Lessons I wish I had been Taught

http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-rota-10-lessons.html

by wickedchicken • 15 years ago

227 20 15 years ago

alumni.media.mit.edu

simon• 15 years ago

Some excellent points even for a non-maths guy like me. And I learned a new word: incunabulum.

Uh, isn't citing papers that have nothing to do with your paper unethical or plagiarism and could be seen as padding your paper? I don't think citing sources that have nothing to do with your paper is a good idea...

michaelbuckbee• 15 years ago

This was my first thought as well, but from the context I think that he was citing papers that were related (even if indirectly) to his work.

JoachimSchipper• 15 years ago

Not really. Plagiarism means something else, and padding your paper or citing some random guy doesn't help you in any way. (A lot of work is done to shorten papers to get them under journals' page limit, and many have at least a full page of citations.) And he only did it once; if nothing else, he can plausibly say "I had these papers on my desk, had a deadline, and wanted to make sure I wasn't accidentally using their work without giving credit".

[I'm doing a PhD in crypto after my MSc in math, my girlfriend is doing her PhD in math, lots of friends are mathematicians.]

gnosis• 15 years ago

It's more like anti-plagiarism: giving credit where none is due.

PaulHoule• 15 years ago

I figured out most of these aspects of the academic game before I bomed out of it.

hugh3• 15 years ago

I am unfamiliar with the verb "to bome".

ryanbraganza• 15 years ago

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bome "Verb, " I just Bomed that math test!" (Meaning you did a good job)"

Although based on context, I'd guess a misspelt "bombed"?

Jage• 15 years ago

Yeah, academia... never was a fan.

A couple gems for life though, the bit about old age stuck out to me. I've learned that from my dad, who attests to having never thought about getting old and now spends lonely nights drinking himself to bed. Pretty depressing but very little anyone can do about it... Just know you're going to get old one day, you're going to die, and then get over it.

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

He was a fine professor, and these notes captured his attitude in the lecture hall pretty well.

dilanj• 15 years ago

Loved this:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

itaborai83• 15 years ago

In Brazil there is a saying, "água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura", which means something like "Soft water on hard rock will eventually poke holes in it", but it sounds way less folksy than the original.

wging• 15 years ago

Sounds a lot like Grothendieck's metaphor of the rising sea. pdf warning: http://www.math.jussieu.fr/~leila/grothendieckcircle/mclarty...

aristidb2• 15 years ago

Unusually, the German version is much more concise:

Stetes Wasser höhlt den Stein.

thefool• 15 years ago

Point 5 reminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_under_the_integ...

keypusher• 15 years ago

Lesson #1: Which words in a sentence need to be capitalized.

mturmon• 15 years ago

Rota's reflections, anecdotes, and musings are always a good read. I enjoyed his book of essays (with Jacob Schwartz and Mark Kac) "Discrete Thoughts"

http://books.google.com/books?id=5waLQ06J9VwC&pg=PA1&...

and I see he has another called "Indiscrete Thoughts".

Lessons I wish I had been Taught

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