Lyons needs your advice regarding the IEEE

Jerry Avins <jya@ieee.org> wrote:

(snip, I wrote)
>> There is a book called "Feynman's Lost Lecture" about a lecture
>> that Feynman gave on Newton's calculations showing planetary orbits
>> were elliptical. While we now do it fairly easily with Calculus,
>> Newton did it without Calculus. Either it hadn't been invented yet
>> or no-one else would understand and believe the explanation.

(snip)
> I find that hard to understand, given earlier history. Kepler had, by 
> observation, calculated planetary orbits to be elliptical, with the sun 
> at one focus, and a line from the sun to the planet (the "radius 
> vector") sweeping out equal areas in equal times. Since Pythagoras, a 
> circular orbit was considered perfect -- "ellipse" implies something 
> missing -- and there was a philosophical conflict between going with the 
> calculable and adhering to heavenly perfection. The issue was a major 
> preoccupation of natural philosophers of the day.

> As I heard it, Newton was as aware of the question as anyone, but what 
> set him apart was the notion of universal gravitation that had been 
> germinating since an exchange he had had with Robert Hooke. Edmund Haley 
> asked Newton for his opinion on the subject, and Newton answered 
> bluntly, "They are ellipses." When Halley asked how he knew, Newton 
> answered with what I think are the most astonishing words in the history 
> of science: "I have calculated it."

> To do that calculation, he had to lay out the laws of motion and 
> gravity, and invent a rudimentary calculus, "fluxions" as he called it.

The question is, how to show that an inverse square centripetal force
generates elliptical orbits without using calculus. No derivatives
and no integrals, but algebra and, I believe what is now called 
analytical geometry. 

It was some years ago that I read the book, and I don't have one to
look it up. I am not sure now, and maybe it isn't known. It might be
that Newton first did it with his rudimentary calculus, but then needed
a way to show others, who didn't know calculus yet. Or, maybe he wasn't
ready to tell others about his progress on calculus until he had
finished it. 

In any case, there is a way to show elliptical orbits without calculus,
and it makes a more interesting story than many papers published
in IEEE journals. (How this got into the thread.)

-- glen

On 7 Jan, 19:43, "westocl" <cweston_@n_o_s_p_a_m.hotmail.com> wrote:

> I bet 7 out of 10 engineers would say PHDs in the field are hard to talk
> to. They even can be 'spacey' at times. Now try to read a paper of theirs.

Then they have got a degree prematurely.

Somebody once told me that the word 'doctor'
means 'he who is able to teach' (not 'learn').

Don't know if that's true, but the sentiment
certainly is valid. One is not worthy of the
degree if one is unable to explain the fundamental
subjects clearly to layfolk.

If one is unable to do the easy stuff, one lacks
the skills and competence needed to do the hard
stuff, as well.

Rune

On Jan 8, 7:43&#4294967295;am, "westocl" <cweston_@n_o_s_p_a_m.hotmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jan 7, 6:06=A0pm, Fred Marshall <fmarshallxremove_th...@acm.org>
> >wrote:
> >> On 1/6/2012 5:13 PM, HardySpicer wrote:
>
> >> > On Jan 7, 11:14 am, Rob Gaddi<rga...@technologyhighland.invalid>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >> On Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:05:37 -0800
>
> >> >> Rick Lyons<R.Lyons@_BOGUS_ieee.org> =A0wrote:
> >> >>> [snip]
> >> >>> So that's it. =A0Here's our chance to let the IEEE Sig.
> >> >>> Processing Society officers know what we think.
> >> >>> If you have any suggestions, please reply to this post.
>
> >> >> I'm with the masses. =A0Pricing, pricing, pricing. =A0The IEEE paper
> t=
> >hat I'm looking for is absolutely worth a $35 download to me. =A0The right
> =
> >to read enough of a paper to determine whether it really is the paper I'm
> l=
> >ooking for, or if it's mathematical gibberish with no practical
> application=
> >, isn't even with 35 cents.
>
> >> >> Yes, they need to be written with the practicing engineer in mind; as
> =
> >someone already said that means getting to the point. =A0I don't care THAT
> =
> >you've created a novel means of transforming this matrix into that one, I
> c=
> >are why. =A0And if why doesn't have an answer, then I most certainly don't
> =
> >care. =A0But none of that will mean anything if I don't even glance at the
> =
> >papers to see whether they're any better, and I'm absolutely not going to
> d=
> >o so at $35/glance.
>
> >> > Engineering has become =A0Science. Often there doesn't need to be an
> >> > immediate reason or application, just a theory. If we went on
> >> > practicing engineers as reviewers only practical working projects
> >> > would be published. What is wrong is that there needs to be other
> >> > journals for practice just as the Transaction is for mainly theory.
>
> >> > Hardy
>
> >> If "theory" is writing some terse, complex and not-very-useful paper
> >> then I object. =A0Take a look at the classical papers on theory.
> =A0They'=
> >re
> >> generally understandable. =A0Take a look at most current "theory"
> papers
> >> and wonder WTF?? are they talking about and who cares?
>
> >> Fred
>
> >Not so sure I agree. Just because you don't understand a paper doesn't
> >mean it's always going to be rubbish! The whole point of discovery is
> >to push boundaries. You may not care and I may not care but that's not
> >the point.
>
> >Hardy
>
> I bet 7 out of 10 engineers would say PHDs in the field are hard to talk
> to. They even can be 'spacey' at times. Now try to read a paper of theirs.
>
> If you want to relate to the 'practicing engineer', you gotta be more down
> to earth then some people will read and care about your paper (not for 35
> dollars) but maybe the google PDF version.
>
> (Hell... even a woman will possibly talk to you once or twice).

Well in fairness it's not the Ph.Ds that are charging $35 but your
learned institution! No point in blaiming them.
You have to understand the difference between a practicing engineer
and an academic. You cannot be both at the same time
or you will probably lose your job. You need to dig far deeper.


Hardy

>On 7 Jan, 19:43, "westocl" <cweston_@n_o_s_p_a_m.hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I bet 7 out of 10 engineers would say PHDs in the field are hard to
talk
>> to. They even can be 'spacey' at times. Now try to read a paper of
theirs.
>
>Then they have got a degree prematurely.
>
>Somebody once told me that the word 'doctor'
>means 'he who is able to teach' (not 'learn').

Doctor does come from the Latin verb for "teach", but nothing in the
acquisition of a doctorate relates to teaching. The sad thing is a high
school teacher needs to obtain a university qualification in actual
teaching. A university teacher only needs a doctorate, and their ability to
get their point across is never tested.

>Don't know if that's true, but the sentiment
>certainly is valid. One is not worthy of the
>degree if one is unable to explain the fundamental
>subjects clearly to layfolk.
>
>If one is unable to do the easy stuff, one lacks
>the skills and competence needed to do the hard
>stuff, as well.
>
>Rune

Steve

On Jan 8, 8:49&#4294967295;am, "steveu" <steveu@n_o_s_p_a_m.coppice.org> wrote:

> The sad thing is a high
> school teacher needs to obtain a university qualification in actual
> teaching.

The sadder thing is that a high school teacher has to
obtain a university qualification in actual teaching only,
not in the subject to be taught.  At many universities,
there are separate curricula for B.S. degrees in mathematics
and in the *teaching* of mathematics, and the latter are
the ones for would-be high school and elementary
school teachers.

In an otherwise forgettable movie Oh God II, there is
a scene in a grade school class where "new math" is
being taught. The teacher, reading from her notebook,
asks "What is a set?" and a child replies "A set is a
collection of objects."  The teacher consults her
notebook, and looks up, saying "Correct."  Some of
you may have come through the "new math" curriculum
which failed not because the children couldn't understand
it but because the teachers couldn't....

On 8 Jan, 15:03, dvsarwate <dvsarw...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jan 8, 8:49&#4294967295;am, "steveu" <steveu@n_o_s_p_a_m.coppice.org> wrote:
>
> > The sad thing is a high
> > school teacher needs to obtain a university qualification in actual
> > teaching.
>
> The sadder thing is that a high school teacher has to
> obtain a university qualification in actual teaching only,
> not in the subject to be taught. &#4294967295;At many universities,
> there are separate curricula for B.S. degrees in mathematics
> and in the *teaching* of mathematics, and the latter are
> the ones for would-be high school and elementary
> school teachers.
>
> In an otherwise forgettable movie Oh God II, there is
> a scene in a grade school class where "new math" is
> being taught. The teacher, reading from her notebook,
> asks "What is a set?" and a child replies "A set is a
> collection of objects." &#4294967295;The teacher consults her
> notebook, and looks up, saying "Correct." &#4294967295;Some of
> you may have come through the "new math" curriculum
> which failed not because the children couldn't understand
> it but because the teachers couldn't....

That's certainly a concerne where I am. In my day, those
who entered teaching college were those who were not
qualified for anything else. When the government
required freshmen at teaching college to have grade
3 or better (0 worst, 6 best, 2 worst 'pass' grade)
in Norwegian language, English language, and maths,
all of a sudden teaching colleges had qualified
students for only 75% of their capacity.

Which means that before that legislation, 25% of
students only barely passed at least one of the
subjects native language, English or maths, before
becoming teachers of those very same subjects.

I never understood how one can be expected to
teach something one does not know.

Rune

>On Jan 8, 8:49=A0am, "steveu" <steveu@n_o_s_p_a_m.coppice.org> wrote:
>
>> The sad thing is a high
>> school teacher needs to obtain a university qualification in actual
>> teaching.
>
>The sadder thing is that a high school teacher has to
>obtain a university qualification in actual teaching only,
>not in the subject to be taught.  At many universities,
>there are separate curricula for B.S. degrees in mathematics
>and in the *teaching* of mathematics, and the latter are
>the ones for would-be high school and elementary
>school teachers.

In most countries I know about, someone has to get a BA or BSc in some
subject, and then take an additional one year course to get a teaching
diploma, before they can teach their BA/BSc subject in a high school.

>In an otherwise forgettable movie Oh God II, there is
>a scene in a grade school class where "new math" is
>being taught. The teacher, reading from her notebook,
>asks "What is a set?" and a child replies "A set is a
>collection of objects."  The teacher consults her
>notebook, and looks up, saying "Correct."  Some of
>you may have come through the "new math" curriculum
>which failed not because the children couldn't understand
>it but because the teachers couldn't....

I believe "new math" in the US is somewhat like the modern maths course I
took in high school in the UK. They ran traditional maths and modern maths
courses in parallel. Some schools looked at modern maths, saw the course
didn't touch calculus until the children were 16, and assigned traditional
maths to the top streams, and modern maths to the lower streams. Other
schools looked at modern maths and considered it very conceptual and
demanding. They assigned modern maths to the top streams, and traditional
maths to the lower streams. This created the interesting distortion that
the most able kids in some schools competed with the least able in others
at public exam time. I found it rather interesting that even maths teachers
couldn't agree on what was hard.

Making allowance for the kind of problem with teachers that Dilip
described, it does seem that modern maths turned out to be the more
demanding option. Personally I found modern maths much more stimulating
than the traditional maths course, which we essentially covered anyway in a
separate set of classes called "additional maths".

Steve


Steve

On 8 Jan, 17:53, "steveu" <steveu@n_o_s_p_a_m.coppice.org> wrote:

>  Personally I found modern maths much more stimulating
> than the traditional maths course, which we essentially covered anyway in a
> separate set of classes called "additional maths".

I'd expected additional math to be the product of a
trancedental group or division, where harmony would be
the function of subtracting disharmonous elements from
the set of tools in the field...

Rune

On 1/7/2012 11:37 AM, HardySpicer wrote:
> On Jan 8, 4:06 am, Rune Allnor<all...@tele.ntnu.no>  wrote:
>> On 7 Jan, 14:31, HardySpicer<gyansor...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> On Jan 7, 6:06 pm, Fred Marshall...@acm.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> If "theory" is writing some terse, complex and not-very-useful paper
>>>> then I object.  Take a look at the classical papers on theory.  They're
>>>> generally understandable.  Take a look at most current "theory" papers
>>>> and wonder WTF?? are they talking about and who cares?
>>
>>>> Fred
>>
>>> Not so sure I agree. Just because you don't understand a paper doesn't
>>> mean it's always going to be rubbish! The whole point of discovery is
>>> to push boundaries. You may not care and I may not care but that's not
>>> the point.
>>
>> In the late '90s, DoA estimators like MUSIC and ESPRIT
>> was hyped up. 'Smart antennas' was the buzzword of the day,
>> the question how to serve as many mobile phines as possible
>> with inexpensive base stations.
>>
>> I happened to be one of very few who atually attempted to
>> *use* those kinds of methods in a practical application,
>> seismic data processing. The methods has an achilles heel
>> which is obvious from the maths, but not awfully important
>> my particular application (the seismic data qqcuisitionsytems are 10-50-fold redundant):
>>
>> One needs to tune the reciever array to the signal one
>> processes.
>>
>> The mathematics of parametric methods links the number
>> of antenna elements N to the order P of the signal
>> autocorrelation matrix with the number D of signals
>> present, as
>>
>> D<  P<= c*N.
>>
>> where c is a constant (either 1 or 1/2) that depends on
>> certain details of the signal processing chain.
>>
>> So the end effect is that if P = c*N and D>= P,
>> then the signal no longer complies with the assumptions
>> behind the signal processing methods, and nothing works.
>>
>> All this is obvious from merely reading the papers.
>>
>> Again, in my particular application which was interactive,
>> a human operator could play with N and P more or less at
>> will, and so find a set of processing parameters which
>> worked.
>>
>> Not so in an unsupervised system like a phone base station.
>>
>> Nonetheless, a colleague of mine was approached by some
>> person who happened to have got a job with these smart
>> antennas, with some questions about MUSIC and ESPRIT.
>> I wrote a quick email much like some of the more elaborate
>> posts one occationally finds here, with some rudimentary
>> explanations and pointers to further references.
>>
>> The next thing I know, this person is quoted in periodicals
>> as the expert on such methods, within the organization.
>>
>> He didn't know a lot more than the occasional posters
>> who ask stray homework questiones here, but still he
>> predicted what methods would be used and what lines
>> of inquiry to pursue.
>>
>> Anyone with the ability to read and contemplate maths
>> will spot the problem in half a second.
>>
>> The point is that IEEE and similar organizations have
>> gone totally astray. They publish papers that are poorly
>> written, written by people who don't understand the
>> subject and whose sole interest in their work is to
>> tick some boxes in order to get a diploma to hang on
>> the office wall. Reviewers are not better - they are
>> among the would-be authors for such journals, and are
>> as such unable to spot the problems in the manuscripts.
>>
>> At least the phony degrees are recognizable as such.
>> These people are a lot harder to spot, since their
>> publications and diplomas are with used-once-upon-a-
>> time-to-be-credible institutions.
>>
>> Rune
>
> Well if it has gone astray it has done so for the past 30 years or
> more  at least! That's the time period it has been producing such
> papers.
> I disagree however that all such papers are rubbish which is the
> argument being raised here. What I don't like are people publishing
> the same thing over and over again with a different title!
>
> When blind source separation first came out I thought it would be
> rubbish but it has turned out to be quite a tool and now even some are
> attempting real-time applications of the (convolutive)  theory. In the
> US at least, most Ph.Ds at Unis who have tenure track have done their
> stint in industry so are well aware of the practicalities and
> limitations. You have to start somewhere. I remember when people
> scoffed at Kalman filters. I remember iit well. They also scoffed at H
> infinity controllers. Now H infinity has been used as a control method
> in the European fighter jet. Not saying there aren't alternatives to
> many or all such theories but if you don't try you will never know
> what you're missing. Cellular networks was a theory at one time.
> People scoffed at speech recognition and said it had no applications.
> Look at it now in mobile phones.  Software radio  - what a daft idea,
> why did we need that when we could do it all in hardware? and so on...
>
>
> Hardy

Hardy,

Hey! Waitanminnit!  Don't put words in my mouth please.

I didn't say *all* such papers and I've not used the term "rubbish".
I believe that everything I've said has been general and related to 
notions about quality and usefulness .. and that's all.  But, I hope 
it's enough.

Fred

steveu <steveu@n_o_s_p_a_m.coppice.org> wrote:

(snip)
> Doctor does come from the Latin verb for "teach", but nothing in the
> acquisition of a doctorate relates to teaching. The sad thing is a high
> school teacher needs to obtain a university qualification in actual
> teaching. A university teacher only needs a doctorate, and their ability 
> to get their point across is never tested.

I am not so sure about 'never'. Many schools have some checking for TAs
ability to teach. Many also have systems where students can give
feedback on their professors teaching abilities. Often that means
that the better teaching professors are used for the lower level
courses.

-- glen