Post #1032175
2026-04-08 07:30 UTC
haunted by the fact that when we had some weird results show up on an undergrad's experiment (as part of his final project for his degree) with fairly sparse data points that made it look like they came from a rather strange curve, i suggested that he quantify the uncertainty of the points (put in error bars) to help provide wiggle room for other, simpler curves to plausibly explain the data too
and he just looked at me blankly like "huh i wonder how you would do that"
the concept of graduating with a degree in physics without being fluent in declaring your degree of confidence simply does not exist: moments like this really point out how far i am from home in this job
Replies (1)
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@Tessa@fandom.garden 2026-04-08 07:40
in my charitable moments i see this as a moment of different fields having different philosophies and end goals in my less charitable ones, engineering looks like wrangling a bunch of business majors who just wanna get rich quick into learning just enough physics to put together things held together at the conceptual level by bubblegum and duck tape my default is to be charitable, but if you talk over me incorrectly to the point i can't think through my own explanation about a geometry problem a high schooler could solve, my charity will wane hypothetically speaking of course, this would never happen to the one young woman on the team