Thank you for documenting your PhD experience James! As an aspiring theoretical physicist myself who is entering university soon, these videos offer an insight into what I hope to eventually go through. It inspires me to do my best from the beginning to the end of my educational life! It will be around 8 years altogether until I do go through the experience but I’ll be watching these videos before my viva for sure.
James, youre such a genuine, nice, decent and likeable guy. Thanks for sharing with us all what youve shared already, and be encouraged that a couple of thousand of us avid fans are sincerely wishing you the very best. The upcoming vid where u proudly wave that bit of paper is going to give the thumbs up button a right hammering!!!
This is very relevant for me. I'm a PhD student, although still a year or so from my graduation. It's nice to hear other peoples thoughts about the writing process.
Not to worry. When you write on a highly technical subject using multiple capitalized abbreviations and mathematical notation with all those Greek letters and other special characters, you have no choice but to take your time. You just can't touch type a complex equation, or even a sentence with multiple technical references requiring special characters. If you write on the computer from the start, you will make many more edits than you would if you were doing it by hand. If you're doing it by hand you will be less critical of your work because it is an order of magnitude more laborious to edit it, and each correction leaves your paper in more of a mess. You also can't make global changes in nomenclature if you decide you need to. Plus, it's a lot harder to reorganize your paper if you get the order of paragraphs or sentences wrong. Make it a practice to never use the computer to write anything sloppy. Always read everything before you send it and correct anything that is wrong or could be said better. Then read it again. Keep reading and correcting until you read it and can't find any more improvements to make. Believe me. If you write this way, you will take enough time! If you are worried about writing "waffly" verbiage, then test it out. Write your explanation in an email to a cooperative colleague and ask if they understand what you just said. Quiz them in enough detail to make sure they really do understand all the nuances you intend. The best way to really understand something is to teach it to someone else.
"You just can't touch type a complex equation, or even a sentence with multiple technical references requiring special characters." Of course you can. It was trivial years ago with either Latex or the then Open Office.
I recently completed an MChem degree and did a viva and i know the feeling, i am about to start a PhD (tomorrow eek) and this made me feel excited about the whole thing
I do the exact opposite. I type my work out to slow me down, and get my thoughts in proper order. But my hand-written work also looks like a piece of interpretive-dance more then math and physics.
Fare more than that. It's an extremely precise, exhaustive paper based on your original research and written entirely in the language of the field of study. It has to encompass everything you have learned and at the same time advance knowledge in that particular field of study. It's the most difficult thing most anyone can write. People have committed suicide becaused they failed their Ph.D.
James, you'll probably never read this but I took some very important practical advice from this video: writing by hand really increases the quality of the content I'm writing. In the past I had to employ a kind of itterative process... meaning I had to go over one part of my thesis two or three times to get it about right. I have a thing for fountain pens. It's a shame I never thought about using them for this. I thought it would cost too much time when it really is the other way around.
People tend to see physics and maths as something that is above the human condition. It's paramount to be able to observe these types of moments so people realise how human the academic process can be. Thanks for the video. Congrats on the PhD!
Thanks for the hand writing tip, James. :) While I'm not writing a PhD thesis I do have a tendency to be extremely verbose, finding it very hard to compact what I want to say into something simple and concise. Maybe if I try hand writing it first it will slow me down enough to find the right balance. I'll give it a try. :) Good luck with your PhD!
He does that so the scientist can break through these generalizations and let it be a sort of discussion, which is always more interesting than someone just talking.
Making sense is exhausting work! I like you perspective, writing by hand better teaches you to edit your thoughts. There is too much clutter rattling around otherwise! KUDOS!
wow i never thought of doing that, this is a pretty good advice. (even though he wasnt really giving out advice) the entertainer part of me says "spy cam the viva... but the moral thinking kicks in and kicks in my balls for thinking that.
Being a synthetic organic chemist myself, I once heard the story of an external examiner asking a candidate at the beginning of a viva if he wanted one he would need to explain how to synthesise PhD (benzene with a single deuterium atom attached to the ring)! Not a particularly hard problem to solve, but very disconcerting in the context of a viva.
@culwin Most new work, either a published paper, or a thesis, or really anything, is not entirely new, and almost never earth shattering. In a general sense, most published work, is at best a new experiment which confirms something already thought to be true. Or new research into an area not thought to be of all that much importance. Knowledge moves more or less at a crawl with each new paper/thesis, almost never does anyone come up with something like special relativity.
I'll be defending my dissertation in chemistry in just a little over a month here in the US--using a computer to construct it is difficult enough, but that takes some major dedication to hand write it! Best of luck to you!
LOL! He wrote all that and then at the end he says: "The real challenge now is to see whether I can read my own handwriting." Imagine writing all that and then not knowing what you wrote.
I truly miss James on numberphile and sixty symbols. I hope he's doing well
Yes
he got his PhD.
Top guy. Really interesting and down to earth.
Thank you for documenting your PhD experience James! As an aspiring theoretical physicist myself who is entering university soon, these videos offer an insight into what I hope to eventually go through. It inspires me to do my best from the beginning to the end of my educational life! It will be around 8 years altogether until I do go through the experience but I’ll be watching these videos before my viva for sure.
I'd be terrified hand writing 80+ pages! I hope he photocopied them all at least for redundancy.
Writing it is hard; now he knows what it says, re-writing it would merely be a few boring days.
His final Dissertation was 200+ pages I think he said unless he was speaking colloquially.
Good Luck James. Hope all goes extremely well for you.
James, youre such a genuine, nice, decent and likeable guy. Thanks for sharing with us all what youve shared already, and be encouraged that a couple of thousand of us avid fans are sincerely wishing you the very best. The upcoming vid where u proudly wave that bit of paper is going to give the thumbs up button a right hammering!!!
he wrote it in arabic
This is very relevant for me. I'm a PhD student, although still a year or so from my graduation. It's nice to hear other peoples thoughts about the writing process.
I really enjoy videos with James in them.
i'm going to look at your thesis when i get back to campus in a couple of months
Not to worry. When you write on a highly technical subject using multiple capitalized abbreviations and mathematical notation with all those Greek letters and other special characters, you have no choice but to take your time. You just can't touch type a complex equation, or even a sentence with multiple technical references requiring special characters.
If you write on the computer from the start, you will make many more edits than you would if you were doing it by hand. If you're doing it by hand you will be less critical of your work because it is an order of magnitude more laborious to edit it, and each correction leaves your paper in more of a mess. You also can't make global changes in nomenclature if you decide you need to. Plus, it's a lot harder to reorganize your paper if you get the order of paragraphs or sentences wrong.
Make it a practice to never use the computer to write anything sloppy. Always read everything before you send it and correct anything that is wrong or could be said better. Then read it again. Keep reading and correcting until you read it and can't find any more improvements to make. Believe me. If you write this way, you will take enough time!
If you are worried about writing "waffly" verbiage, then test it out. Write your explanation in an email to a cooperative colleague and ask if they understand what you just said. Quiz them in enough detail to make sure they really do understand all the nuances you intend. The best way to really understand something is to teach it to someone else.
"You just can't touch type a complex equation, or even a sentence with multiple technical references requiring special characters."
Of course you can. It was trivial years ago with either Latex or the then Open Office.
qwasdninja I wouldn't exactly call it trivial. Getting a complex equation to show up just right can sometimes be a little tricky.
+Niosus If you're experienced it's not that hard in latex..
Niosus latex (lah-tek) is a wonderful software that i used all the time for physics back in school
+qwasdninja "Trivial", lel
wow and i thought our 1 month to write an essay was hard
All the best for your thesis, James! - Aqilah, BSc Physics with Medical Physics 2005-2008
Hand writing rules. Always brings out better ideas. Am looking forward to Patterns in Sand.
I do exactly the same when writing a piece.
blank A4, arrows, fence offs and small handwriting. eerie..
good luck.
Lol'ed so hard when he said the hardest challenge right now was to read his own handwriting :P
I have a cypher for my own handwriting, I use it a lot; very recommended!
I recently completed an MChem degree and did a viva and i know the feeling, i am about to start a PhD (tomorrow eek) and this made me feel excited about the whole thing
I would love more videos of James.
Good Luck with reading your hand writing, With hand writing like that you were born to be a Dr.
I do the exact opposite. I type my work out to slow me down, and get my thoughts in proper order.
But my hand-written work also looks like a piece of interpretive-dance more then math and physics.
Oh my, thats PhD and I thought writing my final year thesis was a pain. But its all fun. Love the enthusiasm in research there!
james u are so cool, makes me want to work on a PhD thesis too.
James is very charming. More videos of James please!
Congratulations Doctor.
Congratulations!
It's really nice to see how it all started.
Fare more than that. It's an extremely precise, exhaustive paper based on your original research and written entirely in the language of the field of study. It has to encompass everything you have learned and at the same time advance knowledge in that particular field of study. It's the most difficult thing most anyone can write. People have committed suicide becaused they failed their Ph.D.
who needs a phd when you're a tetris champion!
James, you'll probably never read this but I took some very important practical advice from this video: writing by hand really increases the quality of the content I'm writing. In the past I had to employ a kind of itterative process... meaning I had to go over one part of my thesis two or three times to get it about right.
I have a thing for fountain pens. It's a shame I never thought about using them for this. I thought it would cost too much time when it really is the other way around.
James is probably the most easy to listen to person on youtube
I was very close to saying "that's not a lot of paper" - then he showed the other 60 or so pages :L
I'm sure most nottinghamscience/numberphile/sixtysymbols viewers would want to read it
People tend to see physics and maths as something that is above the human condition.
It's paramount to be able to observe these types of moments so people realise how human the academic process can be. Thanks for the video. Congrats on the PhD!
I'm told he's still working on it.
Can you write 80+ pages about Tetris?
Thanks for the hand writing tip, James. :) While I'm not writing a PhD thesis I do have a tendency to be extremely verbose, finding it very hard to compact what I want to say into something simple and concise. Maybe if I try hand writing it first it will slow me down enough to find the right balance. I'll give it a try. :) Good luck with your PhD!
He got his PhD about 6 months ago.
Can you write a thesis on Tetris?
So what would be the next step if one were denied a PhD?
He got it last month! James is a doctor now yay!
You go, dude! Good luck on your PhD!
@XxhilfmirxX still going!
How about now? Did you finish yet?
I like him :) Good luck, I am sure he'll make it.
He does that so the scientist can break through these generalizations and let it be a sort of discussion, which is always more interesting than someone just talking.
I want to write a PhD thesis too!! .(But i'll have to wait for about 7-8 years). I just got in the undergraduate studies :)
It never even occurred to me that people could even try to cheat on a PhD thesis...
It has been 2 months now. So how did it go ?
good luck james
Just started with writing my phd thesis.. and i honetly feel sooo related to this video, I think i wont sleep in months.. :(.
Making sense is exhausting work! I like you perspective, writing by hand better teaches you to edit your thoughts. There is too much clutter rattling around otherwise! KUDOS!
If you fail your phd, do you get to try again?
Do we get to see a video of the bound copy after this is all said and done? Good luck, hope it goes well for you.
he should have mentioned that in his viva
so... how did it go? been waiting for a follow up video..
Are we there yetttttt
good luck, very best to you
Is there (or will there be) an electronic version of his thesis available ?
i just learned what fastidious means :) thanks.
Guys, he got his PhD.
wow i never thought of doing that, this is a pretty good advice. (even though he wasnt really giving out advice)
the entertainer part of me says "spy cam the viva... but the moral thinking kicks in and kicks in my balls for thinking that.
my god man please tell me you photo copy or scan your pages every now and then for some sort of back up.............
Being a synthetic organic chemist myself, I once heard the story of an external examiner asking a candidate at the beginning of a viva if he wanted one he would need to explain how to synthesise PhD (benzene with a single deuterium atom attached to the ring)! Not a particularly hard problem to solve, but very disconcerting in the context of a viva.
Organic chemists are smart
Still going?
How about now?! I want the best for this guy, follow up please!!
He got it! he has the PhD congrats!!
Now he just needs to get the Tetris world record.
Good luck!
How about now?
so he graduated or not?
@culwin Most new work, either a published paper, or a thesis, or really anything, is not entirely new, and almost never earth shattering.
In a general sense, most published work, is at best a new experiment which confirms something already thought to be true. Or new research into an area not thought to be of all that much importance.
Knowledge moves more or less at a crawl with each new paper/thesis, almost never does anyone come up with something like special relativity.
Everytime I work I read what I write out loud as I'm writing it...
I hope he make it!!
Im writing my medical engineering PhD thesis at the moment.
I want to read it. Will it published publicly for the world to see, or do you need to pay the Nottingham University library a visit?
So what comes after the PhD? (Or what is James planning to do)
That's fantastic dude!
It's done!
How about now? Hows the P.H.D?
how about now? can I call him Doctor yet?
and now?
I wanna get my PhD
Especially when it's Dr. James Clewett :)
I love how not that people are mentioning he's one of the greatest Tetris players of all time.
Good luck Mr. Clewett! :)
That one movie about a guy who was constantly trying to write his thesis totally put me off the concept forever.
hows the tetris?
may i suggest lined paper?
What is the status of James' PhD?
@nottinghamscience still!?
@Atheistprimate It's a cypher. So that no one copies his work :)
3:36 hahahahahahah :)
I'll be defending my dissertation in chemistry in just a little over a month here in the US--using a computer to construct it is difficult enough, but that takes some major dedication to hand write it! Best of luck to you!
And now?
4:28 XD
LOL! He wrote all that and then at the end he says: "The real challenge now is to see whether I can read my own handwriting." Imagine writing all that and then not knowing what you wrote.
You can talk about physics all day? Challenge SET. Make a 24h video covering as much physics as you can, in some semblance of depth
just bind your publication together. what are you doing man.
Is it possible to teach oneself algebra and trigonometry in five months of intensive study?
tyruk Definitly!