tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (What happened?)

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14295)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:28:49 -0700

In other words, you have to present your achievements to your superior not only in the form understandable by him but also in the form which will allow him to cite such achievements when he communicates with his own superiors, colleagues, press and government when he claims more funding for the university from the government etc. Which raises the prestige of the institution. Give a sword in the hands of your university boss and he will never fire you. Even if that sword is not so important in mathematics, but it should be undisputable and concrete.

an_mo_user comments on "What happened?" (14293)

an_mo_user — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:23:38 -0700

Anixx, fair enough, if this was your intended meaning than at least in my opinion you answer is not worse or least not much worse than some others; in that I cannot imagine it/them being of much actual value. Finally, let me change my unfriendly 'useless' in reference to your suggestion in the second part to the weaker 'in actual practice not overly useful'.

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14292)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:20:39 -0700

Just imagine your conversation with the boss. He/She says "you do not have enough results..." You can reply either "No, we have results, we advanced such and such field, but you have to be a mathematician to understand it..." or you reply "We have results, we solved one prominent problem which nobody could solve since 1920s. We received such and such prizes for it, our achievements were reported in such and such media and recognized by such and such institutions..."

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14289)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:08:20 -0700

I mostly meant that a formal recognition of the achievement by an independent body or community may help. It is true that mathematicians usually try to obtain the best results, but sometimes they do not bother to obtain a formal recognition or postpone the publication or just occupy themselves with teaching rather than research, or occupy themselves with things which importance is not evident to everybody (even if it is in fact a promising field) rather than solving a well-established recognized and promoted problem.

an_mo_user comments on "What happened?" (14288)

an_mo_user — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 05:35:48 -0700

Anixx, in case you really do not understand what the problem is let me translate how I assume some people (me included) read your suggestion:
"If you were good enough/better, you would not have this problem."
This is rude and useless, and this is an unfortunate combination.

If you did not mean to imply this, then I would say your suggestion is just useless, since to give one of many reasons it is a safe assumption that mathematicians try to obtain as good/interesting results as they can even if they are not faced with imminent termination of their employment. So, that your suggestion is not a suggestion of something one could do (in a planned way).
To be precise (bordering to the ridiculous): the mere assertion that there typically is a positive correlation between the scientific achievements and the chances of (continuation of) emplyoment is true. (Although, in practice even this can be not as clear and direct as one might naively expect.)

So, if you really really made the suggestion in good faith, then yes it was not offensive (in a narrow sense). Did somebody ask you for clarification?

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14287)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:53:50 -0700

By the way, the question was a community wiki. I did not think making any answer on it can affect reputation in any way.

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14286)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:33:25 -0700

Is it wrong that if you have actual prominent results your position in defense will be more strong? This is true not only in mathematics but in every other field.

Angelo comments on "What happened?" (14285)

Angelo — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:29:11 -0700

Dear Anixx, if you don't see anything wrong in your "suggestion", I would guess we have very different ideas as about interacting with other human beings, and a debate would most likely be pointless.

markvs comments on "What happened?" (14284)

markvs — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:24:16 -0700

@Anixx: You are wrong. Gregory Perelman was never "about to be fired" from anywhere. He resigned by himself.

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14283)

Anixx — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:13:05 -0700

The advise was based on the actual story of Gregory Perelman who was about to be fired from Steklov Institute when he published his proof of the Poincare conjecture. Of course instead of making a discovery or other breakthrough you can try to rise the name and authority of your department by other means, but making something similar to what Peralman did would be more "quick and dirty" solution (as you know he even did not go through the peer review process).

Of course getting a Field medal can be too difficult but there are different known and long-standing problems in mathematics. In other words if you have actual prominent results your position in defense of the department will be more strong.

What do you see as offensive here?

Noah Snyder comments on "What happened?" (14280)

Noah Snyder — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:15:42 -0700

Also, because it's irrelevant. The timescale between getting a result, writing it up, submitting it, and having it become a big enough deal in the math community that it brings accolades that the administration can understand is much longer than they have in this situation.

Noah Snyder comments on "What happened?" (14279)

Noah Snyder — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:25:29 -0700

I agree that Anixx's answer was offensive, but let's not go overboard here: certainly winning a Fields medal would mean something to university administrators. It's not offensive because it's wrong, but instead because it's mean.

Ryan Budney comments on "What happened?" (14278)

Ryan Budney — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:02:30 -0700

@markvs: it's highly doubtful that a university that closes a math department is going to care one bit about a fields medallist or abel prize winner.

Andy Putman comments on "What happened?" (14277)

Andy Putman — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:00:45 -0700

I agree that Anixx's answer wasn't spam. I flagged it as "offensive, abusive, or hate speech", and I stand by that judgement.

Angelo comments on "What happened?" (14275)

Angelo — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:58:07 -0700

Anixx's answer wasn't spam; but if I were one of the people who face losing their jobs I would find it extremely irritating, and probably very offensive, so I can't say that I am unhappy that it got deleted.

markvs comments on "What happened?" (14261)

markvs — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:19:30 -0700

@Marino: I respectively disagree, Anixx is right. If the department had any Fields medalists, it would not get closed. So the best way out is to get a Fields medal (Abel prize) as soon as possible. That is a valid answer. Whether it is practical or not is completely irrelevant.

Mariano comments on "What happened?" (14259)

Mariano — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:10:33 -0700

Anixx "answer" is rather off-topic. At the very most, it is a recomendation to take care of one's personal future. Yet the question is rather clearnoy not a request for self-help tips...

markvs comments on "What happened?" (14258)

markvs — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:56:52 -0700

I actually like Anixx's comment. I think it is not worse all the other answers there. As a 10K+ user, can I reopen it?

Scott Morrison comments on "What happened?" (14231)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:12:45 -0700

It does look like the answer François links to above has been downvoted sufficiently that the software has taken it upon itself to mark it as spam. This results in the the post being locked and deleted, with a 100 point penalty.

It's quite unusual for post that isn't hugely obviously spammy to get this many downvotes, but as you can easily observe this particular thread is seeing a huge amount of traffic. I'm afraid I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for getting burnt while playing with fire.

François G. Dorais comments on "What happened?" (14230)

François G. Dorais — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:35:50 -0700

Ryan is correct. Here is a link to the deleted answer http://mathoverflow.net/questions/63221/ideas-on-how-to-prevent-a-department-from-being-shut-down/63283#63283. Since it is only visible to moderators and 10k users, I'm pasting the contents here:

Make a discovery. Solve a long-standing mathematical problem. Once you do it, nobody will fire you, I am sure. Or even if they do, you will easily find another place.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "What happened?" (14229)

Anton Geraschenko — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:18:07 -0700

Reputation earned on a post doesn't disappear when it is converted to community wiki.

The only ways I know of to drop 100 reputation quickly are to (1) offer a bounty, which you didn't do, or (2) have one of your posts deleted as spam/offensive. I don't see any questions that have been deleted that way recently, but it's harder to track down answers. If one of your unpopular answers was recently locked and deleted by the community user, this is what happened. I'll have to dig into the database to see if this guess is correct, and to see if there's any funny business with how people are flagging things as spam/offensive.

[Edit: Ryan's comment above identified the offending post]

Ryan Budney comments on "What happened?" (14228)

Ryan Budney — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:10:24 -0700

No, it was Anixx's comment on the VU shutdown thread. The post has been deleted but 10k+ users and moderators can still read it.

darijgrinberg comments on "What happened?" (14227)

darijgrinberg — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:00:48 -0700

Somebody set you up the bomb.

Hmm, may be a post of yours voted +10 has become community wiki by virtue of being edited too often?

Anixx comments on "What happened?" (14225)

Anixx — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:34:11 -0700

I today received -100 reputation. Why?