An American Mathematician (and Physicist) in Stockholm

Tomorrow I will be flying directly from WorldCon to Stockholm for my next adventure on the faculty of Nordita (the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics) and the Department of Mathematics at Stockholm University. In the latter, my title is Professor in Complex Systems.

I hardly ever write long blog posts these days, but the title of this post is an homage to my post from when I moved to Oxford in 2007.

A new adventure awaits!

Some of my Past Materials Related to Academic Job Applications and Related Things

I've gotten an e-mail from someone indicating that the job-related materials that I have posted have been helpful to them, so this is a good impetus for me to broadcast them again in case others find them useful.

In case it's of interest to those of you on the academic job market (or people with mentees on the market), I have posted some of my materials: (1) a research statement; (2) a teaching statement; and (3) two equity, diversity, and inclusion statements: https://t.co/HDMKUPNTvF

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) November 20, 2019

A Useful Exercise for Junior Scholars on the Academic Job Market

Here is a story and useful exercise for people on the job market for junior faculty positions or postdocs: When I was a postdoc at Georgia Tech, I was asked to go through about 20 postdoc applications for my thoughts on them. This was for the Center for Nonlinear Science in the physics department. (They had already removed about half of the original set of applications, so these were ones that made the cut to still be considered.) I decided that I would try to do it in one hour. It actually took me about two, even while purposely trying to be very fast. Then, in addition to helping the Georgia Tech folks (which was a good thing to do), I asked myself what I noticed about the applications during that intentionally rushed time. I then used those insights to help me improve my application materials.

There are various ways to do such an exercise, and I suspect most people will be doing it without looking at submitted applications in the above way. Gather a set of postdocs in a sufficiently broad field (e.g., "applied mathematics" or even just "mathematics"), as it's a good part of the exercise to see how you evaluate people who are studying topics that are somewhat outside of your expertise. Make sure there is a strict time limit, as you want to see what you notice — both good and bad — about applications in that setting, as it's a realistic setting for how applications are evaluated when it counts. I think you'll pick up some good insights this way, and you can also give each other helpful advice to improve your application materials.

There are various things that we (= senior academics) talk about and give as advice all of the time, but it's good to really try it for yourself. Then you'll see what you notice — both good and bad — in the bundle of applications that you read really quickly.

And, importantly, good luck on your job hunts!

Incidentally, you can find my research statement, teaching statement, and LaTeX file (with drafts of various 'personalization' paragraphs) from my time on the job market, to get my first faculty position, over a decade ago on this Web page

Which 2-Digit Parent Mathematics Subject Classification Should I Pick as my Primary Classification?

Suppose that you are in the situation that I am in terms of Mathematics Subject Classification, as shown in my tweet below (each term corresponds to one of these), and you are now supposed to pick one of these as your primary classification on the job market. (Note that I am not on the job market, but there was a time long ago when I was a junior scientist and I was faced with this situation.) Which one would you pick?

The Mathematics Subject Classification does an "awesome" job of classifying me: https://t.co/chQW9cCotC

This classification ontology is horrible for applied mathematicians in general, and that can really hurt them on the job market. pic.twitter.com/DnYYBI2Muh

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) November 16, 2018

Applied mathematicians face this all the time (though my own research portfolio is a particularly extreme case of MSC failure) on the job market in their job applications for postdoc and faculty positions in mathematics departments in the United States. They forced to submit the standard American Mathematical Society (AMS) cover sheet, and they are then categorized according to an ontology that fails them utterly. It is systematically unfair to applied mathematicians.

The MSC needs to be revamped.

Some Very Cool Outdated Words

This is brilliant. (I have heard of some of these before.) We need to bring back some of these words.

20 Very Obscure, Very Specific Ancient Jobs eg "Nob Thatcher - Also spelled knob thatcher, this delightful occupation may sound like a Medieval insult, but was the term for a wig-maker." https://t.co/iBrkPdUWWK

— Jennifer Ouellette (@JenLucPiquant) February 27, 2018

Claim: The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) Scheme Needs a Revamping

It's getting to be that time of year: it's the season to look at the dossiers of job applicants.

Every year, when I go through these dossiers, I am reminded at how poorly I fit into the two-digit MSC (Mathematics Subject Classification) scheme, as I my work is split across many of them without any obvious single home. Nonlinear and complex systems (and networks) shows up in the depths of many of the two-digit numbers, without a single obvious parental home. It is very easy for people who work on these (and other) kinds of interdisciplinary topics to fall into the cracks, and the extant MSC scheme and the extreme reliance upon it exacerbates this problem. It needs a revamping.

Simply put, the MSC is very poorly suited for classifying applied mathematicians. And because people have to use an American Mathematical Society (AMS) cover sheet when applying to US math departments and they also have to list MSC numbers on that cover sheet, people who work in such areas are hurt very severely on the academic job market for postdocs and junior faculty positions.

In my early applications, I put the two-digit number 37 ("Dynamical systems and ergodic theory") as my main subject area, but my application then often ended up in the hands of people proving theorems in those areas, and as a dirty applied mathematician I was often sunk at that point. I think that listing 37 in this way was a very serious mistake on my part. Things of course have worked out well in the end — yay, survivorship bias! — and working in between fields is far more fun and rewarding than not doing it, but it can also create an extra hurdle when on the job market, especially because of the major role that the MSC ontology plays in how applicant dossiers are doled out to different people to evaluate (and thus in who is reading the dossier). Thankfully, if it does work out, there is also the potential of benefits from the proverbial first-mover scientific advantage (or, to generalize, an early-mover scientific advantage), but first one has to get to that point and there are extra hurdles in the way.

While now it's more of a cosmetic thing for my personal situation (though other interdisciplinary people have to deal with this serious issue when on the market), this was very frustrating when I was applying for postdocs and my initial faculty jobs, as my application could so easily get siphoned off into the wrong spots and not find the right ones, purely as a result of the MSC ontology, which I was required to use in applications to US math departments as part of the AMS cover sheet.

Update: To illustrate my subject areas, take a look at my MathSciNet listing, although it only indexes a small subset of my papers and it captures a vanishingly small (well, not literally, but take a look on Google Scholar, and you will see that it is a factor of more than 50) fraction of my citations. I don't have a home within the MSC ontology, and most of the two-digit identifiers in which my work is best represented are still in 2017 often not construed to be areas of applied mathematics. Many people are open-minded, but many others are not, and the issues with the current MSC contribute seriously to this problem.

Update: By the way, as of right now, Google Scholar registers 10146 citations to my work. Meanwhile, MathSciNet registers 184 citations. These numbers differ by a factor of approximately 55.14.

"Opposite" Jobs

According to this website, the "opposite" job of a kindergarten teacher is a physicist, whose opposite job is a model (so it's a directed similarity measure, as it should be, so really one should write "most different" rather than "opposite" to encapsulate the directionality).

According to this, the most different job from "mathematician" is "mine shuttle car operator".

Huzzah!

Back on the West Side

Last night, I arrived back on the West Side, my first time living in this part of LA in more than 20 years (when I was living in my parents') house.

A couple of weeks ago, I set up my "boring, professional web page" at UCLA. I might make it more aesthetically more please at some point, though tons of information is there and pretty easy to find, so this isn't exactly a high priority. (But with the current amount of information, that's somewhat less easy than it used to be, and it would be nice to have something nice—so it's very low priority, but not 0 priority. Ask me in a couple of years, and we'll see if I've gotten around to it.)

And more generally I am setting myself up on practical things and simultaneously trying to get some work done.

Meme: #firstsevenjobs

Here is my contribution to the meme #firstsevenjobs:

1. Tech Editor (newspaper editor at university newspaper)
2. Teacher's assistant in mathematics
3. Postdoc in mathematics
4. Postdoc in physics
5. Faculty member in mathematics department
6. Faculty member in a different mathematics department
7. ?

#sorry :)

(Well, I had a one-semester postdoc at MSRI as well, but that rolls into jobs (3) and (4) and occurred during a semester off of job (3). I could count that one if I need to get up to seven, but I like the idea of leaving the above open, as I already needed to stretch this out rather substantially. I also had a couple of paid undergraduate research projects in mathematics, so I suppose I could put those early in the list.)

The Most Googled Job in Each State

Here is a visualization of some jobs that each U.S. state led in Google searches. Some of these are fantastic.

(Tip of the cap to Kin Chan.)

Postdoc Opening in My Lab

We have reposted the advertisement for a 3-year (technically, 34-month) postdoctoral position at University of Oxford to study multiplex networks:

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/19782


This is the same position I circulated a couple of months ago, but we had to take the advertisement down for bureaucratic reasons before. It's back up and applications are due by Friday 26 October, with a start date for as soon as possible thereafter.

The position is in the Mathematical Institute, and the successful candidate will be part of my group.

Please circulate far and wide. :)

New Postdoc Position in my Lab

Hot off the presses is an advertisement to become a postdoc in my lab to study multiplex networks. This is a 34-month (aka, almost 3-year) position.

Lots of information is available on the website above.

Note (8/03/12): I have temporarily taken down the advertisement because of some confusion. I will put this back up as soon as the confusion gets resolved. The deadline for when to apply might get pushed back a bit, but I don't know yet about that. Sigh.

Flamestrike in the Office?

Earlier this evening, I received a spam e-mail that included the following statement:

Please join me in congratulating [name]. Based on [his/her] high level of professionalism and performance, [his/her] job level has been increased from a level 8 to a level 9.

Here is what I wrote to one of my collaborators who is very familiar with the organization in question:

So is it supposed to be universal knowledge what level 8 and level 9 actually mean? Can [name] cast 5th level spells now?

And here is his response to my message:

Wow, that's just cryptic. I'm so glad I'm not on that mailing list! Maybe [he/she] gets a new cape?

And my response to that comment:

I would like to think that I now have to be careful about Flamestrike being cast in the office. I hear that self-immolation is pretty popular these days.

Best and Worst Jobs of 2011

Mathematician was named the 2nd best job of 2011. Software engineer was first. And perhaps that is indeed true, but mathematicians are much cooler than software engineers! [He says as he ducks a lot of virtual tomatoes.]

Check out the 3rd worst job. I always thought that they were ok.

(Tip of the cap to SIAM.)

Old Job Application Materials

I keep passing along my old job application materials (from Fall 2006, my last time on the job market) to various people, so I have decided to repost these items. You can find 2006-era teaching and research statements on this page, which also contains two LaTeX introductions.

Feel free to pass these materials along to anybody who might benefit (even if you want to use them as examples of what to do wrong).

I won't post any materials from when I applied for postdoc positions during the Fall 2001 season because, frankly, my research and teaching statements from that era sucked.

I am happy to pass along old cover letters as well, but I won't be posting those publicly.

(And, obviously, these materials are most relevant to mathematicians, physicists, and the like. I think, however, that they are not entirely irrelevant to others.)

Trouble Brewing in Chavez Ravine

A pretty good sign that a marriage isn't healthy is when the husband fires his wife from her job. (Dodger owner Frank McCourt recently separated from his wife and has now fired her. Her attorney has issued a statement that this battle will be fought in the courtroom. This might be an interesting offseason for the Dodgers...

Mathematics Employment Task Force

The the results of the Mathematics Employment Task Force have now been published. The 68 departments surveyed had 40% fewer doctorate-required positions to offer. This aligns rather closely with my expectations based on anecdotal discussions, but ouch is still an appropriate word to use.

"Mathematician" named top job in a America

I just found out from an AMS press release that "mathematician" is the top job in the United States according to the Wall Street Journal.

That's what I've been saying all along. I told you so!


Here are the best and worst jobs according to the article:


The Best
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant


The Worst
200. Lumberjack
199. Dairy Farmer
198. Taxi Driver
197. Seaman
196. EMT
195. Garbage Collector
194. Welder
193. Roustabout
192. Ironworker
191. Construction Worker



The article showed the top 20 and bottom 20 jobs. Most of the top jobs are typically quite academic in flavor, although I was amused by the fact that physicist (13th) ranked just above parole officer (14th). I approve!

Mathematics Job Wiki

Following in the fine tradition of the condensed matter/atomic physics job rumor mill (and similar web pages in other physics subfields), there is now a wiki devoted to the mathematics job rumor mill. Not that it matters for me anymore, but I do like to gossip about this stuff (as Lemming knows quite well). :)