Research Flow

They do better by going to school less!

The schools in Finland are the model for the entire world. They do better by spending less in the school.

What are the languages they speak? Most students name atleast two languages.

English

Swedish

Finnish

German

French

How these students are able to learn this may languages despite spending less time in school than many countries?

Strange and counter intutive points from here.

1. Less home work

2. Say no to multiple choice questions

3. School is about finding your happiness finding what you know, finding what you learn and what makes you happy

4. Teach everything to kids: music, singing, art, drawing, etc.

5. When you move to a new city, we don't ask for the best school. It is never a question. Because all schools are same.

5. There is nothing different from one school to another in the entire country. They are all the same.

6. It is illegal in Finland to set up a school and charge tution. This makes sure that the rich parents have to make sure that the public schools are great.

The one thing i disagree in this video is about what to tell people on what they want to be. I defer from what the teacher at 7:10 says telling that you can be anything you want to be when you grow up is a lie. Even though it is a lie, at very young age (atleast 15 years old) the interest of the students should as diverse as possible. They should not be forced to focus on a single thing unless the wanted. Isn't completely different from the core idea of the video?

What makes the students to like something or unlike something? It is entirely based on the way they are brought up, the people they meet, the environment. In such environment, it is not a correct way to focus on what the students want. I am not sure at what age the students focus should be narrowed down.

The end of the video says very important points.

1. Try to teach kids to think for themselves

2. Be critical to what you learn

3. Try to teach student sto be happy person

4. Teach to respect to others and themselves.

Another followup video (which Youtube suggested after watching the above video)

What if Finland's great teachers taught in your schools?

Why we need to spend more money on energy related projects?

You can calculate the amount of money each country spends (each year) on gasonline (petrol or diesel or gas). Surely, it will be in many 10s of billions. Now, calculate last year's budget on energy research. If you compare these amounts, surely the later will be insignificant. Are the we ignorants?

Here is a short video by Bill Gates.

This is is really mind blowing. Are you satisfied with what your country spends on energy related research? Comment here.

Working with Matplotlib and Pandas (Python package for graphs)

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

file = pd.read_excel('/full/path/to/file.xlsx')

When you run this, you may get following error.

ImportError: Install xlrd >= 0.9.0 for Excel support
To proceed further, install xlrd package using

pip install xlrd or pip3 install xlrd

For mentioning the sheet number in the excel sheet import.

df =pd.read_excel('fileName.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet4')

Python Class: A simple and clear explanation.

I have been trying to understand class in python and failed to use it any useful purpose. Then, I came across this webage where I got a clear understanding of Class in Python. To understand this, I went through so many pages and blogposts. But I didn't get it.

https://micropyramid.com/blog/understand-self-and-__init__-method-in-python-class/

See the code blow (taken from above link).

class Car(object):
  """
    blueprint for car
  """

  def __init__(self, model, color, company, speed_limit):
    self.color = color
    self.company = company
    self.speed_limit = speed_limit
    self.model = model

  def start(self):
    print("started")

  def stop(self):
    print("stopped")

  def accelarate(self):
    print("accelarating...")
    "accelarator functionality here"

  def change_gear(self, gear_type):
    print("gear changed")
    " gear related functionality here"

This code is an example for a class in python language.

As you can see, this is a collection of functions (def) grouped in a class named Car.

What is the use of Class?

Class is used to collect list of definitions and provide a functionality to crosscommunicate with all other definitions inside the Class.

What is the best explanation for Class? Do you have any link?

Comment and provide link here.

Thanks.

Postdocs: Dos and Don'ts for getting tenure

I read an intereting article "What 50 principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure" by Bela Z. Schmidt’s.

After multiple postdocs for long years, and failing to get a tenure, the author provide eight pieces of advice for researchers. Here is what I understood from this article.

1. Don't over check your results. Believe your data:

After getting very good result, most of the time, you may have a feeling that the result is good and anything wrong with the experiment, or calculation. These kinds of thinking should be avoided. Of course, you should cross check your data and confirm that they are correct. But, too much thinking would not be healthy. The author simply put this as "Accept your data".

2. Don't ask what I should do further. Instead, tell what you have done and got and what you are going to do further.

Most of the postdocs ask their supervisors what should they do further. Instead, you take responsibility to the project, do experiments, calculations, and everything without waiting for an approval. Do something useful and get progress and inform to the supervisors that you have done this and that and got this result. In addtion, you may give a hint on what you are going to do further. This would be useful to get feed back and advice from your supervisors.

3. Don't think like a postdoc. You treat yourself like a co-PI.

Treat your supervisor as a future collaboration and you like a co-PI of the current project.

4. Have confident in what you are doing.

Some times, your supervisor may not realize the importance of a result. If you beleive that something is important, do it and try to convince the importance of your experiment or calculation or result.

5. Keep track on the timeline of the project and publish as soon as you get results.

As a postdoc, the term will be renewed every year or so. This is the time to show your potential in a short duration of the time. Publish your results at as soon as you get results. This will also increase the chance of getting renewal and a good boost for you.

6. Think ahead what you want to do next.

While in Ph.D, think about what you want to do in postoc. During postdoc, think about what you want to when you join an institution and where would you apply. Always think ahead of future.

7. Take decision quickly and act on it.

You should take quick decision and act on it. At the same time you should have multiple ideas and have to follow your intution.

8. Finish what you start.

Michael Faraday said "Work, Finish, Publish", finish what you start and publish. If you are trying to unravel big problems, reveal as soon as you find some thing.

Postdocs: What they should know?

“I don’t feel that anything significant that I’ve done has been truly independent,”.

This Nature article on "The quest for postdoctoral independence" ends with this quote. I also feel the same.

This articles provide important points. I compare with the points provided here in another articles from TimesHigherEducation.com article 10 habits for a successful postdoc.

Take ownership of your project.

Read broadly and learn more about research.

Learn how to train people.

Learn how to write scientific papers, and learn how to give scientific talks

Position yourself to get good letters of reference.

Learn organisational skills.

Be a good citizen of the lab and the department.

Network.

Learn how to write grants and apply for your own funding.

Finish papers before you leave your postdoc.

Interetigly, only a few points match between these two article. While most of the postocs do what is given in above points, many postdocs fail to do what is mentioned in the Nature article.

You just need to prove that you have the skills, expertise, collobrative skills, communicative skills, fund writing skills, getting grant, articulative skills, ect in order to convince any committe to land in tenured jobs. These skills would be of great help regardless of whether you prefer academia or industry.

Big tech companies look for those who has these skills with PhDs. Having just Ph.D is not enough for companies.

What do you thing about this? Leave a comment.

Jim Simons: Life Lessons from the ‘World’s Smartest Billionaire'

Matplotlib y-axis label not displayed when saved as .eps .pdf file

I encountered this error in matplotlib.pyplot.

When I tried to save the plotted graph in matplotlib, the y-axis label was not displayed in the saved file (.eps, .pdf, etc files).

Just add this line (as a previous line) before saving the graph as a file using savefig command.

plt.tight_layout()

The problem will be solved and the saved file will contain y-axis label.

Matpotlib error: Image size of 3831x7771797 pixels is too large. It must be less than 2^16 in each direction.

This is due to the large file size of the figs. you have plotted.
If you get this error, you may not visualize the figure(s) on the matplotlib.
However, you can save as a file (.pdf or .eps ir .png) and you can open and see the figures.

If you want to elimate the error message, the only solution is to decrease the file size (you may decrease the size of the figure or the pixel size)

Here is a related post in GitHub.
https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/16234

Another reason you may get this error may be due to the following reason.

If you have plt.text option as follow,

plt.text(6.0, 7.4, '(b)', ha='center', va='center', fontsize=14, rotation='horizontal', fontweight='bold')

then, this may be causing the problem (especially if you use alreadying existing script to plot figs.)
To solve this problem, just comment this plt.text() using # and try to save the file.
Now, if there is no error, you just adjust the location of the text values in the plt.text() to proper place.

This would solve this error.

How to translate documents from one language to another language using google drive (google docs)?

How to translate documents from one language to another language using google drive (google docs)?

You can convert .doxc or .doc file from one language as follow:

1. First, upload the file (e.g. .docx) to google drive (Since the file is in .docx format, you can not find the translate option in Tools.)

2. Now Go to File --> Save As Google Docs.

3. Go to the file converted google docs. In this document, chose:
Tools --> Translate --> (select the language)

Now you will get the translated .docx doument.

Hope this helps. Comment here if this is useful.