Interesting Links for 15-02-2020

[andrewducker]

A couple of clicks in a bank's spreadsheet caused the biggest fluctuation in Britain's trade figures in modern history.

(tags:gold UK trade weird )

What's going on with geothermal wells?

(tags:electricity energy earth heat )

An Inflammation of Place (the historical diagnosis of NewYorkitis)

(tags:newyork disease cities stress )

Don't aim for passion, be *curious*

(tags:advice passion )

Moving home can affect your children's health and education

(tags:homes children mentalhealth Education )

Some tips on writing British characters

(tags:UK society behaviour )

Flow-Charts of Programming Language Constructs

(tags:programming visualisation )

Dentists threatened by face-mask shortage because of coronavirus

(tags:teeth virus disease Doom )

There and Snack Again: How to eat everything in Lord of the Rings

(tags:lotr food )

How real is "grade inflation"?

(tags:education uk )

Comments

[jducoeur]

Most UK degree courses you apply for a 'degree in $foo" and then have very limited choice of courses (institutions vary, in both within-$foo choice and outside-$foo permitted courses). US students having to take English courses to get a maths degree astonishes me (sharing dorm rooms horrifies me).

*boggle* -- wow, it's so standard at US universities to require a breadth of courses (and encourage yet more) that it hadn't occurred to me to question it.

I'm curious: how common is major-switching in the UK? It's quite common in the US -- indeed, many folks don't settle on their major until somewhere around third year -- and I wonder if this difference in expectations plays into that.

(And sharing dorm rooms horrified me, too, but it's one of the rites of passage in the US. And I can come up with arguments in its favor, although it's challenging for us introverts...)

[naath]

I have not taken anything not STEM since I was 16.

Some people do change course, but unless it's really closely related or you only just started they probably have to start over (you've missed so much) I know a few people who did.

I picked 3 subjects at 16 which entirely ruled out many degree subjects, I did go on to natural sciences at Cambridge which (unusually for the UK) meant I didn't have to pick a science until 3rd year, but that's basically chemistry or physics in my case not a wide choice really.

I see the point of liberal arts, but I hate essays so not my thing really.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, different world. My major was Computer Science (I was *fairly* sure of that going in, and it solidified within six months), but the classes were more shoring up my existing knowledge than anything else, since I'd already been working in the field since I was 14.

So college was mostly liberal arts, with enough stuff in my major to graduate well. Essays were sometimes a pain, but with occasional joys like managing to write my final in Arthurian Lit on the then-hip-and-new comic book Mage...