Tuesday, 18 August 2009
How to explain programming to your Mum
This article will hopefully be helpful for those times when you have to explain to your mum/dad/girlfriend/person on the bus what it is you do all day. I can't help you explain the intricacies of your particular scientific field but I can help explain how all the computers get involved.
Monday, 17 August 2009
Changing disciplines
You don't have to work in the same research discipline for your entire career. Indeed, at least some drift is probably the norm, if only because most problems don't warrant 40 years of attention. But researchers tend to be very focused and dedicated to their subject, spending many thousands of hours exploring it and communicating their findings to the world. They become known for it - "Susan the cosmologist", "Steve the mouse guy".
But it doesn't have to be that way. You could change disciplines.
There are a number of pros to this. You learn a lot of new things when you change discipline. Not just the facts and figures of the new subject (although there are many of these), but also you find out how people in that discipline approach scientific research. How do they collaborate? What are their conferences like? How do they write their papers? All these things can be surprisingly different from subject to subject, and you can learn a lot by seeing different ways of making these things work.
All this new knowledge is stimulating. Not only is this a great experience for the knowledge-hungry academic, but it's a great way of generating new ideas. Perhaps there are problems in the new subject that are much more tractable using the old subject's mindset. Or perhaps you had a general problem you'd been thinking about, and an idea known about in the new subject gives you a "Eureka!" moment.
You can also act as a vector for good ideas flowing between subjects. This is why interdisciplinary work can be so valuable. When the good ideas of two different disciplines mix, sometimes you get important new discoveries. Being the cause of this is obviously a Good Thing.
Sometimes, moving allows you to find a better niche for yourself. There are all sorts of reasons that determine how well you 'fit' in any job and research is no different. Do the day-to-day tasks suit your temperament? Are you happy working on decade-long projects, or is six months a better timescale for you? How well do you gel with the culture in a given discipline? How well does your particular set of research interests fit into a particular discipline.
Depending on the specifics of the change, the practicalities of funding might become easier. One good reason for moving disciplines is to move from one where there's little funding to another that has much better support. I don't think this should ever be the primary reason for moving (and I don't think most scientists do research for the money!), but all other things being equal, wouldn't it be nice to not have to worry quite so much about where the funding is going to come from?
It can also be the case that changing disciplines freshens things up for you. Working on the same small set of problems for a decade or more can get quite same-ish, so moving on to a new set of challenges can open a wellspring of enthusiasm.
A well-judged change of discipline can be a great move, but of course it's not without downsides. It take a big commitment of time and effort, because there will be many new things you need to learn and you'll likely be moving jobs at the same time, so there will be the normal upheavals that this implies (you might even be moving house or moving to a different country). And you'll stay junior in your career for longer. In your new subject, you'll be a rookie even if you bring a lot of relevant skills, plus you won't have a network of contacts and collaborators yet, so these will need building. And your publication list in the new subject will need time to develop, before you can start applying for fellowships etc. None of this is to say that change is bad; simply that there are costs associated with a change this big.
In conclusion, there's a lot to consider if you're thinking about changing disciplines. And rightly so - it's a huge commitment. But if you make the right change, there can be a lot of benefit. And here's one more thought: Maybe the modern scientist should always be looking to diversify?
But it doesn't have to be that way. You could change disciplines.
There are a number of pros to this. You learn a lot of new things when you change discipline. Not just the facts and figures of the new subject (although there are many of these), but also you find out how people in that discipline approach scientific research. How do they collaborate? What are their conferences like? How do they write their papers? All these things can be surprisingly different from subject to subject, and you can learn a lot by seeing different ways of making these things work.
All this new knowledge is stimulating. Not only is this a great experience for the knowledge-hungry academic, but it's a great way of generating new ideas. Perhaps there are problems in the new subject that are much more tractable using the old subject's mindset. Or perhaps you had a general problem you'd been thinking about, and an idea known about in the new subject gives you a "Eureka!" moment.
You can also act as a vector for good ideas flowing between subjects. This is why interdisciplinary work can be so valuable. When the good ideas of two different disciplines mix, sometimes you get important new discoveries. Being the cause of this is obviously a Good Thing.
Sometimes, moving allows you to find a better niche for yourself. There are all sorts of reasons that determine how well you 'fit' in any job and research is no different. Do the day-to-day tasks suit your temperament? Are you happy working on decade-long projects, or is six months a better timescale for you? How well do you gel with the culture in a given discipline? How well does your particular set of research interests fit into a particular discipline.
Depending on the specifics of the change, the practicalities of funding might become easier. One good reason for moving disciplines is to move from one where there's little funding to another that has much better support. I don't think this should ever be the primary reason for moving (and I don't think most scientists do research for the money!), but all other things being equal, wouldn't it be nice to not have to worry quite so much about where the funding is going to come from?
It can also be the case that changing disciplines freshens things up for you. Working on the same small set of problems for a decade or more can get quite same-ish, so moving on to a new set of challenges can open a wellspring of enthusiasm.
A well-judged change of discipline can be a great move, but of course it's not without downsides. It take a big commitment of time and effort, because there will be many new things you need to learn and you'll likely be moving jobs at the same time, so there will be the normal upheavals that this implies (you might even be moving house or moving to a different country). And you'll stay junior in your career for longer. In your new subject, you'll be a rookie even if you bring a lot of relevant skills, plus you won't have a network of contacts and collaborators yet, so these will need building. And your publication list in the new subject will need time to develop, before you can start applying for fellowships etc. None of this is to say that change is bad; simply that there are costs associated with a change this big.
In conclusion, there's a lot to consider if you're thinking about changing disciplines. And rightly so - it's a huge commitment. But if you make the right change, there can be a lot of benefit. And here's one more thought: Maybe the modern scientist should always be looking to diversify?
Friday, 14 August 2009
Why do you work on the science you work on?
What was the decision-making process? How did you make the choice?
Early in my research career, I discovered that I loved working with statistical inference and building the software to do it. I had chosen my PhD because I knew I was interested in astrophysics and I was offered a place at a good department to work on observational cosmology (which I found and still find fascinating). Gradually over the years my horizons have broadened, to the point where I now work mainly on medical and biological data. But the key point is that I'm using statistical inference and programming to do science.
I certainly didn't see this path coming - it evolved.
I suspect this is true for a lot (maybe even most) scientists. Maybe the subject was something that interested them during their degree. Or perhaps it's what they're trained for, given the choice of undergraduate degree they made. That's sobering - the choice you made aged 17 can define your entire career. Anyone else want a 17-year-old picking your career for you? Thought not...
My guess is that many people aren't sure what to do next. They enjoyed their undergraduate degree and therefore (quite reasonably) decided to do a masters in the same or a similar subject. That also turned out to be interesting and, still lacking inspiration as to a career direction, a PhD beckoned (perhaps they were even offered a place by their Msc supervisor, making it an easy option). Suddenly, they're in their mid-twenties, have a doctorate and almost a decade of training in an academic subject. Sounds like a good basis for academia, so off they trot.
Some people want to stay at the same university and this affects their choice of subject (I'll admit to this a little bit). Given a choice of several interesting topics, they take the one that also allows them to stay where they want to be.
Perhaps the subject in question was/is an up-and-coming area with the prospect of lots of interesting science to work on and important problems to tackle. This seems like a not unreasonable consideration.
And of course some people have a burning passion for the subject (something which strikes me as a very good reason indeed!).
As you progress through your career, you'll learn more about what your chosen subject is really like. Are the scientific challenges important? Is it well-funded? What do you really enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis? And do you try to change things in response to this knowledge? What if after five years in one field, you realise that another field might suit you better for whatever reason. Would you change?
I once read a suggestion that in life you shouldn't pick a good destination, but rather focus on a good direction in which to go. The point is that as you live and experience life and learn from it, you'll be better able to make future decisions about where to go. If you pick your path through life now and stick to it, you'll have to turn down all those unexpected opportunities that occur tomorrow. And the You of 5 years time is probably a better judge of where you should be going at that point than you are right now; so why not defer to your (future) superior judgement?
And the point of all this? Think about why you work on the things you work on. And be willing to be flexible. Even if your current plan is a good one, you might happen upon an even better one tomorrow!
Early in my research career, I discovered that I loved working with statistical inference and building the software to do it. I had chosen my PhD because I knew I was interested in astrophysics and I was offered a place at a good department to work on observational cosmology (which I found and still find fascinating). Gradually over the years my horizons have broadened, to the point where I now work mainly on medical and biological data. But the key point is that I'm using statistical inference and programming to do science.
I certainly didn't see this path coming - it evolved.
I suspect this is true for a lot (maybe even most) scientists. Maybe the subject was something that interested them during their degree. Or perhaps it's what they're trained for, given the choice of undergraduate degree they made. That's sobering - the choice you made aged 17 can define your entire career. Anyone else want a 17-year-old picking your career for you? Thought not...
My guess is that many people aren't sure what to do next. They enjoyed their undergraduate degree and therefore (quite reasonably) decided to do a masters in the same or a similar subject. That also turned out to be interesting and, still lacking inspiration as to a career direction, a PhD beckoned (perhaps they were even offered a place by their Msc supervisor, making it an easy option). Suddenly, they're in their mid-twenties, have a doctorate and almost a decade of training in an academic subject. Sounds like a good basis for academia, so off they trot.
Some people want to stay at the same university and this affects their choice of subject (I'll admit to this a little bit). Given a choice of several interesting topics, they take the one that also allows them to stay where they want to be.
Perhaps the subject in question was/is an up-and-coming area with the prospect of lots of interesting science to work on and important problems to tackle. This seems like a not unreasonable consideration.
And of course some people have a burning passion for the subject (something which strikes me as a very good reason indeed!).
As you progress through your career, you'll learn more about what your chosen subject is really like. Are the scientific challenges important? Is it well-funded? What do you really enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis? And do you try to change things in response to this knowledge? What if after five years in one field, you realise that another field might suit you better for whatever reason. Would you change?
I once read a suggestion that in life you shouldn't pick a good destination, but rather focus on a good direction in which to go. The point is that as you live and experience life and learn from it, you'll be better able to make future decisions about where to go. If you pick your path through life now and stick to it, you'll have to turn down all those unexpected opportunities that occur tomorrow. And the You of 5 years time is probably a better judge of where you should be going at that point than you are right now; so why not defer to your (future) superior judgement?
And the point of all this? Think about why you work on the things you work on. And be willing to be flexible. Even if your current plan is a good one, you might happen upon an even better one tomorrow!
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Building scientific tools that are actually useful
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo by flattop341"]
[/caption]
Lots of scientists write bits of software to get things done. Sometimes they offer to give someone else (a collaborator, student, postdoc etc) a copy of some of their code, to help that person out. Sometimes a given piece of code is useful enough that it gets handed out multiple times, and so starts to look a lot like a publicly-available scientific software tool.
That's great, but think about what could have just happened, back in the first sentence of this post. A scientist wrote a bit of software to get something done. Not "a scientist developed a robust, well-tested software tool". Maybe it was, but maybe it was a knocked-together, prototype-y little chunk of code that was only meant to be used once. And now suddenly that prototype is in widespread use. We hope this fills you with horror!
The problem here is that this is a way that a prototype can end up being distributed as if it was a finished product. But it doesn't have to be this way; in this post, we're going to discuss the considerations of producing good scientific software tools.
[/caption]Lots of scientists write bits of software to get things done. Sometimes they offer to give someone else (a collaborator, student, postdoc etc) a copy of some of their code, to help that person out. Sometimes a given piece of code is useful enough that it gets handed out multiple times, and so starts to look a lot like a publicly-available scientific software tool.
That's great, but think about what could have just happened, back in the first sentence of this post. A scientist wrote a bit of software to get something done. Not "a scientist developed a robust, well-tested software tool". Maybe it was, but maybe it was a knocked-together, prototype-y little chunk of code that was only meant to be used once. And now suddenly that prototype is in widespread use. We hope this fills you with horror!
The problem here is that this is a way that a prototype can end up being distributed as if it was a finished product. But it doesn't have to be this way; in this post, we're going to discuss the considerations of producing good scientific software tools.
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