lieven le bruyn's blog
rants
NSF annual report – the comic book version
May 21st
Annual reports of organizations often make extremely dry reading. With available word processing tools, however, several agencies try to make their report at least visually pleasing. A good example is the 2007 annual report of the NSF (USA). It has an attractive cover (left) and has a couple of daring inside pages, such as the one on the right.
I’ve been a researcher with the Flemish National Science Foundation FWO from 1980 till 2000, when I’ve opted for a professorship rather than keeping my permanent research position with them. At the time, it seemed like a sensible move to make, but I’m beginning to have my doubts… The FWO definitely rocks! Single handedly they’ve taken the art of science-organization-reporting to galactic levels with their 2007 year book. Here is the cover
based on the comic book series Jommeke. So what? They have an (arguably) even more attractive cover-picture…
The point is that they maintain this gimmick throughout the entire report! If you don’t believe me, download the entire book from the link above. But as it is over 1Mb, I’ll provide you with two generic illustrations : on the left a typical (as in “every”) page and even pie-charts are way too dry for the FWO-admins so they solved it (right)
Probably the message they want to broadcast is : you guys can easily beat us at science, but we still have the best comic-books!!!
I bet, next year they’ll base their report on the series Spike and Suzy (Suske&Wiske for the rest of us) and the year after they’ll probably go for Tintin (that is, if Flandres can forget by then that Herge was a French speaking Belgian). I’m confident that in 2009 the FWO will spend most of its energy debating this issue…
wankers
Apr 10th
You may not have noticed, but I’m in a foul mood for weeks now because of comments and reactions to the last line of the post on Finding Moonshine. I wrote
Du Sautoy is a softy! I’d throw such students out of the window…
and got everyone against me for this (first floor) defenestration threat…
That’s OK! I sometimes post what’s on my mind and if you don’t like it you are free to leave a comment, and, usually I won’t even bother to reply to it. But occasionally, stuff is bottling up un-healthily.
So, I thought it was a good idea to have a prolonged easter-vacation, somewhere in the south of France. The weather, food, rest, drinks, company and all that were just gorgeous
but …
A quick recap. Here’s the relevant section in duSautoy’s book again :
One of my graduate students has just left my office. He’s done some great work over the past three years and is starting to write up his doctorate, but he’s just confessed that he’s not sure that he wants to be a mathematician. I’m feeling quite sobered by this news. My graduate students are like my children. They are the future of the subject. Who’s going to read all the details of my papers if not my mathematical offspring? The subject feels so tribal that anyone who says they want out is almost a threat to everything the tribe stands for.
Anton has been working on a project very close to my current problem. There’s no denying that one can feel quite disillusioned by not finding a way into a problem. Last year one of my post-docs left for the City after attempting to scale this mountain with me. I’d already rescued him from being dragged off to the City once before. But after battling with our problem and seeing it become more and more complex, he felt that he wasn’t really cut out for it.
What is unsettling for me is that they both questioned the importance of what we are doing. They’ve asked that ‘What’s it all for?’ question, and think they’ve seen the Emperor without any clothes.
Anton has questioned whether the problems we are working on are really important. I’ve explained why I think these are fundamental questions about basic objects in nature, but I can see that he isn’t convinced. I feel I am having to defend my whole existence. I’ve arranged for him to join me at a conference in Israel later this month, and I hope that seeing the rest of the tribe enthused and excited about these problems will re-inspire him. It will also show him that people are interested in what he is dedicating his time to.
For starters, I’m getting old so I’m from those long-forgotten days when you had to do a Ph.D. to prove that you could conduct research independently.
A fortiori this meant that the topic of your thesis was your own choice and interest. The role of your Ph.D. advisor was to get you going and, occasionally, to warn you when you were straying too far afield but that was it.
You, and only you, were responsible to get the thesis finished and defended.
Today, the Ph.D. is just another item on the market to be consumed.
Graduate students shop around looking for the advisor having the best sales-pitch, offers the best deal and, if possibly, the best after-phd service aka the promise of an academic career.
Topic and main outline of the proofs are provided by the advisor and an exceptionally good student today means that (s)he proved a few results along the way on her/his own.
University policy and the promotion-rat-race appear to make the Ph.D. more important to the advisor than to the defendent.
Independence of research today means that after your PhD is obtained, you ditch your advisor and try to get into the slipstream of another more powerful guru, having better after-phd service prospects…
For those who stick with their old advisor, the moment of truth comes when they fail to get a renewal of their grant or a permanent position.
At that time one can hear complaints such as : “That persons’ student got ranked ahead of me and I always thought you were better than that person?” or “The better ranked people for the position are all doing that topic instead of ‘ours’, so I guess your topic isn’t so important after all!”. duSautoy’s captures it all in this one key sentence :
They’ve asked that ‘What’s it all for?’ question, and think they’ve seen the Emperor without any clothes.
As if, failing to get a permanent position is the advisors fault, more than yours…
Just for once, try to be honest to yourself : count the number of hours a day your brain-power gets you over 120 IQ. Substract from this the number of hours a day lost surfing the web idly, trying to read unreadable hep-th papers, socializing, kissing asses, socializing, doing fun things with you fellow graduate students, socializing, working on a relation, chatting, texing, emailing insults but softening it all with a closing smily 
, socializing, etc… (you know the daily-drill of a 20-30-something phd-student a lot better than I do)
I’ll be damned if you get a positive outcome. But if you do, I’ll be happy to take you on as a PhD student…
Well, it’s no threat, it’s a promise : the first ex-student who gets me into a ‘why was it all good for?’ discussion will experience first floor defenestration! (provided I’ll get my window open in time)
And, to soften it all, I’ll add the obligatory
Finding Moonshine
Mar 2nd
On friday, I did spot in my regular Antwerp-bookshop Finding Moonshine by Marcus du Sautoy and must have uttered a tiny curse because, at once, everyone near me was staring at me…
To make matters worse, I took the book from the shelf, quickly glanced through it and began shaking my head more and more, the more I convinced myself that it was a mere resampling of Symmetry and the Monster, The equation that couldn’t be solved, From Error-Correcting Codes through Sphere Packings to Simple Groups and the diary-columns du Sautoy wrote for a couple of UK-newspapers about his ‘life-as-a-mathematician’…
Still, I took the book home, made a pot of coffee and started reading the first chapter. And, sure enough, soon I had to read phrases like “The first team consisted of a ramshackle collection of mathematical mavericks. One of the most colourful was John Horton Conway, currently professor at the University of Princeton. His mathematical and personal charisma have given him almost cult status…” and “Conway, the Long John Silver of mathematics, decided that an account should be published of the lands that they had discovered on their voyage…” and so on, and so on, and so on.
The main problem I have with du Sautoy’s books is that their main topic is NOT mathematics, but rather the lives of mathematicians (colourlful described with childlike devotion) and the prestige of mathematical institutes (giving the impression that it is impossible to do mathematics of quality if one isn’t living in Princeton, Paris, Cambridge, Bonn or … Oxford). Less than a month ago, I reread his ‘Music of the Primes’ so all these phrases were still fresh in my memory, only on that occasion Alain Connes is playing Conway’s present role…
I was about to throw the book away, but first I wanted to read what other people thought about it. So, I found Timothy Gowers’ review, dated febraury 21st, in the Times Higher Education. The first paragraph below hints politely at the problems I had with Music of the Primes, but then, his conclusion was a surprise
The attitude of many professional mathematicians to the earlier book was ambivalent. Although they were pleased that du Sautoy was promoting mathematics, they were not always convinced by the way that he did it.
I myself expected to have a similar attitude to Finding Moonshine, but du Sautoy surprised me: he has pulled off that rare feat of writing in a way that can entertain and inform two different audiences – expert and non-expert – at the same time.
Okay, so maybe I should give ‘Finding Moonshine’ a further chance. After all, it is week-end and, I have nothing else to do than attending two family-parties… so I read the entire book in a couple of hours (not that difficult to do if you skip all paragraphs that have the look and feel of being copied from the books mentioned above) and, I admit, towards the end I mellowed a bit. Reading his diary notes I even felt empathy at times (if this is possible as du Sautoy makes a point of telling the world that most of us mathematicians are Aspergers). One example :
One of my graduate students has just left my office. He’s done some great work over the past three years and is starting to write up his doctorate, but he’s just confessed that he’s not sure that he wants to be a mathematician. I’m feeling quite sobered by this news. My graduate students are like my children. They are the future of the subject. Who’s going to read all the details of my papers if not my mathematical offspring? The subject feels so tribal that anyone who says they want out is almost a threat to everything the tribe stands for.
Anton has been working on a project very close to my current problem. There’s no denying that one can feel quite disillusioned by not finding a way into a problem. Last year one of my post-docs left for the City after attempting to scale this mountain with me. I’d already rescued him from being dragged off to the City once before. But after battling with our problem and seeing it become more and more complex, he felt that he wasn’t really cut out for it.
What is unsettling for me is that they both questioned the importance of what we are doing. They’ve asked that ‘What’s it all for?’ question, and think they’ve seen the Emperor without any clothes.
Anton has questioned whether the problems we are working on are really important. I’ve explained why I think these are fundamental questions about basic objects in nature, but I can see that he isn’t convinced. I feel I am having to defend my whole existence. I’ve arranged for him to join me at a conference in Israel later this month, and I hope that seeing the rest of the tribe enthused and excited about these problems will re-inspire him. It will also show him that people are interested in what he is dedicating his time to.
Du Sautoy is a softy! I’d throw such students out of the window…
quotes of the day
Feb 1st
Some people are in urgent need of a vacation, myself included…
From the paper Transseries for beginners by G.A. Edgar, arXived today :
Well, brothers and sisters, I am here today to tell you: If you love these formulas, you need no longer hide in the shadows! The answer to all of these woes is here. Transseries.
In a comment over at The Everthing Seminar
Shouldn’t dwarfs on the shoulders on giants be a little less arrogant?
by Micromegas. Well, I’d rather enter a flame war than report about it. But, for some reason I cannot comment at the EverythingSeminar, nor at the SecretBloggingSeminar. Is this my problem or something to do with wordpress.com blogs? If you encountered a similar problem and managed to solve it, please let me know.
UPDATE (febr. 2) : my comment did surface after 5 days. Greg fished it out of their spam-filter. Thanks! I’ll try to comment at wordpress.com blogs from now on by NOT linking to neverendingbooks. I hope this will satisfy their spam-filter…
please, use this bookmarklet!
Jan 21st
Great! You’ve finally managed to arXiv your paper after months of laborious research, and now, you’re eagerly awaiting response…
The odds are you’ll be disappointed, if not frustrated. Chances are high that if you get any response at all it is only to clarify that someone else (usually the person emailing you) proved this result a long time ago, or that your result could be generalized enormously, or that you could have shortened your proof tremendously if only you were more educated, or … Mathematics seems to be more of a pissing contest than anything else, at such moments.
Imagine someone would be kind enough, at that particular moment, to send you an email saying not much more than : “Gee thanks! Ive just browsed through your paper arXived today and you really made my day! Keep up the good work, all the best :: lieven” (change the name to your liking)
Sadly, math-circles are not known for their ‘good-vibes’ generally. Mind you, Ive send similar emails to people posting on the arXiv, but, admittedly, I did it far fewer than I might have. Often I like (even admire) a result but repress the urgent need to communicate that feeling to the author, perhaps my Asperger kicking up…
Now that you may feel some empathy with the situation, let’s get to a similar situation in math-blogging. Sometimes, you spend a lot of time writing a post 1 , release it to the world, see tons of RSS-bots and genuine hits passing by and then what?… nothing! no reply, no email, no comment, nothing at all!
Personally, I’m not that influenced by this. When I blog I do it because (1) Ive the time, at that particular moment and (2) I like to write about the things I do, at that moment. But sometimes, it comes to us all, that feeling of ‘why am I doing this after all? can’t I spend my time more sensibly doing something else?’ and when you begin to have these doubts it usually marks the beginning of a long silence at your blog2
So, here’s an appeal to all you lurkers at math-blogs : give these people, once in a while, something back…. Ive thought for a long time that this lurk-but-no-comment attitude was something typical of mathematicians, but, as often, when researched in more depth, I have to admit that I’m wrong! Read the post Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute by Jakob Nielsen to find out that most blogs act along a 90-9-1 scheme :
User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule: 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.
So, the good news is, it’s not that particular to us autistic mathematicians. But, wouldn’t it be even better if you could do something positive about it? Speaking for myself : often I read a post I like, and (being a semi-pro myself) appreciate the work had to be put into producing such a post, but even then I don’t feel the urge to communicate this positive feeling to the blogger in question. Perhaps, we could accelerate things by having a bookmarklet in your bookmarks-bar that does the following : when you like a post, go to the post-page where you are asked to leave a comment. Hit the bookmarklet and it will automatically fill in your name, URL, email adress and a supporting message along the lines of “Nice post! I’m not so much of a commenter, but rather than not replying at all, I found it important to let you know that people actually read and like your post. All the best (and perhaps later I’ll comment more to the point) :: lieven (again, change the name to your liking).
Well, I’ve just done that! So please take a few minutes off your time to read and follow-up the instructions below and have a math-blog-bookmarklet up in your bookmark-bar to tell the blogger in question you really liked her/his post. This may just be enough motivation for them to carry on…
Okay! Here the nitty-gritty (it takes under 2 minutes, so please, do it now!).
part 1 : copy the following text and save it as blogmarklet.html
Download mathblogmarklet.txt and save it into your favorite text-program as bookmarklet.html and change your URL, name, email and custom message (please extend on your compliments…)
Once you saved the file as bookmarklet.html open the file under your favourite browser (Safari or Flock) and drag the link to your bookmark-bar.
part 2 : use it!
Whenever you visit a blog-post you like, go to the page of that post where you can leave a comment. Hit the bookmarklet and your comment-fields are filled (but PLEASE ADD TO THE DEFAULT COMMENT IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT) and press the submit-button!
That’s it!
For example, Ive just changed the layout of this blog. Please leave a specific comment what you think about it.
- but probably you have to be blogging yourself to appreciate the amount of energy it takes to write a genuine post compared to a link-post or a couple-of-lines-not-going-into-the-specifics post [↩]
- browse my archive and I can tell you specifically what happened at that particular moment to stop blogging [↩]
Hi, I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. My research areas are non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry. Sometimes, you can also find me here :
