Women and research

This post says it all: "Like we didn't know this." Links there to the NPR story on bias that's been making the rounds and the PNAS story that confirms once again that if you put a woman's name on something it's automatically less competent regardless of contents. Old news, old news.


On the one hand, I don't want to talk about it. On the other hand, I would urge men who care about unconscious sexism and racism manifesting in mathematics to read the story on stereotype threat and consider it. It rings true now that I am observing my own interactions with other mathematicians, male and female, and it's brought home very strongly now that it's NSF proposal time. I can't quite believe that I have anything valuable to say and I very strongly feel the need to be absolutely correct about every statement because I feel any incorrect statement is a reason to dismiss everything I might say. These contribute to difficulty writing the thing and a stress burden that is unnecessary -- unnecessary because there's not a damn thing I can do about it and that stress only hurts me. My stomach in particular.

A saving grace is that I saw a collaborator's proposal and saw some of my ideas in print in that proposal, describing our collaboration. They sounded so valuable and interesting coming from someone else! Cognitive dissonance. A kick in the ass. Get writing.

As an early-career mathematician, it's my first NSF. I've written most of it now. It brought up another point quite strongly, which I can't disentangle from this gender stuff: I don't feel like I've ever believed I could be a research mathematician. From another angle, it feels like something I am not allowed to do. Allowed? Sure, the prohibition is some mythical nonsense other that doesn't exist, but I carry the feeling. When I go to seminars and conferences I feel like a guest with a limited-time pass that will expire, and then I will be kicked out of the club. Mathematics is a paradise I cannot stay in. I'm gonna eat that apple and that's going to be it. I keep making plans for the eventuality, in fact.

Mostly written. I feel slightly ill and slightly thrilled.

Does anyone else feel like being a research mathematician is a transgression?

Notebooks redux

I am in a country thousands of miles away from home -- the annual migration to the land of my ancestors. (As a guy I was chatting with last week said, "You guys are like wildebeests or something!") I forgot my research notebook.

My spouse said, "That's a Freudian slip if I ever saw one."


I did remember my personal journal, and it's been co-opted now for mathematical purposes. This is one reason I know that I'm still in the right field: I can't stop the mathematical itch. Can't stop! Maybe I get tired out by "parenting" students, maybe I get tired out by committees, but I can't stop wanting to know how this combination of group actions acts on my geometric object of choice. I got a nice couple hours in on the plane and have some cool ideas. I can't wait to find out if my crazy insight is correct. There's a nice and clear combinatorial correspondence between the things I'm looking at but I don't know if the geometry will hold up.


Now if I ever get famous enough to have a biographer write my biography they'll read all my grousing about all my neurotic thoughts... combined with math.

The difficulty, though, is that I'm with the family. There is going to be a whirlwind of social activity, from yardwork to running to coffee-drinking. I need a vacation, Lord knows, but I also want to find the answer to my question. How will I find some time? Do I need to beg off with jet-lag induced need for alone time?

Also started reading "Quiet," a book about introversion, which may be lending me some insight into why my last year at a liberal arts college stressing student interaction was, well, rather stressful. Maybe with such information I could do better in the future.

Notebooks

I keep a research notebook. The following issues have come up in conversation with other mathematicians.


To scratch or not to scratch: Do you include your scratch work in the notebook? Some people include everything in research notebooks, but I feel this might dilute their usefulness. I don't include most scratch work. It takes up a lot of paper. I include some done when I'm in a location in which I don't have access to real scratch paper (by that I mean paper that's already been printed on or used on one side). I try to include summaries of my calculations done on scratch paper. Sometimes, the details of the calculation are useful.


Paper thickness: Paper must be sturdy enough that ink does not bleed through.


Hardcover or softcover?: I used to prefer a cardboard cover but I've switched to a lighter notebook. The new kind fits better in my lap than the old kind. I don't like a terribly floppy cover, but I've decided I do not need a very rigid cover.


Wire bound or other?: I really hate spiral-bound notebooks, actually -- the wire spiral always gets caught in my bag and pulls out. I know other researchers who insist on spiral-bound.


What's in there, anyway?: Notes. Research notes -- things I am trying to prove, random ideas I had, snippets from talks with other people. Reading notes on things I'd like to know more about. Every now and then a grocery list or other to-do item. Details of some, not all, calculations. QUESTIONS I need to answer.

I refer back to them every now and then: they're useful when talking to others about old mathematical conversations I've written down, when figuring out what I did last summer or last week, when someone asks, "Did you check (blah)?" I store up some ideas for future work as well.

I don't have a very systematic way of going back over them, though, and I wish I did have a way of doing so usefully. I haven't figured out what's useful yet.

Juggling

Old post (written as I finished my dissertation): With apologies to mathematicians who actually juggle, I am wondering about how people maintain multiple mathematical projects. There are a lot of questions I'm interested in. While some stay in my narrow field of mathematics and are continuations of dissertation questions, others veer into related areas, with contributions from as far afield as combinatorics and PDE.

How many projects are you comfortable with at once? Given the time needed for teaching, service, and administrivia, how many problems do you like to have in active rotation? I am reaching for three. I find that I get very wrapped up in one problem at a time and have an extremely hard time pulling my head out of it to look at another, even if they are closely related. My mind always wants to go back to the one it's spent the most time on recently. I have a little file of questions and I've got six at the top, which means I am keeping my eyes open for papers that apply and people who might be able to help out. I read somewhere that Conway liked six. Maybe over time I will be able to switch more easily from one problem to another and make steady progress on several...

Do you like to have different problems in various stages? Some folks seem to like having a problem they're just starting to think about, a problem that they're making active progress on, one they're writing up. Do you aim to have a range like this? Does it work? How do you do it? I guess right now, by default, I have some things I'm wrapping up (dissertation) and some projects I'm starting.

On a related note, I am getting some advice from my advisor (if I understand correctly) that I should not be spending much time starting different things right now --- I ought to concentrate solely on finishing. If anyone has any first-hand advice they'd like to share, I'd be eager to hear it!


New commentary (after time as something approximating a real professor): These days I am fairly comfortable having three or four projects in the air at once. I only manage this because they are closely related. I really have more projects, but I am not making any progress at all on a few of them -- it seems like the ones left behind are mathematically different than the others. I also manage the projects that are progressing through collaboration. That makes it a social affair and something that must be scheduled into my daily calendar. When a student emails to ask about time to meet outside of office hours it is easy to say, "Oh, I guess I could reschedule my research time and talk to you about calculus instead"........ unless you've got a Skype date with someone across the country!

Small weekly goals and discussions help me move forward with multiple projects even if I can't devote hours a day to anything. Just keeping my head in a problem on a daily basis is pretty important. Being an overworked participant in the American liberal arts system has pushed me to learn this.

On that note.... I need to escape my office as I have a whole free hour. Time to do some research!