

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. - jonp
http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

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RiderOfGiraffes
This is _exactly_ how it feels once you get over the initial elation of
passing the blasted thing!

Of course, with all the Ph.D.s creating little bumps all over the place,
various people have to come along and fill in the gaps between the bumps. They
don't get enough credit.

~~~
pierrefar
_various people have to come along and fill in the gaps between the bumps_

Ah yes, the underpaid overworked summer students.

~~~
pgbovine
s/summer students/grad students/g

or

s/summer students/postdocs/g

or

s/summer students/full-time research staff/g

~~~
pierrefar
All true: <http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=701>

------
prs
Do not forget that the boundaries of human knowledge have been surpassed by a
healthy amount of individuals that never went the PhD route.

~~~
jerf
It is not that you must have a PhD to push the boundaries of knowledge, it is
that you must push the boundaries of knowledge to get a PhD, by definition.
Nobody claimed otherwise here.

~~~
prs
You are right about that - I merely wanted to highlight that there are always
other avenues of enlarging the sum of human knowledge. Investing your mental
resources into a PhD is only one path a person can choose in order to strive
reaching that goal.

That is what I love about HN - Comments are dissected in a constructive
manner.

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amirmc
This is the best description by far that I've seen of most PhDs. It passes the
"Would my mother understand this" test.

I'll be sending this to anyone who asks what a PhD is really like.

~~~
jedc
Did you ever end up finishing yours? ;)

------
njharman
Great illustration.

Also why Ph.D is not for me. Too low bang/buck factor. I'd rather know a
little about a lot than everything about a little. But, I'm very glad others
are the opposite.

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moultano
Now, add a third dimension to that diagram that describes the number of people
that know any particular bit of knowledge. That's more accurately what I would
describe as the "sum total of all human knowledge." It's not known if no one
remembers it!

You can then view the work of a professor as a tension between adding shallow
bumps to the perimeter and increasing the depth in the center.

~~~
nkassis
That's where wikipedia (without the deletionist), museums, libraries come in.
Putting all that old knowledge some place for some one to find them when they
have been forgotten.

If it paid the bills I'd become a Computer historian. But the tech isn't old
enough yet to be worth stuying ;p

~~~
rbanffy
> If it paid the bills I'd become a Computer historian

If you ever find a way to pay the bills this way, let me know. There's a lot
of history in there.

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j-g-faustus
I think it would work well as a guide for startups too, especially the "how it
looks to you" (living inside the dent for the past x years) vs. "how it looks
to a VC" (weighing your startup against the sum total of every other product
and service in existence).

Except perhaps that only the successful startups get to make that dent.

------
nhnifong
The sum of all human knowledge probably looks more like a million dimensional
koosh ball than an circle.

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swah
I always wondered: where is the list of things we (humans)
forgotten/unlearned?

~~~
tomjen3
I doubt that there is a complete list (we don't even have a list of the books
at the library of Alexandria, so we don't know which were lost only that we
will never find them again).

But there is a good list at cracked (of all things)
[http://www.cracked.com/article_18533_the-6-most-important-
th...](http://www.cracked.com/article_18533_the-6-most-important-things-
humanity-just-plain-forgot.html) although that is a list of things we forgot
and subsequently rediscovered. There is also a list of important books that we
have lost, but I can't seem to find it.

------
ja27
It's be more realistic if your little bump was built on top of lots of other
people's little bumps.

~~~
scott_s
It is, because all of the little bumps before you form the outer rim of the
circle.

------
dlsspy
I like to think I've made such dents, but have never been granted a Ph.D.

~~~
eavc
I don't know how to say this without it coming across as baiting you or
flaming you. I'm doing neither.

What contributions have you made to the sum-total of human knowledge? I'm
really interested.

~~~
lukev
That depends how you define it.

My cat has a skin blemish on its paw. Does documenting this fact add to the
sum total of human knowledge? Technically yes, but it's of no interest to
anyone.

But there's an even continuum between this and academic papers of great import
- what if I figure out the best strategy to defend against a Zerg rush and
post it on a forum? What if I figure out a really cool new programming
technique and blog about it? What if I write an academic paper on obscure
characteristics of hyper-complex non-euclidian non-reimannian Q-manifolds in
P-time that has no ramifications for anything and is quickly forgotten? But
then what if a tremendously important application is discovered 50 years
later?

Especially with the internet, what qualifies as human knowledge becomes
completely blurred. Previously the qualification was probably getting
published, but now anyone can make information available to anyone else and
the rest of posterity.

~~~
eavc
All of your examples involve publishing, but even more incredible is the idea
that that circle in the comic represents not just published knowledge but all
that any human has ever known and that we can sometimes venture into entirely
novel territory.

------
isaacsu
Use this mirror link if you can't get to the actual site
<http://bit.ly/cUavpF> (matt.might.net.nyud.net)

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superfx
It's a great graphic, but I'll nitpick. There's an important distinction
that's left out. During all the stages leading to the Ph.D., all the area
covered was just learning, taking in what other people have done. The very
last little bump on the other hand actually added new area, so it's a very
different thing, you're discovering new knowledge as opposed to just learning
about what's already known. I suppose the graphic does capture that in a way
but it's subtle.

~~~
WalterGR
I'm afraid it's anything but subtle. The first line is "Imagine a circle that
contains all of human knowledge". All learning until the Ph.D. is _within that
circle_.

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briandu
Awesome!

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andy
I get it, So a Ph.D. is like a pimple or an erection?

~~~
DougBTX
More like the fertilised egg (if you aim the erection properly.)

