This weekend we came across an intriguing New York Times article by Alina Tugend about the psychology of mistakes. The main point is that we’re too scared of making mistakes because we fear looking stupid. In fact, mistakes can be important learning experiences — and we could benefit from deliberately trying to make mistakes. The [...]
This year’s Nobel prize announcements just happened. And, as usual, no women received any of the science prizes. We became curious about the history of Nobel prize awards to women. We looked at the awards for the Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology/Medicine. As you might expect, physics is the worst. Only 2 women have been awarded the [...]
In today’s New York Times there is an intriguing article by Lisa Belkin about how women are perceived at work. Belkin focuses on perceptions of women and gender stereotypes. The sad summary is that women look bad no matter what. One recent study run by Catalyst (an organization that supports expanded opportunities for women in business) [...]
It happened again last week, and we’ve been mulling it over since then. It happens about once a semester: a random student wanders into the Lair of Dr. Medusa and asks for help. No, this is not a student in our class, or a graduate student, or even a potential student. Mr. Random Student just [...]
We can’t believe that we only found out about this. Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall - Harvard professor, poster girl for women in physics, and author of the popular-science book Warped Passages - appeared in Vogue (August 2007). She’s in a photo spread on “Ageless Beauty.” There’s a picture of her standing behind a messy desk, [...]