By Daniel Erman

There is a wealth of information on the internet about how to give a good Mathematics talk, including:

(*)   Gian-Carlo Rota’s essay “Ten lessons I wish I had been taught”

(*)   John Baez’s “Advice for the young scientist”

(*)   Terence Tao’s “Talks are not the same as papers”

In this post, I’d like to consider an aspect of lecturing which is not emphasized in the above sources, but which I think is extremely important.  Lecturing necessarily involves choosing to emphasize some aspects of the material over others. A common pitfall I’ve seen among speakers—especially student speakers—is to apologize during the talk for such choices, or to make self-deprecating jokes.  This is nearly always a bad idea, as it distracts from the point of your talk. Continue reading →

By Tom Wright

This entry is a list (with explanations) of the five most important things I have learned in my years as a teaching assistant (i.e. leading a recitation section for a professor). Individual results may vary…

1.)  Make sure you know how to do ALL the problems when you go into class. You don’t have to have them all written up nicely, but the one at the end of the chapter where you say, “Eh, I’ll figure it out in class,” is invariably the one that someone will ask and you can’t answer.

2.)  You may mess up in class.  If you do, admit your mistake and make sure students understand that you messed up; otherwise, they will be trying to figure out why A implies B without understanding that A was written incorrectly.  If you realize your mistake is significant enough that you can’t finish the problem, say something like, “I’ll let you do the rest as a homework, but here’s how you start,” and then do whatever you can.  On a related note: Continue reading →

By Adam Boocher

Navigating seminars can be a tricky thing to do, especially when you’re new to the whole grad school game.  I was lucky in that I had plenty of older students (and a few professors) to give my advice.  I thought I’d share my experiences and what I learned from the seminars I attended last semester.

Last semester at Berkeley was a particularly busy time in algebraic geometry, mainly because this spring there is a semester-long program in the subject at MSRI.  There were several “official” seminars… and of course the student algebraic geometry seminar, and then the seminar we first year students organized to try and decipher everything we were learning.  And of course don’t forget about colloquia and other regular seminars open to everyone!   It was quite daunting to try and attend all of these seminars every week, but once I got the hang of everything I really got a lot out of going.  It was a great way to meet older students, and also to see mathematics “in action”. Continue reading →

By Annalies Vuong

A friend’s advisor is rumored to have said, “An advisor/advisee relationship is like a marriage…only more permanent.” From that perspective, I did a lot of “dating” before I settled on an advisor. I did some “online dating” before I got to graduate school by checking out the web pages of professors at the schools I applied to, particularly in the areas I thought I might specialize in. I looked at their publication lists, titles of their advisee’s theses, and what their advisees did after graduate school. Next came “speed dates” at various graduate schools’ open houses, where I talked with those professors and tried to determine if we’d be a good fit. It was clear in some cases that we were not. In other cases, asking graduate students about a professor let me know that I either might not want to work with the professor or would not be able to work with the professor (for instance, if they were retiring, moving, or not taking advisees). Continue reading →