Being in science since 1986–which would mean about a quarter of a century since I began to study in university–I have spent a lot of time learning to communicate, both in writing and orally.
I’m not sure when I lost my jitters and nervousness at standing up in front of crowds of people and speaking, whether it occurred gradually o Continue reading
I like to watch eddies that form underneath waterfalls in a cascade, the ones you see in creeks of glacial run-off rushing down the sides of mountains. The milky-green water, and everything trapped in it, seems desperate to get from point A to point B. But sometimes, the turbulence creates a moment of dithering, of pause, of milling around. If a fa Continue reading
^^quote by my youngest nephew, then four years old (he’s now ten, still knows everything, and wants to be a lawyer, FSM help us all).
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I spent Friday in an all-day symposium at my institute, on the subject of tumour biomarkers and personalised medicine. It was a really interesting event – encompassing discussions of healt Continue reading
Scientists have been given a bad reputation by being inherently literal. But there is a limit to the amount of bullsh*t that I am willing to hear without fighting back.
I can recall having endless dead-ended conversations about “carbs” this and “carbs” that. For those of you who may actually have been fortunate enough to avo Continue reading
Piled Higher and Deeper – the popular PhD comic – has been made into a movie. The movie is touring campuses around the world. Find a screening near you, or watch the trailer:
Imperial College Union‘s Graduate Student Association hosted a screening on Wednesday last week. Continue reading
Having recently reported that my second and new lablit novel, “Welcome Home, Sir” will be coming out in the near future, and now in the process of deciding between two disparate options for the plot and characters of novel #3, I find myself with–well–a bit of extra time in the late evenings. Something I am not really used to Continue reading
If you are designing seat-belts, who do you design them for? Or if teaching aspiring doctors the symptoms of heart disease and the presentation of heart attacks, whose symptoms do you describe? Clearly the correct answer to both questions should be men and women, but that hasn’t always been the answer assumed, sometimes with fatal results. Once it Continue reading
One nice aspect of living (virtually) at Occam’s Typewriter is the diversity of authors. Though many (most? all?) have backgrounds present employment in science, the variety of topics in any given week provides for some fun reading. But there are certainly some common threads, not least because everyone here reads everyone else’s posts. Continue reading
First of all, many thanks to ScientistMother and Chall for hosting weeks 3 and 4, respectively!
And now for the Week 5 update:
Graph made in Google Docs, 'cos I can't figure out Numbers and don't have Excel at home
There wasn’t a huge amount of action, as we all (except Bob) made rather similar picks and had quite similar week Continue reading
I came to research in statistical genetics from an undergraduate degree in biochemistry. I learnt statistics as applied to genetics; perhaps a student who studied statistics of itself would have a perspective that is broader than my own.
I was prompted to think about more diverse applications of statistical methods in the life sciences (and beyond) Continue reading
