Book Review: Trees, maps, and theorems: Effective communication for rational minds by Jean-luc Duomont
I got a copy of Jean-luc Doumont’s Trees, Maps, and Theorems Effective Communication for Rational Minds a long time ago, and read it almost immediately. I’ve been meaning to write a review for a long time. With the annual office clean before the new semester starts, this gives me a perfect opportunity to do so. […]
Book Review: Just My Type by Simon Garfield
I had bought Just My Type: A Book About Fonts while waiting in Kings Cross waiting to get home. It’s a book that I’d been wanting to read for a while. I’ve been fascinated with fonts ever since the early Macs got me trying out new fonts. Now, I find myself mostly stuck in my […]
Responding to Reviewers: It’s the way you say it
August 3, 2015 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Reviewing, Writing
Nature Methods has a few nice links over on their page about responding to criticism before and after publication. The way you say it The dos and don’ts of communicating with editors and reviewers Here are some of the choice quotes from the first link that I related to, from my experience as an author […]
Minute Earth and Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) Get Clouds Wrong (NOW FIXED AT MINUTE EARTH!)
I like both Minute Earth and Phil Plait’s column at slate.com. They are both great ways to communicate science to the public. That’s why writing this post is upsetting to me. At about 0:50 into the video, it says this about a rising bubble of air: “In fact, the more water vapor it collects before […]
Errata from Eloquent Science
Here is a list of typos identified by the compositor of the book. These changes were not implemented at the time. p. 53, 1st graph: OK to change “formating” to “formatting”? p. 53, 3rd graph: OK to change “conciousness” to “consciousness”? p. 86, 3rd graph of section 9.8: OK to change “parenthethical” to “parenthetical”? […]
Why the first letter of your last name matters
Sent from frequent reader and commenter Jon Zeitler: https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/06/why-the-first-letter-of-your-surname-matters/ When individuals make choices from lists, does the list ordering matter? There may be a ‘primacy effect’, where individuals are biased towards selecting items earlier in the list. Conversely, there may be a ‘recency effect’, i.e. a tendency to select items towards the end of the […]
Step by Step from Writing to Publishing
I will be offering online training in scientific publishing through the Virtual Medical Academy. Called “Step by Step from Writing to Publishing”, the course will last for four two-hour sessions starting on 24 August. To sign up, visit the Virtual Medical Academy here. If you cannot make this session, I will likely conduct more in […]
How to Get Your PhD Published: Workshop for Saudi Students Club in Manchester
Eloquent Science will be presenting a workshop at the Saudi Students Club of Manchester on Saturday 25 April 2015 at the Samuel Alexander Arts Theatre on “How to get your PhD published”. The workshop will last from 11 a.m. to about 4 p.m. (Image source: https://twitter.com/ksamcr/status/589967613645697025/photo/1)
New resource for teaching students how to find, read, and use the literature
The UK Higher Education Academy just published our second report in the series How to Succeed at University in GEES Disciplines: Enhancing Student’s Information Literacy Skills. (GEES is Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences.) I wrote this with coauthor Rich Waller at Keele University. Contents include finding and assessing scientific literature, critical reading, citing sources and […]
The Importance of Thinking Before Writing
March 21, 2015 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Writing
I was helping a student with a paper he was writing. He said a lot of interesting things, just not being very effective at what he was trying to convey. Here was my advice to him. If you can write down 1–3 bulleted sentences that convey your principal results or points that you want to […]
