Timeline for Where to find (personal) motivation
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 21, 2014 at 0:05 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by S. Carnahan♦ | ||
| Aug 21, 2014 at 0:01 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | Some time ago, I looked up the CEOs of $5$ of the $10$ largest companies on Wikipedia. $4$ out of $5$ had engineering degrees, the last had a degree in agricultural economics. | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 23:17 | comment | added | paul garrett | Also a rather mixed bag to "appear in Wikipedia"... :) | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 23:14 | comment | added | vic | By an important contribution, do you mean one worthy of a Wikipedia article, or one that is recognized by the peers as an important contribution? If it is the the latter, then it is more difficult to quantify (e.g. many consider a paper accepted to a respectable journal to be an important contribution, yet there are overwhelmingly more such papers than fundamental contributions recognized by, say, the Fields medal or other noticeable awards). In general, I think a contribution is difficult to quantify at a level finer than just "fundamental" and "interesting" (the latter is a huge class). | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 23:10 | comment | added | Michael | You are probably right. Both my undergrad and PhD advisors are in wikipedia; none of my engineering co-workers whom I directly interacted with in 5 different companies are; however the sample is rather small. On the other hand, the major purpose of a career in fundamental science is to make important contributions, and if after, say, 5 years it appears that one cannot do that perhaps a career in application of the learnt science would be an appropriate choice. | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 22:57 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Aug 20, 2014 at 23:02 | |||||
| Aug 20, 2014 at 22:44 | comment | added | vic | I cannot argue to the contrary, but I do not have enough statistical data to affirm that there are fewer nine-to-five engineers (or anyone else for that matter) in Wikipedia than (nine-to-five or otherwise) mathematicians. The truth of the matter is that very few people ever make contributions of fundamental importance, engineer, mathematician, or anyone else. | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 22:41 | history | answered | Michael | CC BY-SA 3.0 |