Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I guess I was too stuffed with turkey and mac and cheese to write yesterday. See you on Tuesday!

...and here are the results!

As promised last Thursday, here are the results from my e-mail experiment:

(Yes, I know my original proposal said I'd plot the number of e-mails each hour, but I couldn't figure out how to get Excel to do that!)

As you can see, there's definitely a correlation here. The question is whether this is caused by one of two hypotheses:

1. I receive more e-mails when I send more e-mails because the e-mails I receive are responses to the e-mails I send.
2. I send more e-mails when I receive more e-mails because the e-mails I send are responses to the emails I receive.
   

If Hypothesis 1 is true, then it would stand to reason that the number of e-mails marked "Re" that I receive should correlate roughly with the number of e-mails I send. This would indicate that I can reduce the number of e-mails I receive by reducing the number of e-mails that I send.

If Hypothesis 2 is true, then it would stand to reason that the number of e-mails marked "Re" that I send should correlate roughly with the number of e-mails that I receive. This would indicate that I can reduce the amount of time I spend writing e-mails by reducing the time I spend reading incoming e-mail.

So, this second chart plots the same data as the first, but now with the number of e-mails marked "Re" sent and received represented by the dashed lines:

So, is Hypothesis 1 true? Are the number of e-mails marked "Re" that I receive (the dashed blue curve) proportional to the number of e-mails that I send (the solid red curve)? Yes.

Is Hypothesis 2 true? Are the number of e-mails marked "Re" that I send (the dashed red curve) proportional to the number of e-mails that I receive (the solid blue curve)? Yes.

In fact, I notice two other things:

1. The two dashed curves are very well-correlated. So it looks like many of my responses are really responses to responses. Maybe it would be easier just to pop down to the person's office?
2. The solid red curve and the two dashed curves look very well-correlated, while the solid blue curve is more independent of the other three. Look at the huge disparity at the beginning of the week between the e-mails I receive (the solid blue curve), and the number of responses I send (dashed red curve). What are all these e-mails I'm receiving that I seem to not care about? How much time do I waste each week reading them?

In conclusion, I think I'm going to keep up my e-mail-off-for-an-hour-each-day challenge. It certainly seems like not all e-mail (or time spent on e-mail) is created equal.

What are your thoughts about this data? Have you noticed similar trends in your life? How else can we better discern where our time is going?

You can CLOSE Outlook?!

I spent last weekend at a great workshop for new physics and astronomy faculty hosted by the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society, and the National Science Foundation. The second-to-last session was titled "Time Management" in the schedule.

The actual title of the session was "Doing What Matters."

As a Christian, I found this title---and the accompanying theme---intriguing. The speaker's main point was, "Your job is not to manage your time. Your job is to pursue what matters."

He offered a challenging way to make sure we have the time to pursue what matters: Turn off our e-mail for one hour a day.

You could feel the entire room seize up when he said this, but we knew he was right. We knew that the reason it takes us a day to grade an exam or a week to "finalize" a proposal or a month to go so say, "Hi," to that colleague we haven't seen all semester is because of the near-incessant "BAY-DOO!" that directs our attention to the lower-right-hand corner of the screen, in the hopes that it will provide us with something more interesting than what we're doing at the moment.

So, I accepted his challenge. I'm writing this on Tuesday night, and for the last two days I've found the "Close" button on Outlook and left it off for one hour at a time.

And it was amazing what I could get done! I got all my notes from the Workshop typed up in what seemed like no time. I was able to take some thoughts from the weekend and outline a few grant proposals. I even got my afternoon lab ready this morning with hours to spare.

I'll close with the following point and a proposed experiment: One of the reasons this discipline works is because the amount of e-mail one receives is directly proportional to the amount of e-mail one sends. Thus, I'd like to propose to graph the number of e-mails I receive each hour this week along with the number of e-mails that I send each hour day. I'll post the results on Tuesday of next week. I invite you to do the same!

Engaging your professor

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."


How do you perceive your class meetings? Boring? Seemingly pointless? A requirement that you know you have to fulfill in order to get the grade you need to get the degree you want so that you can have a job you don't hate?

How do you perceive your textbooks? Pedantic? Dry? Verbose? A waste of $100+ that could have bought you real food for two weeks?

How do you perceive your homework assignments? Long? Unclear? A waste of trees and ink (or electricity, if conducted on-line)?

Have you ever considered how they're perceived by your professor? They are points of contact---communication from one human being to another---about the one thing in the world that she finds most interesting. They are the opening lines of what is supposed to be a dialogue between you and her.

Another way of looking at it is that they are the foundation of your class's culture. Whether you feel it or not, you are part of your class's culture. In each class, you are a member of a unique subsystem of human civilization that has never occurred before and will never be repeated again.

And here's the thing about communication and culture: They are always two-way. If your professor is the only participant who engages, the communication/culture project is stunted. It fails to be all that it was meant to be, and therefore your experience as a student fails to be what it was meant to be. If this communication/culture project is to be fulfilled, you have to be an engaged participant.

That's right; you have to (gasp) engage with your professor.

Before I get into what this looks like, let me paint another side of the picture for you: Few students engage their professor. Those that do find themselves in a position of respect in the professor's eyes, because they've come and broken the silence that has otherwise existed between them and the students, and---regardless of how preoccupied they are with their own research---nearly every professor appreciates this.

Now think of what it means for you as a Christian student to be the one student in your class to engage the professor. Imagine what it means for your witness for Christ to earn that respect in his eyes, all because you treated another human being how you would want to be treated. (Which, you just might eventually remind the professor, is something that Jesus taught.) Imagine how the kingdom might advance just because you took the time out to visit an instructor's office hours---oh yeah, and you just might get an insight into what's on the exam.

So, how do you engage a professor? The easiest way is to find out how she wants you to engage her. You can find this out in the syllabus or by simply asking.

1. Does your professor welcome questions in the few minutes before class while she is getting situated?
2. Does your professor welcome questions during class?
3. Does your professor welcome questions at the end of class?
4. When are your professor's office hours?
5. Does your professor mind if you continue to ask questions after the end of office hours?
6. Is your professor welcoming to students dropping by during non-office hours?
7. Is your professor willing to schedule an appointment with you outside of office hours?
8. Would your professor mind if you read the textbook or worked the homework in her office so that you can ask questions as you proceed?
9. What on-campus colloquia or seminars does your professor recommend?

All of these questions (which are all rather easy to ask and keep track of) will help you to understand the communication/culture paradigm that your professor has set up. And, asking them is your first (and easy) step toward engaging him. He'll already regard you with more respect and appreciation than before, and you just might begin to find class meetings, textbook-reading, and homework-completing more fulfilling and worthwhile.

How else have you found it to be beneficial to engage with your professor? If you're a professor or instructor, what tips would you give to students to help them engage better?

Academic Calling at Urbana09

This is definitely not your typical missions conference seminar. I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

Is service part of our "morality?"

I've been in Matthew 25 a few times in the last couple weeks, having taught out of it in an adult education class at my church last week and hearing my pastor refer to it this past Sunday. In it, Jesus describes how the evidence of saving faith in a person is loving service to others as if they were Jesus, Himself. (Not that the loving service earns their way into God's grace, but that they inevitably engage in loving service because they have received God's grace.)

We often summarize this concept by saying that saving faith leads to obedience, or a godly morality.

But when we think of "morality," aren't we usually concerned with negative concepts, such as sexual purity, or not watching "bad movies," or not associating with "bad company" (which, even Paul affirmed, "corrupts good morals")?

Is loving service part of our "morality?"

Do we see feeding the hungry (literally and figuratively) or tending the sick (again, literally and figuratively) or visiting the lonely as "moral" actions?

After all, in Matthew 25, Jesus doesn't say, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For all your friends went to see every Harry Potter movie, and you refused to go."

And isn't this positive morality of service what the world needs to see, far more than our restrictions on ourselves? Isn't this the kind of attitude that makes the difference for a university to be a welcoming place to students (who are very often hungry, sick, and lonely) instead of a standoffish wall of intimidation?

I'm off to Maryland for the American Association of Physics Teachers New Faculty Workshop! See you on Tuesday!

Facts, opinions, and everything else

I gave my Technical Writing students an assignment in which they were to read each other's mid-term papers and suggest revisions (to their approach, organization, and formatting) to their classmates.


One student raised the issue, "I don't want to write about my opinions."


This gave me pause. Was I asking them to write an opinion piece? I certainly was not asking them to report on facts, as they were simply responding to a paper, not conducting research. But I was not asking for their opinions. So, what was I asking for?


As I mulled over this, I realized that a dangerously simplified dichotomy has been introduced into our educational system: facts and opinions.


Consider it: In third grade, we are handed a list of statements and told to identify each one as a fact or as an opinion, as if every statement in human linguistics could be classified as one or the other. This student knew that he was not writing about facts, and so concluded that he was being asked to write about his opinion.


There is, instead, a broad spectrum of statements between pure fact and pure opinion, including judgments (which I was asking them for), hopes, desires, conclusions, theories, creeds. (Where do creeds fit into this spectrum? Maybe we shouldn't go there right now...)


Take, for example, a physics experiment that results in the red crosses on the following graph:

(Never mind what it's plotting.) We would look at this data and say, "Ooh! It looks like it forms a line! Let me try to fit it." We then create the green line (which has a slope of 1) as a best possible fit to the data, and calculate it to have something like 95% accuracy.

Now, in the lab report for such an experiment, one would say, "The data is fit by a line of slope 1 to 95% accuracy." That would be a statement of fact.

To go one step further, one would say, "This data demonstrates the linear relationship between variable X and variable Y." Here's the question: Is this second statement a statement of fact? Not exactly, because one can't inexorably connect the graph to that statement. But is this second statement therefore an opinion? Not exactly, either, because there's certainly evidence to support it! The second statement could be considered an evidence-based judgment (or conclusion), which isn't really a fact but also isn't purely opinion.

So, how can we encourage our students to think along a spectrum of certainty, instead of merely in terms of absolute fact and opinion? How does the existence of this spectrum impact the way we teach our subjects? How does it impact the way we communicate our faith?

When I have to play the skeptic

I've worn a lot of hats since I joined the faculty at my university: adviser (officially and unofficially), instructor, tech support, committee member (that's at least 4 hats), team coach, author, copy editor, spiritual encourager, substitute instructor, event coordinator... I'll probably think of ten more tomorrow morning.

There's one hat that I've had to wear that I did not expect to. The skeptic hat.

Christian professor aren't supposed to be skeptics, right? We're supposed to defend the underdog faith-based perspectives. We're supposed to encourage wonder and awe at the universe, and point out the flaws of human reasoning. (Okay; so maybe we're supposed to be skeptical about the skeptics, but only to show the limits of skepticism, right?)

But sometimes skepticism is necessary, even for a Christian professor.

An example that often comes to mind is when students in my physics classes try to draw out metaphysical implications of physical laws. This usually happens when we reach Newton's Third Law (N3L), and someone in the class inevitably tries to argue for some version of the concept of karma based on N3L. "For every action you make there's an equal and opposite reaction, so... what goes around comes around, right?"

I tell them that that sounds nice, except that that isn't what N3L says. N3L is a mathematical relationship, and there's no math to karma. (Enter the skeptical argument.) I encourage them that, if they believe in such a concept, N3L is a nice metaphor or picture for the concept. I further encourage them that, if they also believe in a God who oversees this concept, it stands to reason that this God created N3L in such a way as to illustrate this concept. But there's no definitive logical progression that leads one to believe that N3L proves this concept.

So, I play a nice skeptic, but a skeptic nonetheless.

But perhaps I'm more. My desire, after all, is to uphold not only rationality (which the above argument defends) but also the Christian worldview that holds that spiritual matters are illustrated in creation but revealed in God's word.

Pascal said that, ideally, human reason uses rational proof, skepticism, and faith in harmony with each other to reach the truth. When have you had to switch back and forth between these hats?

Undergraduate Corner: Surviving Winter Break

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

The end of the semester is not that far away. In just a few weeks, undergrads all over the country will be packing up their bags, selling back their textbooks, making sure they have that cute lab partner's cell number, and heading home. They'll finally get to sleep (for about 1.5 days straight) in their own bed, eat their favorite meal that their mother prepares (we call ours "Good Chicken"--does that name even need a description?), and spend a few glorious weeks not having to think about Salinger, free-body diagrams, or inelastic demand.

But Christian students may also find it difficult to spend time thinking about God.

Here's the scenario: The Christian college student returns home, and either 1. skips church (understandable given their dire need of sleep) or 2. goes back to their "old church" (is six months ago really that old?) and it simply isn't the same as it used to be (especially if half of their friends from high school aren't there) AND they're hearing the Christmas story which, although powerful, sounds familiar to them and they begin to zone out.

After a very short time, their few weeks of rest have passed, and they return to campus with bellies that are full but souls that are still deflated. And beginning the spring semester (which doesn't even offer the release of football, unless your team is headed to the national championship...) with a deflated soul makes it very long indeed.

So, I'd offer the following advice to Christian students who are just 1.5 months away from winter break:

1. Pick up a Christian book to read over break. I know you don't think that you'll want to read anything, but you might actually find it restful to use your brain on something other than schoolwork. Might I recommend Knowing God by Packer, which has simple language and self-contained chapters, or The Call by Guinness, which just might stir up your motivation to enter the spring semester with a renewed vigor?
2. Stay in touch with Christian friends from school. (Besides your cute lab partner...) Spend some time praying together. Share about what you're reading.
3. Reflect on what you've learned. The end of a college semester is such a rushed time---for students and faculty---such that we rarely have time to think back on what we've learned, how it all relates, how God is showing us His glory in all of it, and how He's using it all to prepare us for a life of service.

What are some suggestions you have for Christian undergrads on their way home?