Guilt-Free Grade Assignments

One of the hardest things to do, I’ve found, is figure out someone’s final grade.

Putting “D-” on one lab report is relatively painless… double check to make sure that yeah, it really is that bad, but it’s only one grade out of many.

Entering “C” into the official records takes a little more work. It’s particularly hard for the ones that I know have tried consistently all semester. “C” could mean that the student will have to repeat the class. It could prompt them to change majors or careers. It could affect their scholarship or financial aid. Then again, turning all “D”s into “C”s and all “C”s into “B”s isn’t doing them any favors, either, because it overestimates how prepared/apt they are for the next class. So I have to check my sympathetic wish to nudge them up, just a hair, they’ve worked so hard for that “C” and is there really THAT much difference between their work and that of the lower-end “C” students?

Ignoring the names, though, it’s an interesting problem in classification. I’ve got 119 samples, who’ve been tested in various ways with the intention of sorting them into 5 categories, which just happen to have alphabetic labels. Now all I have to do is work out the best way to classify the samples, starting with some pre-determined borders for the categories. There are two types of measurements available, which can be broadly described as measuring independent understanding (“exam” type measurements) and as measuring consistent work to gain understanding (which includes homework, lab work, and attendance grades). The easiest of these to work with are the averaged exam grades and the work-over-time-except-lab. Plotting the exam average against the other average doesn’t take into account the lab grade, however. Should that go into the exam average (because it includes some lab quizzes) or into the other average (because it’s mostly work over time)? Let’s average the lab into both grades. (Losing some orthogonality, but I don’t feel like shoving the data into Matlab for PCA.)

This actually works out pretty nicely:

Classification of 119 samples using two parameters

There’s a fairly clear line between most of the categories. Which means…. that it’s quite easy to draw straight lines between those categories as grade boundaries. This also agrees well with the grades based on the overall average (collapsing the two dimensions here into one dimension, so no surprise)… but it makes it a little easier to show a student that “yeah, you really do fall right into the middle of the ___ pack, so better luck next semester”.

Now to finish up grading the senior class… this is much harder to do with 7 samples than with 119!

“…and we’re here to help you.”

Supposedly the reason why we needed “health care reform” was that “health care” was costing too much, thanks to those greedy doctors (you know – the ones determined to provide treatment) and health insurance companies.

Now that it’s down to the wire, though, it turns out that the “reform” we’re at risk of getting isn’t actually going to help with that -

“We are going to be expanding coverage to some 30 million Americans. And, of course, that’s going to up the level of health-care spending. You can’t do that and not spend more,” Romer said.

See, when people complained about some people having to pay more money to insure lots of people who don’t have insurance now (including millions who could get it, but don’t want it!)… those people were dismissed as crackpots rabidly foaming about the specter of socialism.

Instead, we’re going to “expand coverage to some 30 million Americans” which will “up the level of health-care spending”. That’s totally different from “suck money out of ‘the rich’ to insure ‘the poor’”. This is just going to “up the level of spending”.

Don’t worry, there’s some good news too:

“[E]ven though we’re going to up the level of spending in the short run, by the time you get out five or 10 years, you have a dramatic impact on where we are relative to where we might otherwise have been.”

This must be from the same government office that counts jobs “created or saved”. But “dramatic impact”, that must be good – right? We’ll be okay in 10 years (once His Obamacy is out of office)? Not so fast.

the White House sought Monday to bolster the case for reform, arguing that the Senate bill would cut the soaring rate of growth in health costs by 1 percent a year over the long haul, reducing federal budget deficits and producing thousands of dollars in benefits for the average family.

So the “soaring rate of growth in health costs” will continue to soar, just not quite so high, theoretically, as it will otherwise. It all boils down to:

“Look, people: We know that you don’t like this idea – that you’ve been demonstrating against this idea all year long. In fact, we don’t dare face the people we were picked to represent. But we know better than you do, based on these murky projections that Obama’s mouthpiece advisors have brought us, and so we’re going to do it to you anyway. It’ll help you, really it will, although we’ve made sure that our own families won’t be affected by this. And you’ll only have the government’s word for it that this ’solution’ is working, just as you only had our word for it that there was a ‘problem’ in the first place. Oh, and by the way – many of us aren’t going to be seeking re-election next year anyway.”

(Quotes all from the Washington Post.)

Beating the Job-Bushes, Again

… And the first one seems to have something rustling around inside it! Let’s ‘ave a look, shall we?

… Crikey! It’s a big’un, too! Got an interview next Thursday up the road at Big Central State. This is still a primarily-undergraduate institution, but twice the size and with at least twice as much research activity. Might be a better fit for some of my grandioser research ideas, although I’m not otherwise fond of the size increase.

On the other hand, an on-campus interview is a fairly good sign, particularly in December, since their “deadline” (i.e., application review date) was only a few weeks ago. Now if I can just prod my erstwhile postdoc boss into sending out his letter of recommendation in time…

Awesome.

The never-before seen security tapes obtained by Burge provide a rare glimpse into the inner working of the climate research hive and its amazing guano production. In this sequence, we see one group of researchers entering the hive each carrying a datum they have retrieved from a distant climate measuring station. This is the cause of much excitement among their colleagues, who buzz around in a grant-writing frenzy.

Infrared heat map film of highly agitated researchers

But there’s a problem: as the worker researchers attempt to store each raw datum into the neat honeycomb hockey stick structure provided by the hive’s Alpha Grantwriter, they discover that few will fit. The infrared shows them growing cool with fear. This signals the climate researcher’s instinctive behavior to begin viciously beating, rolling and normalizing the data into submission. According to Dr. Nigel V.H. Oldham, professor emeritus at Oxford University’s Centre for Metascience, this violent data dance is what makes climate researchers unique among breeds of scientists.

This and much more in “The Secret Life of Climate Researchers” at
Iowahawk.

Jobs!

No, no offers, yet, but at least I’ve applied myself. Still waiting on my former postdoc boss to acknowledge my continuing existence – three emails, 2 phone calls, and 2 weeks are not enough to reach him, apparently. Well, at least he’s aware that I’m looking and that he may be contacted by search committees wondering why he’s not sent a letter yet.

“Wait, job hunting? You sound so happy there!” Yes, but the department is ending the temporary/non-tenure-track position that I’m in now, replacing it (finally) with a tenure-track version. So I’d drop the “temporary” from “temporary assistant professor”. I’ve been encouraged – nay, pestered and begged! – to apply, so I think that’s a good sign. (The secretary actually chased me down to remind me to get my application in. She’s wonderful.) I’m not sure whether they specifically had me in mind when writing the ad for the position, but it’s about as good a fit to me as could possibly be expected. (Actually the one at MTSU might be slightly better, since they mention wanting someone with interest in environmental *and* materials, while the one here only mentions environmental stuff.)

Of course, it’s not an automatic yes from them, and it’s not an automatic yes from me, either. I’ve been quite impressed with most of the graduate students I’ve seen here – but I’m not sure about getting all of my research plans to fit here, either. Possibly a bigger school would be better that way? But I really like this department’s focus on research as education as well as research for its own sake. So I’m keeping an open mind on it all – it won’t even matter if I don’t get an interview, and if I do, then I can bring up those concerns then.

8 Day Chicken Pot Pie

Day 1: Get cut-up chicken. Unwrap chicken. Heap the chicken parts into a pan that’s really slightly too small for it, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and bake it at 350 degrees during 1 episode of “Supernatural” and 2 reruns of “Scrubs”.

Day 1, step 2: Realize that you’re not actually going to have any chicken for dinner tonight, but you do have a TV dinner. Heat and eat TV dinner. Remove chicken, allow to cool on stovetop. Put it in the fridge right before bed. (If you fall asleep on the couch, hypothetically speaking, do it in the morning. First thing. Bacteria start their day early!)

Day 2: Examine chicken. Confirm that it will require substantial work to finish preparing the chicken tonight. Return it to the fridge. TV dinner time!

Day 3: Push chicken to back of fridge. Just for now. Tomorrow you’ll have time. Refrigerate the carrots and celery you bought at the same time you bought the chicken. TV dinner.

Day 4 through 6: Ignore chicken. There is no chicken. Who said anything about chicken? TV dinners are good enough.

Day 7: After throwing out the packet of green onions (1 used, 8 withered), re-discover the chicken. Exclaim “Eureka!” (Streaking is optional in November.) Begin excavating the chicken pieces from the congealed broth and fat. Give up and warm up the entire pot until the chicken is too hot to handle, then allow to mostly cool. (You meant to do it that way anyway. Something about sterilization.) Strip the meat from the bones, return the bones to the broth in the pot, add 1.5 cups of water and boil during two episodes of “Frasier”. Realize that you’re not going to finish this tonight, either. Cover the meat in a big bowl, return to the fridge along with the broth. TV dinner.

Day 8: Determination. This chicken must be eaten. You’re starting to feel foolish. And very hungry. And so it begins.

Mince the cold chicken, about 16 ounces, into a 9×13″ glass baking dish. (This is the only good-sized dish you have, so it’s the obvious choice.) Peel and slice 5 small carrots. Clean and dice two stalks of celery. Add 2 red potatoes, skins on, diced small. Pause to regret having used the last frozen broccoli the night before. Add a medium white onion, diced. Add 2 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of thyme, and a sprinkling of salt, then stir it in the pan to mix. Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until the onions and potatoes are softened.

While that’s baking, re-melt the broth in the pan, then drain it off the bones into a large measuring cup. That’s not going to cool down fast enough, so add two ice cubes. Make sure one of them splashes hot chicken fat all over your clean shirt. And the floor. Put the broth in the fridge to chill as fast as it can, then Swiffer the kitchen floor. It needed it anyway.

Remove the pan from the oven. Try making gravy (one attempt allowed per year). If you decide you came close enough, pour one and a half cups of gravy over the contents of the pan, add another teaspoon of black pepper, and stir to mix it all up. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and put it back in to bake at 400 F.

Realize nobody will believe that it took 8 days to make this. Begin writing a blog post about it anyway.

Biscuits for the top: Mix approximately two cups of baking mix that probably isn’t too stale with 2/3 cup of milk (which definitely isn’t expired, Mom, because you did teach me better than that). Rearrange your kitchen to have room to roll out the biscuits, while wondering how long it’ll be before you have a kitchen that’s actually large enough to swing a cat, or at least which has more than six square inches of counter space. Finish the blog post. Roll the dough to 1/4″ thick, slice it into two-inch squares and arrange artlessly over the mixture in the pan. Bake for another 18-20 minutes or until the biscuits on top are done.

“Obama Welcomes Economic Growth”

Hasn’t he done that, like, a dozen times since he took office? Since June even?

Pull the other one. It’s not getting better quickly, and when it does, it’ll be in spite of “stimulus” and radical reconstruction of the economy.

“Welcomes economic growth” turns out to mean nothing more than “points out that things are slightly less bad than they could be”. That’s a useless thing for a “leader” to do, but at least it keeps this one busy.

Teaching Freshmen

It’s a huge responsibility to teach a freshman class.

A lot of faculty look at it as an unpleasant obligation. Big classes, lots of “busy work” grading, only covering the basics without really getting into the interesting parts of the subject. Lots of “hand holding” and reminding them of every little thing. And all of that’s true.

It’s also an opportunity, and a responsibility.

Before, I’d taught seniors and grad students. They already knew they wanted to be chemists, or chemical engineers, or a doctor in one case. My “influence” over them and their future was limited – perhaps I encouraged them towards my particular interest, or left them with a new appreciation for something that they’d thought sounded dull. They mostly made A’s and B’s, so not a lot of effect on their transcripts. I don’t know that being in my class last year really changed anyone’s life. (Which may be a good thing.)

Freshmen are a lot more volatile. I’ve had four students drop so far, out of 131. Some have changed their major, partly due to this class. One isn’t going to be a doctor any more. Those are just the “major” impacts that I know about.

I’ve been trying to remember my own general chemistry class; I remember a lot more about the professor than about the details of the class. I doubt very much that he had any particular intention of nudging me towards following in his footsteps. And yet he did – not from any specific thing that he said, but from the enjoyment he brought to teaching, and from the respect and patience he had even for the students slow to understand.

The responsibility, when teaching freshmen, is that casual remarks and attitudes can make a far bigger impact than the subject itself. The opportunity is to make those impacts positive ones.

Really working on that. And I pray that I never stop working on that.

Fall Break Plans

Heading to the FACSS conference in Louisville, KY – that’s “Federation of Analytical Chemistry & Spectroscopy Societies”.

Also, being poor. The advance registration for a “grownup” (vs student) member is $475… *faints*

I’m giving a talk on Monday, though, so hopefully that’ll be well received. If not, at least it’ll be an amusing memory to share when I interview for jobs with some of the same people I fail to entertain.

Today I…

Prepared a lecture on molecular (solution) UV/Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy. Mostly recycled from last year, but with a new explanation of the equations.

Gave the lecture.

Helped students burn gum wrappers and dissolve the ash in concentrated acid.

Tried to figure out why the department’s atomic absorption instrument thinks that the aluminum HCL is actually vanadium. Failed.

Told the students they could analyze their samples next week.

Sent off graduate and undergrad transcripts to the portfolio service, and requested my PhD advisor add a letter of recommendation.

Finally ate lunch. Dinner? Whatever.

Prepared for the optional evening help session.

Wrote this.