The Best Part of My Week

Two years ago I made the transition from academic science to data science. There are many aspects of industry that mesh better with my working style. However one very important industry practice that I feel is lacking in academia (at least for many of the people I have spoken to) are mechanisms for regular evaluation and feedback — especially for graduate students and postdocs.

Lately I've been facilitating workshops on the Impostor Syndrome and having many conversations with people about my process of dealing with and overcoming my own impostor feelings. For me a huge problem with my experience in graduate school was a constant nagging fear that I wasn't performing at an adequate level. There are so few metrics by which to measure success; if I didn't published N papers, make any major discoveries, or win any prizes or grants — how was I to know if I was ‘cutting it?’ And even if I did accomplish some of these milestones, there were always stories of other people who did it more, better, and faster. This was the perfect breeding ground for my impostor thoughts.

Build a Smarter Group from Scratch: Converse Equitably, Add Women, Stir.

The below is a guest post from Dr. Sarah Ballard. Dr. Ballard completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2012 and is now a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Washington.  Follow her on twitter at: @hubbahubble

To work in astronomy is now to work in teams. A recent PNAS study reported that the average team size associated with a single publication grew from 1.5 in 1961-1965, to 6.7 in 2006-2010 (Milojević 2014). However, much of the dialog about the nature of intelligence is still focused upon single individuals. Though the conception of a person’s intelligence as a fixed quantity is fraught at best (see this summary by J. Johnson), it’s often the only way we conceive of intelligence at all. What is the nature of the intelligence of a group? What quantities are predictive of it, if any? It is now groups of individuals who publish new ideas in our field. To ask about group intelligence is now to ask: “How are units of knowledge produced?”