The Physics ArXiv Blog recently discussed a paper on the statistical problem with soccer tournaments.  In particular, the authors note the problem that there is only a 28% chance that the “best team” won the most recent World Cup.  They also point to the presence of intransitive triplets,  or rock-paper-scissors type relationships where team A beats team B beats team C, who then beats team A.  They cite these results to support their claim that single-elimination tournaments, and soccer games in general are a bad experiment to determine the best team.

I don’t know much about soccer, but as a basketball fan, I’m not surprised to hear about the existence of these intransitive triplets.  Sure, after an 82-game NBA season where every team plays each other at least twice,  you can feel pretty confident about ranking the teams on a rough hierarchy.  But three teams of roughly the same level can definitely have a rock-paper-scissors relationship because of different areas of strength.

More interesting, however is their claim about single-elimination tournaments, as it makes me think of the age-old debate that seems to come up every March: Which is better, NCAA or NBA basketball?

There are many aspects to the debate, from the talent levels of the athletes, to the differing styles of play, questions of effort, substance vs. style, and so on.  But the one thing that college fans always point to is the unique thrills brought on by the single-elimination NCAA Tournament, as compared to the seven-game series of the NBA.

From an entertainment perspective, both formats have their merits.  A single-elimination tournament is more unpredictable, and upsets are more common.  A seven-game series presents an evolving chess match as the two teams get to know each other and rivalries are born.  And, for my money, the do-or-die atmosphere of a Game 7 offers even more drama than in a single-elimination tournament.  But the question of which format is more entertaining is largely a matter of personal taste.  (I would think that basketball fans would find something to appreciate in both levels of play, and I’m dumbfounded when I hear college fans declare the NBA unwatchable.  But that rant is beside the point.)

However, if you are looking at the tournament as a way to determine the best team, the research in this article confirms what is intuitively obvious: single-elimination tournaments are not the way to go.  The authors mention repeating the experiments (playing more games), or playing the games for longer until one team’s lead is large enough to guarantee that they are better to a certain degree of confidence.  I’d like to see them apply their methods to a 16-team tournament with 7-game series, and estimate the odds that the “best” team wins.  I’m sure it would be a lot higher than 28%.

But while basketball fans may not agree on the best method for deciding the best team, I think that we can all agree on the worst: college football’s BCS.

Because I have always had my eye on academia, there are many things I don’t know about the business world, including the process of getting started as a young person and moving up the ranks.  However, whenever I hear aspiring business-types talk, internships perpetually come up.  Internships seem to be central to the plan of getting experience, getting noticed, and getting on track to a good job.  And the accompanying question is always asked: is the internship paid or unpaid?

Before today, this question never fazed me.  I have always been paid for my internship-like research experiences, but I was not surprised that in some fields, people paid their dues by working for free.  However, a blog entry that I read today completely changed my mind, and not in the direction that the author intended.

Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA franchise the Dallas Mavericks, had an idea to set up some unpaid internships using social media to market his team:

One silver lining of a “great recession” that we are now in is that there are a lot of incredibly talented people without jobs, or who have lost their jobs. I didn’t care if they were 18 years old or 73 years old.  I thought we could assemble a talented group who would enjoy the internships and could also gain valuable experience to add to their resumes.  When the economy opened up, one of two things would hopefully occur.  We were generating revenue from this effort and we could hire them, or they had just built up their resumes and improved their chances of finding a paying job.

Makes sense right ?

Wrong. Enter the US Government.

At first, I was on Cuban’s side.  (Leave aside for the moment the fact that he, a billionaire, is describing others’ unemployment as a silver lining.)  This seems to be an agreement that would be beneficial for both sides, and the unpaid interns would perhaps benefit more, since he described this project as something that wouldn’t bring in cash flow.  He spins it as the meddlesome government telling the intern that they’re better off doing nothing (or flipping burgers) than gaining experience.

He loses me, and convinces me of the other side of the argument, when he presents the government’s restriction on unpaid interns:

no work can be performed that is of any benefit at all to the company.  That is, you can not deliver mail, sort files, file papers, organize a person’s calendar, conduct market research, write reports, watch television shows and report on them, read scripts, schedule interviews, or any other job that assists the employer in any way in running their business.

It all makes sense when you look at it from the company’s side.  They have some work that they want done, but it’s not important enough for any of their current employees to handle.  So they want someone to do it for them for free.  In the name of an “internship,” they can exploit someone who is powerless in their field.

It’s exploitation, pure and simple.  The intern would do the work to get a line on their resume that connects them to Big Powerful Influential Company.  That’s bad enough if you assume that the work done actually provides a valuable learning experience to the intern.  But look at the jobs Cuban lists above.  He’s outraged that the government won’t let him get someone to sort his mail, do his filing, organize his calendar, and other such grunt work FOR FREE?!  That’s just ridiculous.

Then he goes on to say

The main reason that you do not see more lawsuits regarding unpaid internships is that the interns are very unlikely to sue.  In most cases, they fear being blacklisted, as they will undoubtedly need to use the internship as a reference to get any future work.

Oh, it’s okay that they’re being exploited because they’re not complaining, right?  Again, it would be one thing if they’re not complaining because they’re happy for the opportunity.  Still wrong, but you could understand where he might be coming from.  But no, they’re keeping quiet because they fear retribution!

So, let’s recap Cuban’s argument in favor of unpaid interns:

• Isn’t it great that so many talented people are unemployed?  Maybe I can use this for my gain!
  
• Perhaps they will work for free in the name of gaining experience.
• They can also do the dirty work that would normally be done by “The Assistant to the Secretary’s Secretary.”
• They don’t complain, so it must be okay.  Oppressed people always speak up, right?  Or maybe they know we’ll blacklist them…

Sorry, Mark, I’m not convinced.

It’s Friday afternoon, time for you to goof off with this list of links that I’ve saved up over the past few weeks:

• Advanced physcis labs — What we expect from them, what we should expect from them, how to change them.  My experience with advanced lab didn’t teach me all that much, and wasn’t all that rigorous.  I didn’t mind, since I had my mind made up to be a theorist anyway.  Plus, we were all required to do a senior research project, which filled in many holes, along with our fairly demanding modern physics lab.  But a more challenging advaced lab might have been like foul-tasting medicine that would make me better off today.
• Physics Toolbox: Symmetry: The return of Morning Coffee Physics!  Explains the role of symmetry in physics.
• Cities and Ambition — What does your city say to its ambitious people?  I’ve been trying to figure out the underlying message in Minneapolis, but haven’t quite gotten there yet.  Plus, it’s interesting to think about ranking cities by the quality of the eavesdropping that you can do.
• Grad School and Vacations, PhD Comics — Q: So what do we get? A: Exploited, mostly.
• Impossible Tasks, PhD Comics – I think we all go through this at some point.  Not quite as disheartening as saying it’s impossible and then having your adviser do it in five minutes, though
• Thoughts on Grad School: Trying to employ as many of these tips as possible this semester.  Especially intriguing: #10  Take Days Off.
• Most Depressing Ideas in Physics: The eventual heat death of the universe is harshin’ my mellow.

It’s been a little over a year since I blogged about my carbon footprint, and detailed some of the steps that I was taking to reduce my environmental impact.  Here’s an update, along with a new step that I encourage all of you to look into: purchasing electricity from alternative energy sources.

Car-Free Existence

I grew up dependent on cars for transportation, but I’ve found the transition to not owning a car to be pretty easy.  I ride my bike when the weather cooperates, 8 miles round trip to school.  Thanks to a good network of bike lanes and trails, plus (mostly) conscientious drivers, my bike commute is usually pretty nice.  I can definitely see why Minneapolis is considered the #2 bike friendly city in America.

When it rains, and during the winter, I take the bus.  This is also very convenient, as the Twin Cities have good public transportation.  I can use Google Maps to find the best route at any given time.  Plus, it’s great that the Twin Cities have a growing number of hybrid electric buses, which furthers the cause of going green.

If you use a car as your only means of transportation, you might be surprised how easy it is to cut out some car trips with a more environmentally friendly option.  Most car trips are short, only a couple of miles, but they still do environmental damage, as the car’s emissions controls don’t work to their full capacity until they get warmed up.  So try replacing a couple of short trips per week with bike trips instead.  You’ll help the environment while getting good exercise.  Plus, you get more of a feel for the neighborhood when you travel slowly and immerse yourself in it.

Combining biking and public transit can make both more practical, especially if you live farther from the urban core than I do.  Bus stops that seem too far to walk to are made much closer when you bike.  Many cities have bike racks on their buses, so check your transit authority’s web site.  (All Twin Cities buses and light rail trains have bike racks.  They’re easy to use and secure.)

Car Sharing

Okay, so my life isn’t completely car-free.   I do also participate in a car-sharing service, where I can rent by the hour any of a fleet of cars located at designated locations around the city.  I mostly use the service for making big trips to the grocery store, and it’s convenient for my purposes.  The company I use is local, but there are national brands, and local companies in other cities that you can look into.  It might be a viable option for you to replace a car, or maybe as an alternative to owning a second car, with one car saved for longer trips.  Many services, including the one I use, are centered around hybrids or other high-efficiency cars.

Managing Resources

You don’t need to take major steps to start going green.  Simple lifestyle changes can make a difference without requiring a huge investment.

Of course you should recycle.  It’s 2009, gosh darn it, the message should have sunk in by now.  In some cities you may have to pay extra, which is ridiculous, but whatever the financial cost, it’s a small price to pay for the benefit we receive in a greener earth.  Ditch the bottled water, too.  If you need that filtered taste, get a water filter and a reusable water bottle (preferably aluminum or stainless), and keep enjoying the taste you’re used to.  Or drink from the tap.  Trust me, it’s better regulated than what’s sold in stores.

I confess to still needing the air conditioning (yes, it does get hot in Minnesota, thank you).  But with a wise investment, you can cut the power you waste.  Make sure you have a programmable thermostat.  Mine has a timer, so I can shut it off during the heat of the day when I’m gone, but still have my apartment comfortable by the time I get home.

Conservation is the name of the game here.  Get in the habit of using less whenever you can, and going green becomes second nature.

Alternative Power

Finally, time for my newest green method, which I’m really excited about: using alternative power sources in your own home.

Power companies have begun investing in alternative power sources such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal,  and biomass, and, according to the Department of Energy, half the country now has access to some form of renewable energy.  This can take different forms: some may be able to participate in a program through their current power company where they buy clean energy at a small premium, others can buy from a competing green energy company, and others offset their usage by purchasing green credits.

Through Xcel Energy’s Windsource program, my apartment is now 100% wind powered!  (Or it will be, once the changes take effect.)  Making the change will further reduce my carbon footprint, but I think the more important impact is from showing that I’m “buying in” to the concept of renewable energy.  Increased use and demand will fuel further investment in developing the technology needed to move a greater percentage of our power generation to renewable resources.  It’s more expensive (a whopping $5-$10 a month for me, going all-in), but it’s worth it.

The change to cleaner energy sources won’t be easy.  It will be more expensive at first, partly because the technology is still developing, partly because of the economies of scale involved, and mostly because, at this time, it’s relatively easy to find and burn fossil fuels.  But we’re on an unsustainable path, and switching your home to the greener grid will put us one step farther along a more sustainable one.

You can research your options for renewable energy here.

Going green, lightening the burden you place on the environment, is for everybody.  It’s not just for the tree-hugging, hemp-wearing hippies anymore.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)  You don’t have to be a superhero, and it won’t require a superhuman effort, just a few concentrated steps.  It gets easier once you’ve started.  And once you get everyone around you thinking green, too, it won’t just seem like the right thing to do.  It’ll seem like the only thing to do.

So you want to be a physicist?  Hey, me too!  While I don’t know everything there is to know about getting there, I might be farther along than you are, and have some wisdom that I’ve accrued along the way that I can impart to you, even though you never asked for it.  Hence, this series of Unsolicited Advice.  (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the inspiration I got from Cosmic Variance.  Plus I borrowed stole the name.)

Since this is Volume I, we’ll start early: before college.

Nurture Your Interest

If you’re reading this, and you’re not yet in college, then I’m willing to bet that you got interested in physics by reading one of the many popular books on physics.  It’s a great way to get into physics (it’s the way I got into it all those years ago).  You should continue to feed that interest in any way you can: read more books, watch tv specials, and discuss what you’ve learned with anyone who will listen.

Any book written for a popular audience is going to lose some accuracy and nuance, and some books are better than others.  Some authors are good at drawing a distinction between established physics and speculative new developments, while others are not as good, or maybe don’t try as hard.  Don’t let this concern you too much at this stage.  Reading several books will help patch up your understanding.  But the real goal here is just to get your feet wet and get you excited about the subject, rather than technical accuracy.

Figure Stuff Out

Reading is a good way to introduce yourself to the topics of physics, but how can you get some sort of idea of what it feels like to do physics?  The answer is to practice figuring stuff out for yourself, and this doesn’t need to have anything to do with physics at all.  Solve puzzles.  Build a contraption of your own design.  Try to come up with a new way to harness an energy source.  The life of a physicist is all about trying to solve hard problems, whether they are theoretical solutions to a longstanding problem, or clever experimental ideas for testing a certain theory.  Skill at solving difficult problems is good, but what you really want to know is if you enjoy it, and have the dedication to push toward a solution for as long as it takes.

Lots of people find the subject of physics interesting, and others are good at figuring things out.  If both of these are true, then you just might like to be a physicist.

Classes

Now for the more mundane topic of what classes you should take in high school if you’re planning on pursuing physics.

Math is the language in which physics is written, so you should take as many math classes as you can.  Make sure you master algebra.  Trigonometry may seem arbitrary and useless, but developing an intuitive sense of sines and cosines is endlessly helpful in physics.  I only wish I had gotten there sooner.  To me, calculus and physics are almost inseparable, and my first calculus class introduced me to almost as many crucial concepts as my first physics class did.  However, don’t worry if you’re not on track to take calculus in high school.  The connections take a few years to fully sink in, anyway.  But you should definitely be on track to take calculus your first year in college.

Take as many science classes as you can, and you will never go wrong.  Specifically, chemistry is important because the atomic concepts are generally covered here, rather than in physics classes, at least at the high school level.

Finally, you should take a physics class when you’re ready for it.  (Take it at as high of a level as you can; an AP class is great, if it’s well taught, but it’s by no means necessary.)  Try not to be too disappointed by the seemingly mundane topics of falling balls and sliding blocks.  They may not sound as exciting as what you’ve read in popular books, but a good knowledge of introductory topics is crucial for everything that comes later.  Instead, focus on how amazing it is that you are beginning to unlock the secrets of how the universe works.  The link between force and acceleration, conservation of energy and momentum — these are the most fundamental truths that we know.  That alone can be awe-inspiring, if you simply allow yourself to be taken in.

That seems like enough Unsolicited Advice for now.  Plus, it leaves me a good starting point for the next installment: choosing a college.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into an article with a very provocative title: Is Google Making us Stupid? Ordinarily, these types of articles strike me as the older generation failing to cope with technological changes, and decrying the younger crowd for embracing them.  I generally find reading such articles to be unrewarding, but this one was different, because lately I had been asking myself a similar question.  Not so much whether Google makes us stupid, but if getting much of my information from reading blogs, Wikipedia, and other web pages was changing the way that I read and the way that I think.

In contrast to the title of the article, I don’t think this is all bad.  For instance, the instant access to supporting or contradicting information in the form of hyperlinks or the ability to do a quick Google search is certainly a good thing.  Now, we no longer have to confine ourselves to the limited and perhaps biased view of just one author, which certainly has the possibility of increasing the amount of critical thinking done while reading.

Also, thanks to hyperlinks, internet reading is nonlinear.  When reading a longer article with many interesting links, I often find myself jumping out of the original article to a related page, sometimes a couple of levels deep, before returning to the original page to continue reading it.  In the best case scenario, this style of reading could be said to be helpful in developing the ability to keep several lines of thought going at once, or tabling a certain thought to come back to it later.  I can see such skills as being useful in the real world.

In the worst case scenario, this “jumping around” style of reading could be deteriorating my ability to stick with a single nuanced argument or line of thought for many pages.  This is the kind of reading and thinking skills that are traditionally valued in intellectual circles, but for many professions it is also practical.  It is the style of reading that is necessary for in-depth reading of scientific papers, for example.

Although the style of reading encouraged by the internet may have its downside, most internet users (especially, I presume, those of my generation) will recognize a greater threat to concentration that lurks on the internet.  Distractions unrelated to the task at hand, such as email, Facebook, RSS feeds, Twitter, and the like hold a magnetic pull over any activity that takes place on or near a computer.

Sure, one could claim that multitasking is the wave of the future, and that such internet distractions help train us for that future.  However, recent studies suggest that those who multitask the most are actually the least productive at doing it.  And when I think about it, I know I’m not really multitasking, I’m just allowing myself to be continually distracted by things that are really not at all urgent.  I get time-sensitive emails once in a blue moon, if that, and other social media and sites I check are even less necessary to check on a regular basis.  Really, the great thing about the internet is that all of these services are set up so that you won’t miss anything if you don’t catch it as it happens.  You can choose to obsessively check everything, seeing them as they happen, or catch up on everything later, which is certainly more efficient.

So why do we let ourselves get caught up in petty distractions?  Well, it’s simply human nature to be caught by things that are new and constantly changing, and some people are particularly susceptible.  After all, the very definition of a distraction is in its ability to pull our attention away from something else.  But the technology does play a role; if you work on a computer, the same machine provides you with both your workspace and a slew of distractions.  With iPhones and the like, we can now download our worst distractors straight to our pockets.  In fact, after a summer of sitting at a desk trying to focus on my theoretical physics research for 4 hour blocks, I have started to agree that the modern definition of “work ethic” is simply the ability to block out distractions.

(By the way, I found it ironic that I read the original article about Google over the course of several sittings.  The article itself started out as a distraction from work, and then I later distracted myself from the article by following links, checking Facebook, etc.  How about you?  Were you able to focus for this whole article, or did you find yourself distracted?)

One of my my side interests outside of physics is linguistics.  One interesting topic that fits into this interest is the creation and spread of new words.  Most of these new words are created and spread in an organic way that is difficult to trace.  However, sometimes people try to create and spread new words for a variety of reasons.

One such movement was brought to my knowledge recently: oxt weekend.  “Oxt” is supposed to be an easy way to say “not this [weekend], but the [weekend] after.”  There are some good things about this idea: it solves an ambiguity in our language, it’s pretty easy to remember, and they’ve got a good-looking website, and are taking advantage of social networking sites.

That said, I think there are some problems with the “oxt” movement.    While they are right in saying that new words are created and come into general acceptance all the time, they (along with many people) misunderstand the point at which a word has gained a new meaning.  They state that a new word can make it into the dictionary and thereby become an “official” word.  This reflects the idea that there is some authority that makes the dictionaries and dictates the meanings of words.  In the case of English, this not true.  The meanings of words are decided by common usage, and the dictionary is meant to reflect this democratically created meaning.

With that minor quibble out of the way, my bigger problem is with the word itself.

Clearly, it’s chosen like the word “next” in form, because of its similar function.  However, its intended pronunciation  is going to be problematic.  Although ‘x’ is written with one letter, it is actually a combination of two consonant sounds, ‘k’ and ’s.’  So in the combination ‘xt,’  there are three distinct consonant sounds in a row, and, unless the speaker is being very formal, one of these sounds will be dropped.  Try it for yourself: say the phrase “next weekend.”  If you’re saying it casually, as in normal speech, you’ll probably notice that the ‘t’ sound is dropped.  In this case, it’s not a big problem.  But in the case of “oxt,” dropping the ‘t’ sound gives us the word “ox.”  This is going to cause confusion, especially if you’re trying to spread a new word that is impossible to tell from an already common word.

So, although I admire the attempt, I think I’m going to have to stick with saying “the weeknd after next” if I’m afraid I’ll be misunderstood.

My uncle asked me an interesting physics-related question the other day, so I thought I’d share the question and my answer on the blog:

Q: If a trillion seconds take 30,000 years and there are three trillion stars in the universe, it would take ninety thousand years to count them at one per second. So how do we know?
Before you click through to my explanation, why not take a few minutes to think about how you might answer this?  How DO we count that which is essentially uncountable?

A hint, by way of another question: How would you count the number of grains of sand on a beach?  What’s your strategy for those “guess how many candies are in this jar” type of games?

Now, after you’ve mulled it over for a little bit, here’s my response:

A: You’re right, there’s no way we could ever actually count all the stars.  For one thing, there’s too many, a lot more than 3 trillion: latest estimates put the number around 70 sextillion, a 7 followed by 22 zeros, which is more than twenty billion times bigger than 3 trillion, and it would take 2 quadrillion years to count that high, one number per second.

The second problem is that, in all but the closest galaxies, we can’t see most of the individual stars, so we couldn’t count them if we wanted to.  In fact, there are about 100 billion galaxies in the known universe, so we can’t even count them one by one.

What astronomers have to rely on is the large-scale uniformity of the universe.  That is, no matter which way we look, on a large enough scale, the universe looks the same.  On small scales, this is obviously untrue, as we see stars surrounded by huge amounts of empty space, but the uniformity sets in on truly unimaginable (but still measurable) cosmic scales.  The discovery of the uniformity of the universe was one of the most shocking discoveries of the 20th century, and led to the inflationary model of the big bang.

(Actually, there’s a stronger statement, called the cosmological principle, which says that the universe, on large scales, is homogeneous and isotropic.  That is, it’s the same in any sector of the universe, and it doesn’t matter what direction you look.)
Anyway, we can put this uniformity of the universe to good use in estimating the number of stars.  If you wanted to know how many grains of sand there are on a beach, you would see how many grains of sand there are in a cubic inch, and then measure the size of the beach and extrapolate from there.  If the sand was balled up in little dirt clods, you’d count how many grains of sand are in the average clod (analogous here to a galaxy), and then multiply that by the number of clods.

By studying our own galaxy, astronomers know a lot about the distribution of stars of different sizes and brightnesses, so they can measure the brightness of a distant galaxy and estimate the number of stars it contains.  They do this for a small section of the sky, and then extrapolate to the whole sky, just as you would do with grains of sand on a beach.

When scientists report a number for a measurement, they always give an uncertainty, indicating that this number is accurate plus or minus a certain fraction.  Of course, newspaper articles, etc. never report these.  But because the number of stars has been estimated rather than literally counted, that’s why they give a big round number, rather than saying it’s 70 sextillion and two or something.

As a semi-pseudonymous blogger, I appreciated the post on the difference between anonymity and pseudonymity at Uncertain Principles, in response to the vindictive outing of Publius, a formerly pseudonymous blogger:

Someone like Publius, or FSP [Female Science Professor], or Mark Twain writes under a different name than their given name. This does not mean that they are without identity, though– quite the contrary. They write consistently under a single name, and this body of work establishes an identity for them that is every bit as solid as the identity that “Chad Orzel” establishes for me.

I haven’t tried to figure out who FSP is, because it doesn’t matter. The alias is enough to establish an identity, as revealed through years worth of blog posts. And that’s really the thing that matters in blogdom, or even in literature.

Pseudonymity has a long and honorable tradition in literature, and Publius and Female Science Professor fit in that. Anonymity, not so much. It’s a distinction that matters.

There are plenty of good reasons to use a pseudonym, some of which I’ve talked about before, and which you can find in other discussions about the perils of blogging.  But I have a different reason at this point in my blogging career that has become more clear to me recently:

I don’t like to have a reputation that precedes me.

I had some amount of experience with this in high school.  At the risk of sounding like I’m tooting my own horn, I gained some local notoriety due to some academic achievements and for being part of my school’s successful TV quiz show team, which was seen by a much wider array of people than I thought.  As far as I could tell, none of this affected how I was perceived by people who actually knew me, but to others that I barely knew or didn’t know at all, I gained a reputation as the Famous Genius of the school, something that I didn’t really like.  If you’re going to make that assessment of me, correct or not, I’d like it to be based on actual experiences with me, rather than reputation.

I started this blog in the summer before my first year of grad school, and while I certainly don’t have a huge level of internet fame, and don’t expect to, my voice and opinions could become fairly well known to the circle of people who read this blog.  And I didn’t want my name associated with this blog because I didn’t want my classmates to have a pre-existing opinion of me based on a blogging experiment, where I wasn’t sure how I might come across.  Similarly for professors, possible future advisors, or future professional acquaintances.  I’m just not secure enough with my position in the academic world and with my blogging voice to have a reputation from my blog precede me.

Now, I state that I am only semi-pseudonymous, in the sense that, other than withholding my name, I don’t go to great lengths to hold back other potentially identifying information.  Because of the relative obscurity of my blog and the logic puzzles you might have to do if you care to discover my identity, I figure that anyone who sees this blog and figures out my identity probably knows me well enough that I no longer have to worry about my blog creating my reputation for them.

Now back to my regularly scheduled physics.

I’d like to draw attention to a new blog in my links section.  The authors are three fellow grad students studying high energy physics, covering the range of experiment, phenomenology, and theory.  Combining their diverse intellects, they have come up with the name High Energy PhDs.

From their introductory post back in November ‘08, here is a description of what you will find on their blog:

Short reviews of topics in high energy physics. Our main goal is to generate an online discussion where we can jot down summaries of interesting ideas.

Accessible summaries. We are also interested in writing posts that will bridge the divides between hep-th/hep-ph/hep-ex communities. While these may not be “public outreach” level, they should be accessible to other graduate students in physics.

News. Some discussion of recent events in high energy physics, e.g. LHC commissioning.

Grad student resources. We will also have posts dedicated to grad student resources for items such as post-doc hunting, publishing, finding review articles, adviser management, etc.

I look forward to making use of their list of Resources for Learning New Topics.  Their discussion of Renormalization looks good too, which will hopefully help me make sense of that tricky topic as I try to teach myself some field theory.  You can also find some reviews of technical papers, and discussions of experiments like MiniBooNE.