Recent comments in /f/dataisbeautiful

Keeppforgetting t1_j5kumj6 wrote

Reply to [OC] How I spent every minute of my PhD by FlimsyHuckleberry

I honestly don’t mean this as a dig, but I’m surprised by how little time you spent doing research and learning compared to other things.

Also where in the world did you get your PhD? Or is it pretty common to get a PhD in three years in CS regardless of where you studied?

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MoanALissa32 t1_j5kttyb wrote

Reply to comment by FlimsyHuckleberry in [OC] How I spent every minute of my PhD by FlimsyHuckleberry

Just because you spend more time on one category, were you as productive? I’m just inserting in office vs wfh. Sometimes collaboration between two people is more productive in person as opposed to over the internet. Just wondering.

And, did you keep a log in the computer or was it handwritten and then entered later?

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FlimsyHuckleberry OP t1_j5ks6xs wrote

Reply to [OC] How I spent every minute of my PhD by FlimsyHuckleberry

Edit: PhD was in computer science.

All data collected and graphs created in Google Sheets. Graphic created in Adobe Illustrator. Dates are in day/month/year format.

I spent three and a half years working on my PhD and decided before I started that I wanted to track my time. I'm glad I did because about four months in, I was very seriously considering quitting, and the thought of throwing away four months of data is partly what kept me in it.

I categorized my time by:

  • Writing: self-explanatory I hope; writing, rereading my work, and revising.
  • Administration and Troubleshooting: reading and writing emails, filling out university forms and whatnot, and troubleshooting involving downloading and installing software.
  • Teaching Prep and Grading: preparing for lessons and grading student work; also includes time spent uploading grades to the online portal.
  • Teaching: time spent teaching and did not include time spent talking to students after class.
  • Data Prep, Planning, Analyzing, and Experimenting: planning data format before collection, collecting data, cleaning data, planning experiments, executing experiments, and analyzing experiment data.
  • Coding: writing, deleting, and troubleshooting code.
  • Research: reading and taking notes from journal articles and other sources.
  • Meeting: meetings with supervisors, the wider department, and other colleagues.
  • Learning: doing formal online courses as well as informal tutorials; there was one in-person class I took that was counted here (it was only two hours I believe).
  • Presentation Prep: creating slides and practicing
  • Conference: any time spent at a conference including attending presentations and networking. 
  • Presentation: formal presentations; includes time spent answering questions afterward.

Note that my contract stated that I was to work from the office for 35 hours a week. Covid changed that and allowed me to work from home.

Some interesting things I found from visualizing everything:

  • The vast majority of my time was spent writing
  • I was most productive in terms of my own research when working from home as opposed to working from the office
  • Time spent preparing for lessons and grading did not decrease as much as it should have each year, although this is partly because I was assigned to different classes each year
  • Wednesday was my most productive weekday while I spent more time working on Tuesdays
  • When I did do work on the weekends, it was more likely to be administration work, teaching prep or grading, or presentation prep.
  • I did not spend anywhere near the amount of time in meetings as it felt at the time.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this project. I don't know how indicative my experience was of a typical PhD experience, but it may be helpful for those considering a PhD in Europe.

If you've done something similar during your own studies, please link it as I'd be super curious to see it for comparison's sake.

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draypresct t1_j5kqdqk wrote

Reply to comment by Robot_Graffiti in Average age at conception for men versus women over past 250,000 years by Lazylion2

>It's not based on church records, it's based on statistical modelling of a database of 45 million mutations in modern people's DNA to estimate ancient mutation rates.

They didn't use any data from the past (church records, DNA samples from remains, ?) when constructing their statistical models? If not, then how did they get different age ranges during different eras?

Sorry - I can't seem to open the link in the article to the original study.

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Norvig-Generis t1_j5ko7sd wrote

Reply to comment by gifs_not_jifs in Racial diversity in top tech & biotech companies [OC] by teamongered

Exactly, you want to keep having your society differentiating clearly between Americans depending only on their skin color, instead of creating the basis for a future where our children dont care about color.

The great example for me is how europeans learned to not care about blonde northern hair vs dark southern hair, straight western nose vs eastern crooked nose, red-heads. etc.

Not to say that, typically, the more northern and western you are, the higher the chances of you being well off in life. But the fact the rules don't perpetuate that notion ad infinitum made it a lot easier for people to stop looking at individuals as members of a specific sub group, and just see them as regular Europeans.

I believe the African american experience will never be accepted as a normal American experience for as long as you make sure to differentiate it as much as possible. And the more specific rules you make for those people, the harder it is for everyone to have the same experience and understand each other.

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