when we needed it. Realizing a computer that works this way has been the dream of quantum computer people for decades, but they've been focused on the micro (sub)atomic level.

Instead of using atoms, what if we instantiated a wavefunction computer out something else that does waves, such as a tank of water like those used for tsunami simulations. The 1+1 operation could easily be expressed as the sum of two standing waves, but would yield values (-1,1), and JNZ would be a feedback into the generator of the functions depending on the depths of water at a given series of moments. 

Execution speed might be somewhat weak to start.