[ale] [OT] Software and file formats for on-line/correspondence chemical education [and drifting desparately further off topic]

Mon Jan 23 10:17:38 EST 2012

On 01/23/2012 09:30 AM, Tom Freeman wrote:
> You just demonstrated part of the problem - although Ron has already
> responded. Your solution is at least documented in a fashion. Not formal,
> but documented.
>
> I've had a modest number of students who had the ability to do what you
> just did, and still have no ability to get it written down (and at which
> point, did they actually do the job?? Respond in best Lawyer mode please)
> Three years ago I had a young man, on a test, do a similar, completely
> chemical problem entirely in his head, complete with correct sig fig. I
> was quite impressed, until asking how he arrived at the answer. Even the
> crickets stopped chirping... We spent the next 5 months working not on
> chemistry, but on being able to express his thought processes in numeric
> problems. Very very bright individual already approaching middle age when
> I got him after having flunked out of college after high school.
>
> Last semester I had a different young man, who would get very very
> defensive if you pressed him about his responses for a numeric problem.
> (His favorite response was "But the answer is right isn't it?") Not that
> he could demonstrate, on the board, to the satisfaction of his peers that
> he had arrived at a "correct" or usable or reasonable solution.
>
> _WHY_ do I find this skill crucial? After time in industry where the
> chemical analysis people report to the third shift janitor and marketing
> (or production, or management, or whomever) will happily tell you that
> your results are incorrect because they don't support what those people
> want... Some of these individuals will simply ignore you and they are
> the easy ones to deal with. Some will simply refigure your work, and give
> you public credit for their refiguring, and they are dangerous to you
> because you can not push back. And so forth. Getting your documentation
> right is frequently your only defense in my experience.
>
> To vaguely return to computers/linux/software/etc. I see this type
> skill/procedure as early forms of the computer field's request for
> documented source code, for documents on the network topology and so
> forth. You can certainly setup and configure a network in your head. And
> after a few years of changes, the next person who needs to maintain the
> network is probably justified in doing the digging for clues in your head
> with an axe, on the grounds that you finished the job but never started
> it.
My experience is no documentation, outline of how the numbers were 
developed, etc. means what ever was done was done by guesswork (more 
accurately navel gazing) and may only accidentally be useful. This 
includes explicitly stating all known assumptions as assumptions.

I have done considerable preliminary chemical process design work and it 
was normal to show both the assumptions and outline the calculations 
showing how got our answer. This was partly CYA and partly to document 
how we got to the preliminary design and equipment sizing. Thus you 
could go back to an original letter or memo which had the calculations 
and know how the design was determined and to trace the design history.
> On Sun, 22 Jan 2012, Drifter wrote:
>
>> You've got to be kidding.  It really took more than 90 seconds to solve
>> this problem?
>>
>> If a dollar bill is 6" long, then 2 to the foot.
>> at 5,280 feet to the mile that is 10,650 bills to the mile. (btm)
>> tack 5 zeros on to the end gets you to the moon: 1,065,000,000 bills.
>> double that to get the round trip total: 2,130,000,000 bills.
>>
>> My opinion of DeVry students just took a significant hit.
>>
>> Sean
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> On 1/21/12 2:43 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>>>> I was once teaching a basic math class at DeVry.  I spent most of a
>>>> class period and filled up two white boards doing this exact type of
>>>> conversions.  My hypothetical question to the class was, how many
>>>> dollar bills (assuming 6" long) would it take to reach end to end to
>>>> and from the moon if the moon is 100,000 mi. away (I don't really
>>>> know how far away the moon is).  It was quite interesting, and the
>>>> example, which I made up on the spur of the moment, turned out to be
>>>> a bit harder and longer to solve that I thought.  However, I think I
>>>> made my point of how critical it is to keep track of all the units
>>>> at each point and write your ratios in the right order, so if you
>>>> need inches / ft., you don't write ft. / inch.  We finally got the
>>>> answer, using no automated conversions on the calculator at all.  I
>>>> was rather proud of the example, but I think the students were glad
>>>> when the bell rang.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely,
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
>>>> On 1/21/2012 10:37 AM, Tom Freeman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>>> To continue with a sequence of conversions:
>>>>>                        _75.2 in_ = _?_ cm_
>>>>>
>>>>> convert in ->    cm      1 in       2.54 cm  ===>    191.008 cm
>>>>>
>>>>>                        _191.008_cm   = _?_m_
>>>>>
>>>>> convert cm ->    m      100 cm         1 m   ===>    1.91008 m
>>>>>
>>>>>                        _1.91008_m_  = _?_Km_
>>>>>
>>>>> convert m ->    Km      1000 m        1 Km   ===>    0.00191008 Km
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-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier at gmail.com