Current Events > I just defended my dissertation successfully.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Technically I still need to get a signature from my outside member before it becomes official, but that's a formality (if she dissented for some weird reason, she's still well outnumbered).

I get to endure a week of Dr. Anteaterking, and then it'll return to normal.

Tagging some people who might care:

@Doom_Art
@COVxy
@Darkman124
@Balrog0
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Congrats!

How was the defense? Did your committee give you a hard time?
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COVxy posted...

Congrats!

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Nicely done.
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whats your doctorate in?

congrats btw
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COVxy posted...

Congrats!

How was the defense? Did your committee give you a hard time?

It was fine. They didn't really give me too much of a hard time, since two of them were readers and I was coadvised by the other two, so everyone was pretty familiar with the material pre-defense, and so after the actual defense the questions they had were mostly over the things in the dissertation that weren't in my defense.
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congratu-fucking-lations, man!
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Romulox28 posted...

whats your doctorate in?

congrats btw

Mathematics.
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Congrats! How does it feel?
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Anteaterking posted...

COVxy posted...

Congrats!

How was the defense? Did your committee give you a hard time?

It was fine. They didn't really give me too much of a hard time, since two of them were readers and I was coadvised by the other two, so everyone was pretty familiar with the material pre-defense, and so after the actual defense the questions they had were mostly over the things in the dissertation that weren't in my defense.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's irrational, but I've always been a bit worried about getting on a committee members bad side and then having an adversarial defense.

One of my committee members must have said a maximum of two words, and only because she was the chair, at my proposal lol.
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Congrats Dr. Anteaterking!

I'm actually almost at the end of data collection for mine. I'm getting my last bit of info at a meeting tonight and will start my data analysis this weekend. Hopefully I get to defend early this summer.

Did you have a crowd at your defense? Family? Friends? I'm deciding whether or not I want to invite anyone.
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Anteaterking posted...

Mathematics

*jealousy intensifies*

Congrats >:(
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hortanz posted...

Congrats! How does it feel?

It feels fairly normal, mainly because I'm used to giving talks on things and because usually (here at least) your advisor wouldn't let you defend if they thought you wouldn't pass, so getting to the point of defending usually means you're 80% of the way to passing.

COVxy posted...

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's irrational, but I've always been a bit worried about getting on a committee members bad side and then having an adversarial defense.

There are people who would have been adversarial if they had been on my committee, but I had enough flexibility to avoid them (mainly because we don't like each other).

Zanzenburger posted...

Did you have a crowd at your defense? Family? Friends? I'm deciding whether or not I want to invite anyone.

I had math friends there and the people who attended "filled" the room, but my family lives too far away and I don't think they would have understood any of it anyway. I do have a friend whose family is coming for his defense, so it's not uncommon. I think generally it's like...if they want to come they can, but no one pushes for them to come.

You are studying public policy though, right? So it's possible that your conclusions are interesting enough that a layman might be able to appreciate it, even if the work itself is over their head.
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So what's next for you? Typical route in my field is a postdoc or industry. Do people usually do postdocs in mathematics?
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was your thesis on the study of 0.999999~ = 1?
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COVxy posted...

So what's next for you? Typical route in my field is a postdoc or industry. Do people usually do postdocs in mathematics?

My friend is a mathematician, he ended up going into research. He also has his own project on the side. Granted he got his masters.
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wewt
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COVxy posted...

So what's next for you? Typical route in my field is a postdoc or industry. Do people usually do postdocs in mathematics?

Most people here try to get professorships at four year liberal arts colleges, but some people try for postdocs (postdocs are pretty common, but I don't think my department specifically exports a lot of them). I'm moving to Maryland for an industry job.

BlackHorse6969 posted...

was your thesis on the study of 0.999999~ = 1?

It was actually the opposite, I was really pushing that 0.999~ != 1.

P4wn4g3 posted...

My friend is a mathematician, he ended up going into research. He also has his own project on the side. Granted he got his masters.

Yeah, I'll still occasionally do research on the side (unlike chemistry for example, I don't have to worry about anything besides paper/pencil/computer. Most money in math research grants funds collaboration and travel), it just isn't something that you get paid for in its own right usually.
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congrats my dude!! apologize if answered, just about to read the topic but:

1) post graduation plans?

2) what kind o math you specialize in?
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Balrog0 posted...

congrats my dude!! apologize if answered, just about to read the topic but:

1) post graduation plans?

2) what kind o math you specialize in?

1) Maryland for industry math.

2) My dissertation was mostly graph theory with a touch of some algebraic topology motivated by semigroups. I understand the semigroups better than the topology in general, but when done over graphs it's very combinatorial.
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If you're interested he's in charge of the Google SymPy project, it's a Python based project dedicated for coding advanced mathematics. You'd have to sign up through their thing though.
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Also, you better tag me the next time you share your postdoctoral escapades. I care... <_<
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Anteaterking posted...

I'm moving to Maryland for an industry job.

APL?
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Zanzenburger posted...

Also, you better tag me the next time you share your postdoctoral escapades. I care... <_<

I knew I was missing someone who I knew was close to finishing, but I couldn't remember the username.

Darkman124 posted...

Anteaterking posted...

I'm moving to Maryland for an industry job.

APL?

No, although I know someone starting there. I'm going to the "DoD".
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we'll poach you soon enough.
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What is the procedure of earning a doctorate in mathematics? Like specifically when you're a doctorate student.

Also, congrats!
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Congrats!
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what was the topic/thesis of said dissertation
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Vita_Aeterna posted...

What is the procedure of earning a doctorate in mathematics? Like specifically when you're a doctorate student.

Also, congrats!

So for the first two years it's just more upper level coursework across most areas of math. Then after you've past your qualifying exams/comprehensive exams, you officially get an advisor and start working on research. After that, you continue to take some classes like topics classes in your area, but most of your time is dissertation hours. Then you write up the dissertation and defend and done.

Mufflnz0rz posted...

what was the topic/thesis of said dissertation

To what level of math should I make my explanation for?
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Congratulations, doctor. :P

Saw mathematics and my brain almost melted. Could never wrap my head around the stuff. Was always more the humanities and drama kid in school.

Very nicely done brah. Best of luck going forward.
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Anteaterking posted...

To what level of math should I make my explanation for?

As high as you want
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Anteaterking posted...

To what level of math should I make my explanation for?

safe to assume nobody here has taken anything beyond complex analysis

so, a pretty low level.

Anteaterking posted...

So for the first two years it's just more upper level coursework across most areas of math. Then after you've past your qualifying exams/comprehensive exams, you officially get an advisor and start working on research. After that, you continue to take some classes like topics classes in your area, but most of your time is dissertation hours. Then you write up the dissertation and defend and done.

were you on fellowship during the pre-adviser period, or paying your own way?
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Darkman124 posted...

were you on fellowship during the pre-adviser period, or paying your own way?

I was teaching for my five years (outside of one semester where I was bought out to work on some math education research by a professor here).

Mufflnz0rz posted...

As high as you want

I'll try my best. I essentially did the tried and true discrete math dissertation approach which was just to write four papers and staple them together. They're loosely related via graph theory, but they are sort of distinct from each other.

1. One of my papers was related to the isoperimetric inequality, which asks the question "Given a fixed area, what shape minimizes perimeter?". You may sort of recognize this from Calculus when one of your first optimization problems involves taking some fencing and enclosing the most area (where the answer is a square). The answer in the plane is a circle, which is easy to guess as the right thing, but hard to prove since the shapes you consider can be awful and degenerate. Anyway, you can extend that same idea to graph structures, by fixing the number of vertices in a given graph and trying to see what sets have the largest neighborhood. There was a specific application that tied this to some seemingly unrelated combinatorial game.

2. My second paper was about the classical problem of trying to maximize the number of faces of a complex, given certain properties (if you're familiar with graph theory, you may know of Turan's Theorem, which says that no graph with certain properties has more edges than the Turan graph. This is the same idea except instead of edges you also have triangles, tetrahedrons, etc.) I found the family of graphs that optimized a certain set of parameters for all sizes of faces.

3. My third part wasn't really a paper, just some odds and ends related to work that I did with other people.

4. My last paper is the easiest to state but the hardest to motive non-mathematically, so I'll just say that just as there is a connection between covering space theory and the fundamental group of a space, there is a connection between immersion theory and the "fundamental" monoid of a space, and I was trying to make an analogous version of the deck transformation group.
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Congrats! I still remember the day I defended. My mom and dad came to town to see. The room had about 100 people. I think only 1 or 2 people on the 5 person committee actually understood the whole thing.

I had a computational and an experimental effort. I had six papers worth of data that I had to cut down to two hours. Only one professor asked any difficult questions. He was also the one who understood the most about what I had done. We had mainly undergrad students. Our department gave extra credit to students who attended dissertations and wrote reports about them.

Dad grilled a Filet for me that afternoon. I had an auto loan I was paying on. He wrote me a nice check that afternoon. I think it might have been the proudest day of his life.
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C7D posted...

Congrats! I still remember the day I defended. My mom and dad came to town to see. The room had about 100 people. I think only 1 or 2 people on the 5 person committee actually understood the whole thing.

I had a computational and an experimental effort. I had six papers worth of data that I had to cut down to two hours. Only one professor asked any difficult questions. He was also the one who understood the most about what I had done. We had mainly undergrad students. Our department gave extra credit to students who attended dissertations and wrote reports about them.

Dad grilled a Filet for me that afternoon. I had an auto loan I was paying on. He wrote me a nice check that afternoon. I think it might have been the proudest day of his life.

What area is this?
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Anteaterking posted...

write four papers and staple them together

hah, this is every grad student's dissertation these days.

"I was your slave for long enough. Give me my diploma so I can get the fuck out of here already."
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Anteaterking posted...

C7D posted...

Congrats! I still remember the day I defended. My mom and dad came to town to see. The room had about 100 people. I think only 1 or 2 people on the 5 person committee actually understood the whole thing.

I had a computational and an experimental effort. I had six papers worth of data that I had to cut down to two hours. Only one professor asked any difficult questions. He was also the one who understood the most about what I had done. We had mainly undergrad students. Our department gave extra credit to students who attended dissertations and wrote reports about them.

Dad grilled a Filet for me that afternoon. I had an auto loan I was paying on. He wrote me a nice check that afternoon. I think it might have been the proudest day of his life.

What area is this?

I designed and developed soft materials with specifically engineered nanochannels that I could change depending upon an externally applied stimuli. I modeled fluid transport and separation through the devices. I described the channels using a number of indirect measurement techniques such as particle scattering phenomena. As a chemical engineer, my techniques were foreign to most in my department.
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The whole "staple four papers for your dissertation" thing is so weird to me. In Public Policy (and the softer sciences in general), the dissertation has to be an empirical research study. Like, we do literature reviews for class and theoretical model-building, but that wouldn't suffice for a dissertation. There has to be some kind of data collection, data analysis, and then reporting of the findings. If that results in the development of a new model or theory, that's just icing on the cake.

Most students, though, still take the easy route and their "data collection" is usually using secondary sources of data that already exists. Take some data, do some multivariate regression analysis to correlate it with some latent variable or characteristic, and bam, you have a dissertation that's 100+ pages.

My data collection involves a quasi-experimental study with actual people (high school students, no less), so that's taking me a lot longer than my colleagues.
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Zanzenburger posted...

The whole "staple four papers for your dissertation" thing is so weird to me.

Even within math it's area specific, essentially dependent on what the average length of paper is in that area. Discrete math has lots of short papers (compared to say commutative algebra), because the problems are easy to state and hard to prove. Commutative algebra is filled with people doing problems that are hard to state, so they have to spend a lot of paper building up notation and stuff like that. From the perspective of a grad student, your proximity to the research barrier is also relevant.

So when I got my advisor, I essentially was able to jump straight into research, whereas my algebra friends had to take many more classes to get "up to date". But because of that difference, one discrete paper would make for a 30-40 page thesis, which is very very short. To balance that out, you do more of them.

Now, I'm a little more "staple together" than some of my peers, because I was co-advised by two advisors in different areas, whereas usually "staple four papers" is four papers with a somewhat common theme.
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