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interdisciplinary thinking, Reading Recommendations

Cross-disciplinary thinking, and a crazy suggestion

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The EE department set up a class called “technical writing,” but discussions with some EE faculty suggest that another main goal is related to your getting a more  liberal education. The assumption seems to be that inputs from other fields can inspire and fertilize the minds of engineers. The class changes from quarter to quarter, but this goal explains why I assign a nonfiction public science book during some quarters; it explains two quarters that included Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man; it explains our improvisational games, too.

One of my experiences this summer has only increased my interest in and valuation of cross-disciplinary thinking. I worked at a summer camp for a week, a summer camp that draws in children and teens who love certain books about alternative worlds and then builds on their interests in reading, fantasy, science fiction, technology, role-playing, writing, and art and encourages them to combine all those interests, along with “design thinking,” to imagine the future. When I was there, I happened to be reading Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Seveneves, in which he spends most of the book describing a surprising future—and particularly all the technology that lets humankind survive the destruction of the earth.

This type of imagining, whether in the service of entrepreneurial opportunity or science fiction, seems worth devoting some of your attention to. Whether or not you espouse the singularity—I don’t, quite, but the Camp Director thinks it’s arriving in the next 15-35 years, which I hope will be within all our lifetimes—technological change is happening faster and faster. And with that, in spite of the ways cultures and traditions try to pump the brakes on drastic behavioral change, contemporary societies are changing surprisingly quickly, too. How to prepare?

Well, there may be no specific way to prepare for unknown changes, but all you creative electrical engineers can probably succeed in this situation. At camp, I asked my writing students to imagine a future, and one told the story of a boy using his iPhone as a hovercraft and matter generator (not just a 3D printer!). I assume this is impossible, but I am also sure it’s limited thinking. Why just try to improve an iPhone? Why not imagine a society beyond that, where iPhones seem as obsolete as my flip phone does now? What will replace them? What do people—you!—fantasize about being able to do now, but you can’t? And what will enable that?

Since we were sitting on a beautiful beach while writing, two students wrote short poems about the sea, the birds, the rocks, and the boats. And then they moved from there, imagining a future in which readers would not be able to interpret their poems, since humans no longer had access to this natural setting. That got them going, and the next step (if they’d had more time) would have been to imagine ways to prevent this from happening. Are there technological means to enable more rather than less human interaction with the complexity and beauty of nature? How can technology reduce mediation, or environmental degradation, rather than increase it?

In short, start jotting down some fantasy fiction, and see where it takes you as an engineer.

Some further reading:

The books and “fandoms” these kids love: Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, Doctor Who and Sherlock (from BBC television), Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan trilogy, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (related tv series), and others (including, of course, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books). You might enjoy reading some of these yourself!

One article on Neal Stephenson’s contributions to scientific vocabulary and research is Gray Scott’s “Interdisciplinary Sage” in Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006):

Fiction, Reading Recommendations

“The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson

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This is feminist science fiction, among many other things, and I highly recommend it. Before the iPad, Neal Stephenson imagined the interactive book-like thing he calls A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Apple sells the “Raise an Excellent Child Bundle” of apps , and so perhaps Stephenson’s not far off the mark. But instead of giving dietary advice to parents and suggesting mathematical video games for small children, Stephenson’s nanny-book is both artificially intelligent (adapting to the temperaments and experiences of its reader) and taps into real-time human actors’ voices and judgments. Made for one spoiled grand-daughter of a successful entrepreneur, and purloined for one rash daughter of a creative engineer, the books end up raising an abused and low-income girl and another million orphan girls—who together try to save the world from artificial intelligence that does not require human interface and being led by conscious human desire. At least I think that’s what happens! I’m reading it again soon, because it’s so interesting and also complex.

Forum, Introductions: Plans and Hopes

You’ve arrived! To work!

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Some of you have signed up, and now the fun (work?) can begin!

I’d love to have you write a short post that (re)introduces yourself to (me/) us.

Did you end up publishing the article you wrote in EE 295? What was the process like after your final version in that class? What have you worked on since then? What wisdom have you gleaned from your experiences? What has been you experience collaborating with others (outside of EE, in your lab, or with reviewers and journal editors). Choose one topic or touch on all them, and others.

You can write your post as if you are just writing me a personal email OR as you want it posted. (Let me know which it is!) I’d like to hear how you are doing, and knowing more about your experiences will help me fashion this site to your interests. It will also let me know what kinds of expertise we have here, in this virtual collaborative space. Your post can remain forever in the draft stage (that is, unpublished), as we communicate back and forth on it, or it (or some of it) can eventually become a short article on the site (only if you are for that, of course!)

In short, you can remain as private as you want. You can just communicate with me via drafts. You can communicate to our small group of UCLA EE PhD candidates and graduates with posts that have password protection. Or you can choose to communicate to the whole world (who is not really looking, to tell you the truth) via public posts. Since all your writing has to go through me to get posted, I’ll need to be told what how you want it treated when I read it.

Eager to hear from you,

Dana

Introductions: Plans and Hopes

An initial dedicated registration period

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I’m sending out queries to my past EE students, asking if they want to join the site.

If you register, then I can send you a password, and you can start writing “posts.” These do not need to be short essays, as mine tend to be. They can be questions, topics for discussion, and other requests or ideas. I will review them, and then put them up. They do not go up immediately,  so if you want to send me a message in the post about how you want to be identified (or not) on the website, or any other message, that will work. You can also say if you want the post public (anyone can read it) or more private (I think this means for contributors only).

If you are someone other than a past student of mine, you can start the registration process, and then (at that time) I will communicate with you about your interest in the site. The site is mainly intended for past students who might want some private collaboration, but at the mome

Reading Recommendations

“A Scientific Approach to Writing for Engineers and Scientists” by Robert E. Berger (IEEE Press, 2014)

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I both love and hate the detail in this book. This approach to teaching writing seems like a great idea, and the book is full of useful information, but 191 pages of examples, boxed definitions, and bullet points is too much (for me) to bear.

Berger categorizes sentences into types and then writes a formula for each one. These get more and more complicated. They include, for example, many small bracketed question marks, which stand for the fact that in some sentences of the form in question, punctuation is necessary at this point, and in some, it’s not. I could list other examples of his layers of code that seem to obscure his message, but let me instead refer to a few things I liked.

1. His term “premise.” Berger uses “premise” to mean “a coherent series of paragraphs intended to support a particular proposition (e.g. whether a particular problem is worth solving, whether a particular technical approach will lead to solving a problem, and whether a market exists for a product)” (6). I’ve always called this a “step,” but “premise” captures the meaning better.

2. His basic distinction between the “core” of a sentence and its various “qualifiers,” which add important information ( what kind of x?  when x happens, why x happens). If you identify the main point of your sentences, you’ll know what to say in the core of it, and then you’ll know what to put in the auxiliary parts. And then your reader would better understand your hierarchy of ideas.

3. Where and how the qualifier is attached to the sentence is important. Berger writes in bold: “The integration of qualifiers into sentences is the most common writing challenge encountered by scientists and engineers” (18). One would generally put the additional information close to the word it describes. Berger offers a lot more information on this decision, but it’s couched in grammar jargon (some of it will be familiar to you, and some of it he invented himself).

4. His ideal of having no more than two qualifiers in a sentence is a good one, even if that’s not always possible (4). Engineers try to cram too much information in a single sentence!

5. His high value on parallelism (what he calls “principle of equivalence”), which means ” all items in a list should be treated the same way” (4).

6. His emphasis on coherence. A paragraph should have one goal, and a topic or thesis sentence helps your reader understand this goal.

7. His attention to flow. Sentences should flow together, paragraphs should be arranged logically. Regarding sentences flowing together, Berger does not just emphasize transition words but also what he calls “linking words,” which are repeated words that appear in neighboring sentences and highlight the relationship between them (153).

If any of these topics are important to you, but you feel that they have not been properly explained to you in the past, then try this book. The Table of Contents is quite detailed, so you should be able to locate the topics of greatest interest to you. Perhaps the author’s scientific approach will be more attractive to you than it was to me.

 

Forum

Forums

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Forums fail me.  I’m bothered by the messy trees of influence, or the linear scroll through ideas that are not linearly connected.

But I  want this to be a site that lets us interact.  Describing real experiences can both let the describer process and learn from them and also help others prepare for those experiences. Just as important is the fact that this site can become the very thing that you require, as you clarify what you need from it, as you contribute to it, demand from it, and challenge it.

So, at least for now, forum comments will look like posts, and they will be tagged with “Forum.” As we get more topics,  they will be named something more specific than that.   Other management options are, of course, always on the table. That is,  they are not impossible; we can continue to discuss them and make changes.

If you  want to pose a topic for discussion, please create a post and begin the conversation. (You will need to register and have me send you a password before you can do this.)

Where should you publish? Here!

Let the discussion begin!

Writing and Revising

Remembering what drives you

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You might just want to write about your work, but I recommend backing up a bit and writing some preliminary thoughts. What is your story? How did you get interested in this work? What excited you when you were a child or early in your school years? What was difficult for you to understand, and how did you figure it out?

If you want to get other people interested in your work, you need to express your own enthusiasm for it, but if you are an advanced graduate student (that is, narrowly focused, thinly stretched, over-directed, or just tired) then perhaps you’ve lost your way. You might have let your initial excitement about science or your particular field drown in the details of everyday life. You might even have become cynical.

Writing about your memories is good practice for many things: detailed sensory description, communicating with a lay-audience (outside your field), thinking about your own field from a different perspective, remembering what you used to think when you were outside your field, etc. It will also remind you of your early values and goals and dreams and excitement.

If you are interested in what inspired other scientists, then you might read Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist, edited by John Brockman.

And if you are having real trouble feeling connected to your work, perhaps because your lab is full of people who seem to have forgotten their initial enthusiasms, start asking questions. How did they get into the field? What was their education like? What was exciting to them? What did they most love about engineering or science when they were 10 or 15 or 20 years old? These memories can bring you together, re-motivate more than just you, and also help you start to remember what it was like NOT to know what you now know. Remembering that will help you be a better teacher and communicator to an audience with varying levels of expertise.

Presenting

A first note on preparing presentations

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Some people seem to have to give almost fifty presentations a year, of varying formality. Often these talks are given within a research group, so lab members are informed and can better collaborate. Here’s the text of a slide at the beginning of a 60+ slide presentation, given within a research group at one of their weekly meetings.

The first example is the original; the second is a possible revision. Afterward, I explain why we did what we did.

The original outline of the presentation:

• Change of Dephasing-Length-Limited Energy Gain Equation (3 slides)

• Curve-Fitting” Electron Spectra: New way to determine max energy of electron spectra (10 slides)

• 4 Finalized Experimental Figures (6 slides)

• Simulation Results (6 slides)

• Effective Dephasing Length (20 slides)

• 5 Proposed Simulation Figures (5 slides)

The revised outline:

1. We changed a major equation we were using (3 slides) OR “We moved from the engineering equation to the theoretical equation.”

2. We developed a new way to determine the max energy of the electron spectra (10 slides)

3. Four experimental figures for your critique: improve them now or forever hold your peace (6 slides)

4. Our major findings so far (20 slides)

5. Five proposed simulation figures: any feedback on how to improve them? (x slides)

There was one main goal: increase the action. We did this two ways:

First, some of these changes are meant to invite the audience to become more involved (the audience is now invited to do something!) For example, we made it clearer on points 3 and 4 that we wanted feedback. We also numbered the parts, so that they were easy to refer to, and they became more linear—the slide show is organized linearly, after all!

Second, we made some changes to make the researcher more active. She did not just sit there thinking up abstract nouns; she had to do a lot of work to come up with this stuff! In fact, for point 2, she even thought of writing something like, “We developed a new and improved (seventh!) way of determining max energy.” Tell them a story of your work (“we did this” or “we changed our mind about this” rather than just listing a NOUN—which is static, and it’s not clear what you’re doing with it. Also, it’s impressive that it’s the seventh way: it shows hard work, the challenge of the problem, and may even increase the sympathy and emotional interest of the audience. What a saga!

Writing and Revising

Learn to Write by . . . Writing

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Writers need to write. And writing to yourself is a good place to start. Take notes, jot down ideas, and keep detailed records of what you’ve done or plan to do in your research project. This way you are using your writing to help you think, not just writing to summarize what you already did and thought. In other words, you can use writing to discover what you have to say. This discovery is one of the fun parts of writing; I think that it’s boring to write down what I already know.

If you keep notes as you go along, you will be able to remember your own process of coming to know this new information; these notes should help you figure out how to explain your findings to people who do not yet know what you’ve already found out.

When you have to write about your project more formally, no matter what the format, you have something more than hindsight to work with. You can paste together what you’ve already written, and then revise it. It’s much easier to write when you have some words on the page, talking back to you, telling you what’s missing or what could be clearer. Writers produce dozens of drafts of any good text they produce. If you are reluctant writer, you might not be as eager to do write all those drafts, but think of the efficiency of working from pieces you’ve already written!

Some of your best ideas—for writing and for everything else– will occur to you when you are falling asleep, walking to class, or standing in line somewhere. Jot these down. Then when you actually have to sit down at your task and produce a draft, or the next draft, you will have something to start with. Respect your random ideas—comparisons, phrases, connections–enough to scribble them down, and you will find it much easier to begin writing.

You won’t know what your choices are until you draft a few different versions of any text, until you experiment. Your decisions will tend to fall in a range between two opposites: predictability and surprise, complexity and simplicity, clarity and confusion, explaining and expecting your reader to know. Many other binary opposites could go here, but you probably get the idea. You can fondly look after your readers, or you can disrespect them and be demanding of them. Guess what works better.

Try to make a plan for yourself. Start by writing x mins/day or y hours/week.

 

Reading Recommendations

Why read? or, how to connect to your audience

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Think about writing with your readers in mind. What do your readers want? How do you know? Well, what do you want when you read an article? And what do listeners hope to get out of a presentation at an engineering conference? Remember your own disappointments and struggles as a member of the audience. Then better satisfy, and even pleasantly surprise, your own reading and listening audiences.

Most of my publications are in academic journals in a different field from yours: American literature. Somehow, however, Gertrude Stein is related to everything, and the hot topics of fame, food, self-expression, identity, and genius are lovely doors into a short (and no doubt edifying!) story about Gertrude Stein.

Writers can learn by reading in any field. What I’m getting at is that knowledge is always communicated by helping a person step from what she knows to what she doesn’t yet know, and from what interests her to what doesn’t yet interest her. The bridges across require the wit of connecting different ideas, interdisciplinary interests, and an attention to current events and hot topics.

So read, and have fun seeing new connections, new bridges.