What are your pet peeves?
Appendix B: Commonly Misused Scientific Words and Expressions of Eloquent Science was inspired by a list of incorrect science expressions and annoyances maintained by Chuck Doswell. Many of Chuck’s pet peeves are included in Appendix B. I also surveyed my friends and colleagues about their pet peeves and included many of them in Appendix B. … read more
Positive and negative feedback in science: Scientists as social animals
At a recent meeting at the University of Manchester, the keynote speaker was Prof. Helen Gleeson OBE. She gave an informative and interesting history of her career and the lessons she has learned. One thing she said resonated with me (paraphrasing): “As a scientist, you get lots of rejections, but not a lot of supportive … read more
“PowerPoint makes us stupid.”
April 30, 2010 Filed under Articles, Blog, Featured, Presentations
This story is from The New York Times about how PowerPoint has been used (or banned, in some cases) from military meetings and briefings. “We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint.”
Proper spellings of atmospheric science words
Did you know that shortwave radiation is not hyphenated, but short-wave trough is? Did you know that air mass is two words when used as a noun, but one word when used as an adjective (e.g., airmass modification)? If you are ever wondering how scientific words are spelled or used, the American Meteorological Society has … read more
Edward Tufte and kittens
April 8, 2010 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Presentations
Thanks to Mark Goetz!
A figure in need of help
April 7, 2010 Filed under Blog, Featured, Posters, Presentations, Writing
I ran across this figure from an American Meteorological Society journal article recently. It’s just a simple scatterplot, which is so easy to construct, yet this figure has so many problems. 1. False alarm ratio and probability of detection are both quantities that can have values between 0 and 1, but the x axis ranges … read more
Whether to use colons in titles
March 30, 2010 Filed under Blog, Presentations, Writing
In Eloquent Science, I discuss my thoughts about colons in titles of scientific articles on pp. 24-25, but only briefly. Dave Mechem (University of Kansas) emailed me to express concern about their overuse in some disciplines like geography, humanities, and some of the social sciences. For an example, take a look at this issue of … read more
Prof. Rob Fovell (UCLA) on Powerpoint and Teaching
March 20, 2010 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Presentations
I do not use PowerPoint in class. PowerPoint is virtually a necessity for scientific talks, but I think they often hurt classroom lectures. They lock me into a particular order, and they tend to make me go through material too fast. My handwriting is poor, but I write in class so I don’t go too … read more
Correct use of the Kelvin temperature scale
March 14, 2010 Filed under Blog, Potpourri, Presentations, Writing
Prof. Terence Day at Okanagan College, British Columbia, recently wrote an article describing the errors in textbooks. He argues that, “If the discipline of physical geography is a genuine natural science then the internationally recognized scientific units must be correctly used.” The issue is the Kelvin temperature scale. At the General Conference on Weights and … read more
Appropriate way to label axes of graphs
March 14, 2010 Filed under Blog, Posters, Presentations, Resources, Uncategorized, Writing
Prof. Brian Fiedler of the University of Oklahoma recently published an article in Physics Education calling for a change in direction in teaching dimensionless ratios in physics. As he advocates, The tick marks [on an axis of a graph] are pure numbers. Labels with a solidus such as R/µm are orthodox notation for what the … read more