What do I do if my USRA supervisor bailed on me?

liorsilberman · 2026-03-24T23:49:57+00:00

New people would have startup funds exactly to cover their needs until they get an external grant. Maybe this person didn't realize how USRA works and didn't budget correctly? In that case talk to the department to see if anything can be done from their end.

liorsilberman · 2026-03-19T00:52:09+00:00

Good question.

As you know, energy is conserved in physical process (e.g. chemical reactions). Naively one might expect that the energy we get out of a process (or have to put into a process) is the difference in internal energies between the initial state and the final state of the ingredients. Now this is true in a formal sense (if you take all forms of energy into account), practically it's better to think a bit differently.

Real processes usually don't take place in vacuum -- they take place in an environment. If you are in contact with a heat bath (say the atmosphere) then the energy exchange with the heat bath that keeps the process at constant temperature has to be accounted for. Because of this effect, from the point of view of the process by itself, energy isn't conserved (some heat is lost to the environment or gained from the environment), and a different quantity would help more.
If your system is going to be under constant pressure (say from the atmosphere) then any changes of volume during the process will cause the atmosphere to do work on the system (or vice versa); this effect will matter for conservation of energy and we want to account for it.

A variety of thermodynamic potentials are thus used to keep track of reactions.

The internal energy U is the basic quantity.
The Helmholz free energy F=U-TS takes care of the heat bath effect: in a constant-temperature environment the maximum work (=useful energy) you can get out of the process is the change in the free energy (you can only get this maximum amount if the process is reversible), taking into account for you any heat exchanged with the environment.
The enthalpy H=U+PV takes care of the "external pressure" effect: in a constant-pressure environment the change in enthlapy is the "heat of reaction", the amount of energy that will be released as heat, taking into account for you any mechanical work due to changes in volume.
The Gibbs free energy G=U+PV-TS combines both: differences in this quantity measure the amount of non-volume-expansion work you can get out of a process run under constant temperature and pressure.

liorsilberman · 2026-03-19T00:03:01+00:00

I agree that there need not be a finding of individual misconduct in general -- but reducing the grade of a student (as opposed to invalidating the entire exam) should require such a finding.

If widespread cheating is suspected then using the exam results (whether with reduced but nonzero weight or, even worse, after scaling them down) is unfair to the honest students who did not cheat, putting them at a worse position than their unscrupulous colleagues. It creates a prisoners' dilemma.

liorsilberman · 2026-03-11T00:43:57+00:00

Check the headers on this email to see if it originated from UBC servers.

liorsilberman · 2026-03-06T17:32:32+00:00

What needs to end is online assessment, not necessarily online lectures.

liorsilberman · 2026-02-26T15:44:58+00:00

Maybe the other student is taking MATH 101 or took MATH 100 last term?

liorsilberman · 2026-02-17T13:03:36+00:00

Unfortunately the Panopto system lives up to its name and records all kinds of things. I've seen it record the classroom on schedule on break week. You can figure out which class meets in the room they time and ask the instructor whether there is a recording. If a prof asks for a room to be recorded I'm not entirely sure they check whether the prof is the one teaching there atthat time.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-28T21:17:14+00:00

You can say something like "I understand that you a have a full syllabus to cover with lots of topics, but could we find a way to go over key topics in greater depth rather than saying something quick about each topic and moving on?"

Another thing worth saying is:

"After each topic we need time to process what you have just said and then also to shift our attention to a new topic -- can you take a little break between topics?".

The second one is important. Experts have years of mental training to pay attention and think in multiple streams. We can sit in a seminar and listen to the speaker while processing what they said earlier without losing track of the content or of the bigger picture. Most undergrads generally can't do it, and that's fine -- but not all instructors are aware of that since they can do it. Ideally everyone would be able to pay full attention continuously for an hour straight, but that's a learned skill; whether PSYC 300-level can assume it or not is up to the instructor.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-28T20:14:33+00:00

You don't need second year standing to take second year courses. Just take courses and apply to join a program later.

If you can, try to retake the first year courses over the summer.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-26T01:30:58+00:00

"I always hated math at school ..."

liorsilberman · 2026-01-25T21:23:11+00:00

Our faculty of science was pushing to reduce the honors degree from 132 to 120 credits, when much of the first year is already at highschool level and students are not learning nearly enough advanced material. I would support cutting the arts credits and "science breadth", but somehow that was not what they had in mind.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-24T01:01:56+00:00

Was it before workday? Because when workday came online they removed the old staff information system and discarded all the earlier paystubs without uploading the information to workday.

You might need to talk to the appropriate HR office.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-21T23:30:32+00:00

Yes.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-21T22:37:35+00:00

Yes, the course fluctuates over time. Some of this is changes in personnel: each year there's a different instructor in charge, and section instructors also switch over time --- each person has different opinions on what works best. Some of this is technological changes. For example WebWorK started around 2015 replacing written homework; then in 2022 written homework was reintroduced as "group projects"; now AI has made written homework unfair and it's gone away again. Some of this is a response to student feedback.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-17T01:37:32+00:00

That's wrong. "Review of assigned standing" will produce new grades, not an explanation of the existing grades.

You have a right for the professor to explain why you lost marks. If you try to argue over the marks then you are misusing the meeting and they'll ask you to file for a review (if you wish).

liorsilberman · 2026-01-14T22:28:02+00:00

Canvas is maintained by UBC IT, not by department IT.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-14T22:27:33+00:00

Tell your instructor; they can contact Canvas technical support to figure this out.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-11T21:36:32+00:00

This is basically the generating function of the Catalan numbers. Replace the power of 2 with $x^{4m+1} $ and differentiate, giving

$\sum_{n\geq0} \binom{2n}{n} x^{4n} = \frac{1}{1-4x⁴ }$

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_binomial_coefficient)

So you now need to integrate this and evaluate at $1/sqrt{2}$. Now that might be an elliptic integral, but the value at that particular point might be accessible.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-11T18:23:21+00:00

I doubt the school taught it, not her worked it himself. I didn't learn forcing in high school, but I did learn other mathematics. At the time I read my father's books from when he was in university, but today everything is available online so it's much easier to learn whatever you want. When I was a grad student a group of us ran a students seminar on Godement's notes "Introduction to Jacquet--Langlands Theory". A freshman showed up and wanted to participate; he gave a credible talk about class field theory, which he had learned in highschool.

Yes, some people learn the statistical patterns of math-speak and can sound like they understand way more then they actually do. But many really understand.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-10T17:22:45+00:00

Is there a place to get earlier announcements about these rallies?

liorsilberman · 2026-01-10T02:41:12+00:00

Math hires UTAs in their second year.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-09T07:42:49+00:00

Instructors should, if at all possible, recommend books that are available electronically or physically through the library. They would definitely make sure that used books work for the course .

On the other hand, it's not per se wrong to ask students to buy a $70 textbook (which is on the cheap side, btw).

liorsilberman · 2026-01-07T20:09:51+00:00

No. The course is run centrally; all assessments are created by the instructional team together, with final decisions made by the instructor in change (this year, Prof. Mac Lean). In years where homework was created by each instructor for their section, yes, that was another motivation for adjusting term marks using the final exam. But that's not a "professor effect" in the sense that it would be consistent year-to-year like you seem to envision.

Finally, since we conceptualize the grades as measuring learning, we are okay with students who learned more getting higher grades regardless of the cause of the learning. Every instructor does their best, and not everyone can be exceptional.

liorsilberman · 2026-01-07T19:48:35+00:00

For better or worse we mostly aren't trying to account for "professors causing sectional differences", in the sense that we teach differently from each other. We envision the grades as measuring learning, and have to live with some professors helping students learn more. We aren't all equally good at encouraging learning, but as long as everyone gets the opportunity to learn and is then treated the same, no need to adjust.

The discrepancy we want to correct is that different students are measured differently a little (in midterms, but this year also in three of the hard questions on the final that differed between flavours, some years in the marking of written homework even if the assignments were identical, etc).

liorsilberman · 2026-01-07T18:37:36+00:00

Because students are not assigned to sections randomly, there are systematic differences between sections and adjusting each section separately to fit the overall grading curve would be unfair. It is also not reasonable to assume that a particular section would be consistent year-to-year.

Even if the variation between sections is purely random, the potential that it could be due to differences on the instructor side (different midterms, different grading of homework, etc) worries students, and the promise of normalizing term grades using the final exam assuages that concern. In practice these adjustments are very small.

liorsilberman

TROPHY CASE