Yo, thib

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:37 pm

You got a PhD, right?

Are all IT research papers written by illiterate elitists w\ no command of the English language in some proofreader-proof dome? Or do I just happen to stumble across all of them?

Post by **TheCatt** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:19 pm

People who can't do, research.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:16 am

Well, I'm an elitist, but I think I've got a good handle on teh English.

However, based on my experience, a lot of science and technology research-and-paper-writing is done by Asian grad students, so yeah, their English is quite interesting.

Post by **TheCatt** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:42 am

Having read more Harvard Business Review cases than I care to remember, all I can say is that people like to use incomprehensible sentence structures are large words cuz it makes them feel self-important.

My only serious flaw is overly long sentences.

Post by **TPRJones** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:06 pm

I can tell you from reading grant proposals that the guys holding PhDs in Education have the worst grammar and spelling I have ever seen. And don't get me started on their math skills, I've literally seen them try to claim in their budget proposals that 2 + 2 = 3.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:19 pm

I got a paper that goes like this. A similarity function measures how close two particular words are. Higher number means more similar. Distance functions measure how far apart two words are. Higher number means less similar.

"At some risk of confusion to the reader, we'll use these terms interchangably..."

How can you use them INTERCHANGABLY? They mean the opposite.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:16 pm

cleave:
1. to adhere firmly and closely or loyally and unwaveringly
2. to separate into distinct parts and especially into groups having divergent views

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:22 pm

Yea, but from friggin' context, I can usually determine what they mean.

When someone goes, "Let sim' be a secondary similarity function..." & then mention a sim function that just comes outta nowhere, then I'm supposed to get the maximum of "dist" over a certain set...I mean Christ, they just used one function to describe two others & didn't indicate direct correlation. Do they want me to take the maximum distance or the maximum similarity? They never fucking say.