Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department - <AUTHOR> http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html <comment><USER2> I was a grad student and teaching assistant in Berkeley maths 1998-99. I observed that the department intentionally admitted many more grad students than it could possibly put through the full PhD, and had a well-tuned system for weeding them out after a year or two - chiefly a "preliminary exam" that was notoriously tough and (in my view and that of many others) unfair. A charitable view would be that the department wanted to give many students a chance to shine and graduate, so had a liberal admissions policy; a cynic might observe that those who failed the prelim conveniently taught calculus as TAs for a couple of years for a ridiculously low cost, hence provided cheap labour (much cheaper than Dr. Coward for sure). After two years of experiencing the kind of environment Dr. Coward describes, I definitely adopted the cynical view. I left the university, and mathematics, and have been much happier as a result. I wish Dr. Coward every success in changing what I found to be a very unpleasant system in the department.

<comment><USER3> If hard working students fail a test, the failure is on the teacher, not the students.

I highly doubt the majority of students at berkeley would be anything other than hard working.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, hard work is not always effective work. When you embark on a journey of learning, it is your own responsiblity to make sure that you learn effectively. Hard work alone does not justify any merits - you have to make it count.

<comment><USER5> That is exactly the job of a teacher - to make sure you learn effectively.

<comment><USER6> How many of your teachers focused on efficient learning ? I can't remember one. Even the handful of teacher that left a deep trace in my memory never mentioned 'learning'. They were just so well aware of their subject, they could be the catalyst to bridge gaps in my view of things, triggering inspiration and desire.

<comment><USER7> There needs to be a desire in the student to learn, but the teacher must also be able to impart things clearly. Otherwise, why bother having teachers at all? Why not have everyone self-learn? Ironically, that's what I'm actually doing right now, but still it's good to get recorded lectures as this tends to really help fill in blanks.

<comment><USER6> I'm doing a lot of self studies too, and what I'm missing the most is a little peer pressure to focus and test, especially tests. That's why I personally enjoyed MOOCs since they provide that. My experience is doubly biased, I don't recall any teacher being really helping in learning as I said, but I went to college at a time I couldn't interact with them normally too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If what he Dr. Coward says is true, and I have no reason to doubt him, this makes me sad as a Berkeley alum. I remember taking Math 53 with an awful professor who could barely speak English and refused to cover the material, asking us to just read the material ourselves and ask him questions. This professor had been there for many years despite repeatedly getting in trouble for failing too many students (that he neglected to teach). This is unfortunately the state of universities now, teaching is nothing, research is everything. Lecturers are treated like crap and barely scraping by. I wonder when the devaluation of teaching will catch up to us; maybe another country that values teachers will be able to attract more of the best students in the world.

<comment><USER9> > teaching is nothing, research is everything

Teaching is nothing, research is nothing; grants, tuition, and donations are everything.

I don't know what's sadder, how far universities have fallen, or the fact that there's no sign that these trends are slowing.

<comment><USER8> I stand corrected :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here.

Pros:

1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives out his cell phone number and asks students to call him any time if they need help.

Cons:

1)His class is very poorly structured. No quizzes. The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final. 2)His Graduate Student Instructors that teach smaller group discussions get carte blanche to be as lazy as they want. They don't have to administer quizzes and the three that I saw didn't give a rat's ass. 3)His exams are a joke. Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof. The basic derivatives and integrals on the test are really easy. Many of the pre-med and pre-Haas students love him because of the easy A's he gives out.

In Summary: The department has valid claims against his classes, but he is doing something Berkeley's math department desparately needs: teaching lower division math better.

<comment><USER11> "The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final." And that's your choice. How is it his fault for giving you a choice?

"Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof." Proofs are more important than memorizing a formula and forgetting it after a couple of month.

"Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math." That's way more important than stuffing you with formulas, algorithms and problems. If you have a passion for something, learning comes more easily and naturally.

By giving you confidence and passion, he gave you the greatest gift he could possibly give. You can find theorems, proofs, problems and solutions in countless books. The information is there, all of it. Structured in many different ways. And he gave you the courage to go out and explore. I wish I had that as a freshman. Instead I got fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being mocked in class. Fear of not being good enough. And I cowered in fear. I learned mechanically, memorizing formulas and problems by heart. What good where the quizzes, hard exams and midterms to me when I couldn't understand and apply what I was supposed to be learning?

<comment><USER12> While _I_ agree that the most important thing is convincing the 1 person out of 1,000 to be a math major (or physics or whatever) I'm afraid the university isn't ok with handing everyone else As without mastering a certain minimum skill set.

Besides, the math department isn't a free agent in this. Other departments expect students who have passed math 1A to have certain skills. If the math department was free to teach math 1A as an advertisement for mathematics (the way other departments get to teach their base courses) it would be a much different class. Hell, it wouldn't even be about calculus.

So long as the physicists, economists, chemists etc.. etc.. say "we need students with skills X, Y and Z" there has to be a class whose content (and hence a decent grade in) is X, Y and Z. The name of that class is 1A and it helps no one to just teach a different class under that name without reforming the system.

The math department ALREADY OFFERS OTHER CLASSES DESIGNED TO DO EXPOSE STUDENTS TO MATH IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU MENTION. These are courses that deliberately avoid the equations and rote memorization that generated so much fear in high school and are designed to be low stress while showing off the wonder and creativity of mathematics.

Unfortunately, few people ever take these courses because students don't want any more math than they have to take and the guidance counselors and university won't push or require them.

As you said about the final (which I wholeheartedly agree with) if you give students the choice how is it the department's fault you take it. Students have a choice to approach math in a more exploratory, more encouraging fashion but they choose to do the minimum needed to take whatever other class they need. It's ironic because that's also what makes calculus so hard for them...they want to apply a rule and confidently move on...not think hard about a math problem in ways that might be dead ends.

That is what's so sad about math education. Understanding comes from trying to fit the concepts together and even (especially) professional mathematicians fail 90% of the time. Students, especially those who haven't done well in math find that very distressing. Hell, pick any subject you aren't good at (which has clear success/failure conditions) and really try to do it well. It makes you feel dumb and you give up. Add to that years of pre-college math (often taught by teachers who themselves seek the reassurance of rote procedure) which brain washes the curious kids into believing that doing math _is_ just applying procedures and it's an uphill battle.

Ultimately, I think the problem is that we try and force kids who aren't really interested to know math they don't need. Just like other subjects let the students who want to learn come to you. With the advent of modern computer algebra system no one benefits making kids memorize rote procedures beyond basic arithmetic since without understanding they will never apply it in the real world.

<comment><USER13> There is no evidence to indicate he deviated from the actual required _content_ of the course, only that his _lecturing style_ deviated from what the department wanted. (This is indicated by the department having reviewed and approved his final, among other things).

Also, I'll repost what I said earlier: there is no evidence he gave out A's more freely than other professors.

The grade distribution for one of Coward's classes (16B) is available online for you to check: [https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016...](https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016...). It shows his class average was a B-, whereas most other professors around the year he taught had a B or B+ average.

<comment><USER14> And that by itself is inconclusive, as all the lazy students looking for easy A's know to sign up for Coward's class.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't claiming he was harder on the students. I was claiming that there is absolutely no evidence he was popular because he gave out easy As. So you're agreeing with me.

<comment><USER14> I studied there, and during that time, spoke to and tutored many such students. Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence.

<comment><USER13> And I brought to you a non-anecdotal, total-population statistic. Again, justifying the null hypothesis (that there is no evidence he was any harder or easier on students in the grade distribution).

<comment><USER14> No, you repeated Coward's own assertion, stripped of its original context.

<comment><USER13> This is a non sequitur.

(more specifically: we weren't arguing about my first assertion, we were arguing about my second assertion. So the fact that you're trying to refute my second assertion, that there is no evidence he have out A's more freely, by attacking my first assertion, is irrelevant. I fully acknowledge that absent the department's response, we don't have the full picture of whether or not the department's issue was with the actual teaching content, but that was not what you and I were discussing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a UC Berkeley student who's never taken one of Coward's classes, I've heard great things from every single friend of mine whose taken his class ("I love Coward" is heard a lot). I know students are already rallying to keep him at Cal. However, I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve such a great professor if the system is as decrepit as described.

<comment><USER16> > I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve such a great > professor if the system is as decrepit as described.

At the very least, Coward does not deserve them.

<comment><USER3> Coward is the Math department. Calling the administrators members of said math department is a disservice to all of education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not associated with UC Berkeley, but I have been involved in a lot of campus politics in the past. Because I see many alumni commenting here about the effectiveness of this lecturer, I offer a suggestion: Give a restricted gift to the university. Earmark it for something like the salary or research of Dr. Coward. If they want to play politics, you can too and restrict that your donations are tied to his continued employment.

<comment><USER18> Why not just send Coward a check directly?

<comment><USER19> It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.

<comment><USER18> So why not send a message that isn't open to loopholes? Like mail them a picture of you personally giving him a check with a letter explaining why, and then post it on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had the pleasure of taking Differential Equations from Dr. Coward at UC Davis back in undergrad. He was one of the best math professors I ever had.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have a Berkeley math degree. Two observations. Student ratings are whack. I had a professor I thought was really good but had an average rating. I had one fellow student state that he hated the professor. I am pretty sure the professor did nothing to him that deserved that hatred. People don't like it when they don't do as well as they expect. Second, it appears that the math department hires based on research because I had a newly minted professor who was just plain indecipherable.

<comment><USER22> I have a triple major from Cal with math among them. All I can say is that Berkeley math classes were the most brutal, boring, and demotivating classes that I've ever encountered. For the longest time I tried to suck it up and blame myself. Luckily, since then I've had enough great classes and mentors to realize it really was the department and its professors that made me miserable, and I overcame the massive GPA drop and near-suicidal tendencies that Berkeley Math drove me to.

<comment><USER23> You've voiced my own feelings exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I graduated from Cal in 2013 in Physics and CS. I had a full time lecturer (not a professor) for a course in Analytic Mechanics and the teacher (Charman) was in a similar situation. Despite having ratings well above average and being immensely popular, he was let go. It seems like lecturers are treated as second class citizens, much like contract workers or outsourced positions.

<comment><USER25> Lecturers are Cal's version of adjunt professors. Just like how GSIs are Cal's version of TAs.

<comment><USER26> That's definitely not true in the CS department, at the very least. Lecturers in the CS department can get "security of employment" which is tenure in everything but name and, while I was there, most of the intro courses and some advanced undergraduate courses were taught by lecturers like that.

Of course, the CS department is in a different college (Engineering), has a different culture and, probably, way more funding than the math or physics departments, so there's plenty of reasons for it to be different.

<comment><USER27> Now that may be the problem. Perhaps the mathematics department should be moved to Engineering. Stanford did that with computer science back in the 1980s. It used to be part of Arts and Sciences, run by a rotating committee, and was graduate-only. The education side was disorganized, with schedules and staffing not matching up with admissions. The entire department was transferred to Engineering, was better organized, and got much better on the educational side.

The research side was dominated by logicians to and through the "AI Winter". Then they brought in machine learning people for the DARPA Grand Challenge, and that turned the research side around. Now the machine learning people are in charge, and most of the logicians and expert systems people have retired.

Science progresses one funeral at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Alexander Coward: 'My student evaluations for the two classes I had completed were the highest on record in the Mathematics Department'

Berkeley Mathematics Department: ".. I hope and expect that you will be able to align more with our standards for the remainder of this semester and during the next academic year."

Translation: Your students are doing significiently better than ours and therefore showing up our mediocre teaching performance and for that reason - you're fired ..

[http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMath...](http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> _Note_ that this should not validate or invalidate his claims, but here are videos of his teaching: [http://math1afall2015.blogspot.com](http://math1afall2015.blogspot.com)

<comment><USER29> Wow. He is a really engaging lecturer. I'm actually going to watch these videos to learn. I would have loved a professor like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Instead of teaching at a large research school which cares more about professors obtaining grants, he should teach at a small liberal-artsy school where the professors are expected to spend more of their time actually teaching students.

<comment><USER31> He'll have more students (and therefore more total impact) at a large public school.

Also, maybe the goal is to change the expectation that research universities lack good teachers? Public colleges educate many times more students than private ones, let alone small liberal arts schools.

<comment><USER32> UC Berkeley IS a large, public school.

<comment><USER33> Seems like dwaxe knows that and was suggesting why the OP would prefer Berkeley over a smaller school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> 2 things about this fascinate me:

1) The knock-on effect of having this cross-published on HN and reddit will somehow make this story reach some form of news-media -> which in turn will influence UC Berkeleys decision, as they will be under the media-spotlight.

2) I always thought many STEM professors were useless educators who only taught students as a by-the-way while they chased fame/recognition among their peers for academic-success (or status). I guess this rings true for Math departments in many parts of the world.

As many others are saying, it would be better for this guy to leave, because if the department was overtly toxic before, the true assholism will shine once the other profs create a siege mentality against this guy for "outing them".

<comment><USER35> Very good point. A professors job should be foremost to teach. Research and chasing fame should come second. In my opinion, universities have flipped this on its head. They've allowed and in some ways forced professors to relegate teaching to a level of "by the way". Students pay and go to university to learn from teachers, not to subsidize researchers. There's something very wrong when a University places more emphasis on research than in teaching students

<comment><USER36> There are research universities and teaching universities. If you want to go to a college that focuses on teaching calculus 101 they exist though I don't know why as a budding mathematician you'd want to sprint full speed away from doing real mathematics.

The research has to be done somewhere. It's supposed to be subsidized by the public or private donations but funding is regularly and methodically cut so the only remaining reliable source of income is tuition which ends up having to pay for both.

Not an ideal situation but unless Americans start deciding research is worth paying money for (unlikely) it's what we have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What a great and inspiring letter from someone who is clearly under significant public and private pressure; I'm sure he was repeatedly advised not to go public in any way by friends, enemies and lawyers on both sides.

My favorite part is where he imagines the Math department is "jolly cross".

<comment><USER38> I agree. He really knows how to substantiate his grievances with choice words and data. I don't know any of the players involved in this drama but the letter was so damning that I could not help but look up profiles of Stark, Ogus, Christ, and Evans just to get a picture of their faces.

Politically, this was an excellent play - with his popularity among students, the Math department (and in particular, named faculty) will have a really tough time getting students in their classes.

I don't know the full story and obviously his perspective is biased, but all the same, I pity the fool who has to battle his wits.

<comment> lloyd-christmas I tried to be a skeptic reading his commentary, but I definitely drank his kool aid. That being said... as a healthy dose of realism, nobody will care next year. The administration can easily just ignore this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > The Mathematics Department uses its privileged role in providing service > teaching for undergraduates in all the sciences and social sciences to > justify its size and all the trappings that go with that like funding and > office space.

The above is a very important point and deserves attention in its own right. What it means is that because the requirements for graduation in a particular liberal arts major include several math courses, this gets the math department lots of headcount which translates to budget.

The key lesson for students is to try to avoid those "cattle car" classes with tons of students competing to meet a requirement that they are not interested in learning about.

</comment><comment><USER40> Not the only skeleton in the UC Berkeley Mathematics closet - see the story of Jenny Harrison [0] for another example.

[0] - [http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_j...](http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_jenny- harrison)

<comment><USER41> I had her for a class a few years ago, and like Coward, she was an excellent teacher who didn't care for the norms of the department. She was actually working on a new textbook at the time which was all about teaching the fundamentals of mathematics in a completely different way to give a better foundation for higher level mathematics. At the time, she had just taken a small group of non-STEM majors, and using her book, got them to graduate level math in just 1.5 years. Sadly I haven't seen the book released, but one can only hope the work of these talented individuals will not be hindered by silly politics.

<comment><USER42> I am glad you enjoyed my course, archmikhail. The last chapter of my text needs to be written. I will do that as soon as the department lets me teach H110 again. Birkhauser accepted it years ago, but we need a new contract. I could just sell it on amazon as an ebook, I suppose. I have gotten a flurry of emails asking for copies this morning. This is very encouraging, but I have to finish it before releasing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> His lectures are up on Vimeo, eg: [https://vimeo.com/140890185](https://vimeo.com/140890185)

From what I can see, he's a talented lecturer. He's articulate, genuinely interested in his students' understanding, and has some uninhibited dramatic enthusiasm that keeps the audience engaged.

He's doing a start-up centred on teaching skills for lecturers/professors; I wonder if behind the scenes the issue is simply about that?

Not sure how this particular argument will play out (yikes, it's quite public now though) but he's a smart chap and should land on his feet.

<comment><USER44> I don't know much about this guy's story, but I do remember from my time as a UC Berkeley undergrad that being a popular lecturer with the students is a sure fire way to get yourself unpopular with the tenured staff.

The brass professors at UC Berkeley seemed to be catty like that in all departments. They didn't like it when some young gun became more popular than them for teaching the same topics that they'd been teaching for a generation. Which makes sense, popular professor sell things and get rich, and they way they saw it, they weren't going to lose to some young upstart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> As someone who is not going to berkley, but studying higher level math.

Alexander, if your students are giving you a 6.4-6.5 out of 7, for calc 1a and 1b, you're a beast.

</comment><comment><USER46> _In addition there are further mischaracterizations of my teaching in my personnel file that I am prevented from sharing because the University claims it is their property._

That's worth confirming with a lawyer. AFAIK most states require employers to let you copy your personnel file.

<comment><USER47> My guess would be that you're allowed to copy, but they probably don't want you to publicly share what you've copied. Whether that desire for you not to disclose is legally enforceable should be confirmed with a lawyer, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I had Ogus at Berkeley! He still looks like a lemming. :)

Keep in mind this is only one side of the story.

Also, if you are going to come out against Berkeley, Klein Perkins, or someone else equally powerful then please make sure you can easily prove every allegation. It's the best way to avoid defamation lawsuits.

My lawyer said "It's not slander if it's true." ;)

</comment><comment><USER49> Curious. Was it ever considered that this may be fallout from the decision to hold classes during the campus AFSCME strike back in late November 2013, justification outlined in an impassioned e-mail sent to students? see: [http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-09-02/cal-lecturers-email-students-goes-viral-why-i-am-not) and the collection of heated pro/con responses which followed. Absolutely bizarre. Reminds me of the dismissal of the physicist David Bohm from Princeton in early 1950s orchestrated by then president Harold Dodds, a rabid anticommunist with close ties to the McCarthy era State Department who viewed Bohm as a Marxist unionist. May be what goes around comes around. Does Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks and a majority in the Math department happen to have close ties to Sacramento and AFSCME? If so the real rationale for proposed dismissal may be that the professor is deemed insufficiently Marxist unionist by the powers that be. Just glad I had the financial resources to eschew that institutional quagmire.

<comment><USER50> Doubtful. I was a student during that time and I can't recall _any_ math or CS (or STEM) classes that cancelled a class session because of the strike. The most that happened was some teaching assistants cancelled their section for one day.

<comment><USER49> Started reading Peat's 'Infinite Potential - The Life and Times of David Bohm' yesterday and came across this post on HN. Knowing of the stir created by the 2013 e-mail, the possible parallels with events associated with Bohm's dismissal from Princeton (although for seemingly opposite political reasons) were striking. As an irrelevant aside, Bohm's 3-world intentionality/stochastic/objectified space hypothesis is interesting because it reduces the Schrödinger cat metaphor to a useful fiction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _This question is one that I asked, and in response it was made very clear to me what is meant by the norms of the department. It means teach from the textbook._

Incidentally, some of the _worst_ instructors I've had were these. It doesn't inspire much conference when you see one whose teaching involves verbatim copying from the textbook onto the blackboard and making serious errors on the parts where he/she doesn't. The impression I get from those is basically "if you can't even figure out clearly what you're doing, what makes you think you can teach us about it?" The best tended to be ones who didn't ever use a textbook at all.

Coward is such an ironic name for him, as from this article he is anything but a coward. I think he should find a better place to work where his skills are far more appreciated. That's what I did when I encountered a similar situation in computer science.

</comment><comment><USER52> He was previously in the news for "crossing a picket line":

[http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-09-02/cal-lecturers-email-students-goes-viral-why-i-am-not)

</comment><comment><USER53> Let me offer up another version of Dr. Coward's story: An employee is hired and does his job brilliantly in some aspects and along some metrics, but his employer has complaints in other areas, which are hard to read since we haven't heard their side. These issues are brought up with the employee in writing multiple times over the course of a year: September 2013, April 2014, and November 2014. Apparently, the employee does not address the issues and instead insists that he's doing a brilliant job and that the employer's criticism is really about him being too awesome. Employer decides that they don't want a rogue employee and fires him in October 2014, effective June 2016. Why such almost 2 years of lead time? Maybe it's contractual, but I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could fire him at the end of the academic year. I read this as the employer trying to get the employee to take them seriously and still giving him another chance to change. Now, in 2015, the employee obviously still doesn't care what the department thinks.

Not everyone who claims to be a misunderstood and persecuted genius actually is one. There are people who are brilliant in some areas, but unwilling to accommodate being part of a larger group and difficult to work with. In programming terms, imagine an extraordinary programmer who's unwilling to use the organization's standard programming language or version control. I'm not sure that the Berkeley math department is really any different in preferring a pretty good in all areas to someone brilliant in some, but flawed in others, and, most importantly, unwilling to change.

At first, I wondered why he was blowing up the whole issue and whether it would actually help. If part of the issue is in the level of preparation for science classes, then the administration is going to be just as unfavorable as the department. Then I noticed that he's started some kind of teaching-related company. So, the department told him to change or be fired and he decided he'd rather do the latter, but as long as he's going out, he might as well try to get some publicity for his company.

<comment><USER54> My read: math teaching @Berkeley is in fact horrible and this offended him. He was happy to shame the incumbents and refuse to submit to mediocrity. Naturally he'd prefer to keep his job and reform by example, but his compensation for being fired is that he can righteously expose the corruption on evidence of his firing (and knowing he had this leverage is why he was so uncompromising in pursuing good teaching).

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm 100% on the side of Berkeley's math department here. In my opinion, the way AC has gone about things reflects upon his personality and why he is (probably) disliked by members of the math department. Read through what he calls his "evidence" to support his claims and you will see that there is more than enough reason to doubt his claims.

All the comments about Berkeley not caring about undergraduate math education are far from reality. Sure there are a number of professors who don't take teaching seriously. But there are a large number of them who do, and are very good at it. Among them are Ogus, Hald, Christ, Evans, and Rezakhanlou, all named by AC as people having to do with his dismissal.

<comment><USER14> Hald in particular is everything Coward wishes he could be. He does a great job of teaching undergrad calculus in a way that is engaging while still meeting expectations of other departments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Yet another anecdotal proof that the idea of elite universities is not practically useful. I studied math in Germany and the quality as well as the level of lectures is mostly quite awesome.

</comment><comment><USER57> I hope they can work it out. It would be a shame to lose someone who loves teaching and who students appreciate. My 1A prof at Cal said openly (and with a dash of humor) that he was being forced to lecture and would rather do his research but that he periodically had to teach a class. I wonder if that was the accepted culture in the department and Coward broke a bit against the status quo.

<comment><USER35> Mine too!!!! Harbir Lamba at George Mason University called us all spoiled brat's, and said he hated teaching, and would much rather be doing research. There was no humor in his voice whatsoever. He really hated being forced to teach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I found at George Mason University that my best professors were lectures, adjunct, and those not on a tenure-track. I recall my first calculus professor loudly proclaiming his disdain for teaching. He told us explicitly that he would much rather be doing research, he hated teaching, but because he was tenured, there's absolutely nothing we could do about it. So we could deal with it or find another class. He was the reason I didn't pursue mathematics at George Mason University, because I sadly realized that most of the department had the same feelings.

</comment><comment><USER58> This reminded me of my favorite professor who was also "a full-time lecturer".

Just sent him an email and cc'ed my prof. His address it linked from the root domain:

"Alex, I just read your letter "BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE UC BERKELEY MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT" <[http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMath...](http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html>) linked to from Hacker News <[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181>](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181>).

While I've never attended UC Berkeley, nor have we met, I was moved by your letter. It reminded me of one of my favorite professors in college, who was also "a full-time lecturer," as opposed to a professor that split time between research and teaching. The quality of teaching from a professor dedicated entirely on the pursuit of education is unsurpassed. This professor was well known/beloved and also had classes that would fill up quickly. Not sure if there was statistically significant evidence in this case, but wouldn't be surprised at a strong positive correlation between prior students and subsequent class performance.

Anyways, without hearing from the other side of the lecture, what happened to you sounds like some shit. Best of luck in your next pursuit. Good people like you shouldn't have to put up with nonsense bureaucracy like that."

</comment><comment><USER59> I applaud Mr. Coward for trying to stand up to the institution that is motivated by money and not academic performance. An institution that has blinded themselves to what education is supposed to be all about. Mr. Coward - if you are reading this: You can't succeed in your effort alone. If students like you as much as you say they do, you must rally them to your cause. Get the student council involved. You must get as many of these students and their parents involved and hopefully several of these parents hold political power or donate large sums of money to the institution. If you have the hard facts to support your argument, you must get the media involved as well. Trust me on this - you must make this bigger then it is and begin to get the higher ups concerned about not only money, but their reputation. If you do not get the students involved, you will lose. I was a graduate student at a large, respected University, and taught every semester for years. I had a great reputation among the majors who sought me out for their lab TA. However, when freshmen started coming in less and less prepared but with increased feelings of entitlement and the thought that there is no need to work hard for a good grade, my test means for my non majors course started declining. The institution wanted me to dumb my non majors course down and I resisted telling them that there are more students coming into this University that just don't bother working hard and expect to get a passing grade anyway. My means were fine years before and if anything, my teaching had gotten better and my tests had gotten slightly easier. I resisted, but I knew that I would never be able to survive in that environment without tenure. So, I changed my career path. I would have been a great teacher and I do miss teaching. But the system is currently designed to stamp out those who do not conform no matter how successful they are with their students.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm a bit puzzled by the statement that he is asking "campus authorities" to "overrule" his firing. Why would he want to continue working there, or, how could he expect to be able to work in a department after indicting it in this fashion? With this document hasn't he pretty thoroughly burned his bridges?

<comment><USER61> For the pleasure of teaching 400+ students a year who could all benefit from his instruction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Ratings from [http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1835732](http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1835732) might illuminate some of the back-story. Lots of unhappy reviews in there:

>He went off on so many tangents, nitpicked on random things and when it came down to it, taught the material rather poorly. I took his class with prior calculus knowledge so it was alright but for those that never had calc, it would've been so awful.

>Tries to teach math in a confusing essay format, and marks you down when you don't use his method correctly. Extremely arrogant and set on proving how his principles in teaching are the best. Class was very disorganized and grading until the very end of the course. Avoid taking a class with him if possible.

>Doesn't give homework, doesn't have a syllabus. Exams are a bunch of meaningless boring calculations. He's a genius but not a good teacher.

>He is a nice person, but not a good teacher. Instead of math, he spends most of the lecture telling you how to be a good person: he starts with telling you 'not to give up', and then discusses a mathematical problem(which is not tough) and gets stuck. For the rest the lecture, he will actually show you what 'not to give up' means.

There are also many positive reviews in there (more than negative ones), but they often focus on his charisma and dedication:

>Coward is an inspiration- he deeply cares about his students' learning and believes that you must be infatuated with your education. He really cares for his students and always asks the class if he's being clear.

> I have never had a Math professor who I truly admire - he changed that. The > level of interest he takes in the class is unmatched and he really wants his > students to do well. Rebellious, fun, helpful and unimaginably intellectual. > Best class at Cal so far.

</comment><comment><USER7> I looked up one of Alexander Coward's lectures here:

[https://vimeo.com/137661254](https://vimeo.com/137661254)

I was really impressed! He started with logic notation to explain the definition of a limit, which IMO is actually really important... do most lecturers cover this in an introduction to calculus?

I've heard a lot people complain on this forum that he didn't cover the material in the way that the math faculty liked. But this doesn't dumb down the material, this explains it in more detail!

Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe this is covered, but I don't seem to re all it in any calculus book I've seen. He was also very open about the text-book industry practice of making minor changes between editions just to sell new books. Maybe he fell afoul of them there as well.

</comment><comment><USER63>
        Having a Lecturer teach twice the number of students for
        half the money and do a fabulous job demolishes that
        argument, and that is why so many people conspired to make
        it not so, to mischaracterize my teaching, and do
        everything in their power to remove me.

</comment><comment><USER64> I went to Cal and I took Math 1A and I agree that the professors there don't give a fuck about engaging and motivating you. Math 1A is a weeder class and is meant to discourage dumb people from the sciences and push them into easier majors like Communications or PoliSci, etc.

</comment><comment><USER65> This helps me understand why someone like Dan Goldston left UC Berkeley to teach at San Jose State.

</comment><comment><USER66> Wow, this blows my mind, but it doesn't surprise me. I encountered similar frustrations while doing an excellent job in the Marine Corps. I've come to believe that virtually any bureaucratic institution will be weighted this way.

<comment><USER67> Agreed. He's describing an organization where the leaders are not actually interested in doing a good job. An organization that's not a true meritocracy. An organization where actually playing the game is more important than doing a good job.

Heartbreaking as it is, that describes most large organizations, and most small ones too. If you work at a place where the leadership supports you and truly wants you to do a good job, where the best people get promoted regardless of whether they're "playing the game" then you have found a rare place indeed!

I think that our education system was trying to teach me this all along, and I failed to learn it until I was in my 40s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> If he's this good sounds like it would make sense to build him an online platform for offering his classes over the Internet to the world rather than letting him suffer in that toxic environment. Let's set him free!

</comment><comment><USER69> I'll just be over here waiting on the other side of the story...

<comment><USER70> I have no dog in this fight, but his description lines up with my experience. I showed up at Cal in 2001 as a nerdy kid super-jazzed about math. I took Math 1A my first semester, and the lectures started with the professor turning his back to the class and proceeding to write proofs on the board for 90 minutes in indecipherable handwriting with little to no explanation. People would show up to class with pillows, no joke.

I got a middling grade (B+), but the experience was so bad it was the last math class I took. It took me seven years to fully realize my mistake and get back to working in line with my passions.

Anecdata I know, but at least one case where bad Cal math instruction derailed a trajectory.

<comment><USER7> I would love to have someone secretly record that lecture and put it on YouTube to shame the lecturer. I'm curious if someone has actually done this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Classic Sayre's Law:

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law)

<comment><USER50> I think the stakes are quite high. _If_ he is truly a superior lecturer, at stake is the calculus education of over 800 students _per year_ at one of the top schools in the nation, many of whom will be future scientists and engineers.

<comment><USER72> The stakes are perceived as low because it's not a life-or-death decision and nobody but math students at a single school care about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wonder if other universities are lining up to land him since he seems to be an excellent teacher. My guess is that it won't be the case since the problem is systemic. Hope I'm wrong, good luck to Mr. Coward.

<comment><USER55> More likely the opposite. Departments don't like people who generate this much drama for simply being let go. Why would anyone? This unfairly hurts Berkeley's reputation.

<comment><USER74> Why is this unfair?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He should come back to Sydney!

</comment><comment><USER75> Radical suggestion:

1\. Persuade Dr. Coward to teach at a community college, where his strong teaching abilities can enable a broad crew of would-be nurses, schoolteachers, etc., to succeed.

2\. Compel, by petition and other means, the Cal administration to grant credit for CoCo science and math college courses taught by persons with more than four years' faculty experience in Ph.D.-granting accredited institutions.

<comment><USER76> Did you even read the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This makes more sense why someone like Dan Goldston would leave Berkeley for San Jose State

</comment><comment><USER77> Does this guy have any video lectures? I'd like to watch and check him out.

<comment><USER78> An earlier comment has a video link...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372658)

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin Coward has justifiable grievances with the UCB mathematics department. It must be extraordinarily depressing to work hard at exposition of lower division mathematics to a class of otherwise largely unmotivated students, only to be fired for doing so.

Having said that, I am going to adopt a somewhat contrarian viewpoint. The math department fired Coward for deliberately and repeatedly subverting their requests to conform to departmental standards [1]. It is not surprising that behaving in a fashion that continuously pissed off senior faculty (with the power to fire or initiate the process of firing) got Coward fired.

Coward's student ratings were consistently high. Based on anecdotes, he sounds like an instructor I would love to have (he spontaneously derived a formula!).

However, this does not matter because Coward refused to participate in the system. What I term 'the system' is the set of departmental norms and standards that exist as they do for _very good reasons_. These reasons might not be understood by all actors.

My understanding of the state of the system is informed by the following: UCB is an institution that trains _thousands_ of students in mathematics annually. They have a large faculty [2]. The numbers of people involved imply that there is tremendous variation amongst students and instructors - in areas such as raw aptitude, experience, language proficiency and motivation. The benefits of systematizing the process of training in a university of Berkeley's size are manifold. The system has to exist the way it does in order to produce large numbers of adequately (and usually only adequately) educated people. The purpose of disallowing faculty from deviating from such standards is to allow the system to function independently of the people involved in it. There are many disadvantages to this approach, such as stifling lecturer creativity and disabling course-level optimisations (like a particular professor's vivid geometric intuition for something abstract).

I could enumerate the reasons the system exists as it does (at length) but do not have space here, so here is one example: Using a standard textbook means that course content is instructor invariant. This makes the level of training robust to shitty lecturers, who necessarily exist in any sufficiently large system. It gives students recourse to a standard reference they know is correct. It decreases the variation in quality of students. This is particularly important for co-requirements. It is a huge problem when course B depends on course A and students do not have a firm grip on course A. This happened to my class: we arrived in applied mathematics 3 with a totally broken knowledge of multivariable calculus.

Essentially, the system exists as it does to provide a lower bound for the quality of training. Some people will be incompatible with it. UCB should probably have been more gentle in their handling of Coward - he was 'suicidally depressed' \- but I say this with the benefit of hindsight.

[1] >> On September 22nd, 2013 he wrote in an email "But I do think it that it [sic] is very important that you not deviate too far from the department norms." On November 12th, 2014 he wrote "I hope that, on the basis of our conversation, you can further adjust to the norms of our department."

[2] [https://math.berkeley.edu/people/faculty](https://math.berkeley.edu/people/faculty)

[3] One might think that mathematics is mathematics, and any reference material on a topic will do. I can tell you from experience that this is false. A complex analysis novitiate trying to sort out what 'holomorphic', 'analytic' and 'complex differentiable' all mean will inevitably run into equivalent but different definitions.

<comment><USER7> If he is teaching mathematics successfully and well yo undergraduate students, then shouldn't they be the only actors who count? And if he is a staff member, perhaps they should explain why they require their procedures, even if most people seem to find them not only ineffective but demotivational?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Having actually taught (well TAed)in the UC Berkely math department I can say that generations of both graduate students (who have most of the contact with students) and professors have struggled to the best of their ability to teach calculus in an engaging and interesting way to their students. Now research talent and teaching talent don't always come together but there were plenty of dedicated and talented teachers. Dr. Coward is basically claiming that he is so amazingly talented (or that not one of the multitude of intro calc teachers over the years was competent) that he single handedly does the impossible and rises head and shoulders above all these other teachers.

Even though he quotes from the letter from the math department disturbingly selectively I think he gives away what is really going on in that quote:

"They also reveal some significant differences between your practices and what has been typical in our department [...] I hope and expect that you will be able to align more with our standards for the remainder of this semester and during the next academic year."

Surprise surprise, the students like the guy who doesn't make them learn (those in 16A/B aren't continuing on in a technical field but only take the course to satisfy requirements and/or because their counselors stress the importance of having math on your transcript).

If this isn't suggestive enough consider his statistics: his classes have 400+ students enrolled but the supposedly equivalent class taught by a faculty member only has 100. If he isn't cherry picking an 8am lecture (in which case we should be even more distrustful) this difference is so drastic as to be extremely suspicious. My experience TAing these very courses was that students were quite willing to put up with a bad lecturer (or poor TA in my case) to have a nicer schedule (leave earlier, avoid trudging back and forth etc..) but they were very cogniscent of even minor differences in supposed ease of grading and subject matter.

Besides, anyone who rights an open letter like this while supposedly appealing a deciscion is an ass who would be a nightmare to work with. Even if you (unwisely) believe he was unjustly terminated delibrately impugning the motives and integrity of the people he supposedly wishes to remain colleagues with is just a super asshole move.

I've met great teachers who were very dedicated to improving mathematics education. Every one of them avoided self-aggrandizement and did their best to share their approaches and experience with other educators. The mathematics department at UC Berkeley would be ecstatic if someone figured out how to teach intro calc content in a way that invigorated the students. Hell, it's almost a holy grail their as generation after generation of grad students (and professors) burn themselves out against students whose experiences in highschool have created an instinctive dislike of mathematics and the unshakable belief that math is about formulas and procedures (meaning they instinctively panic if a problem requires creativity...which is sadly what makes math interesting and fun).

\---

Look, I have big issues with the way UC Berkeley (and most other universities) teach intro calculus courses. It's the 21st century and no one is served by forcing uninterested students to learn computational techniques by _rote_ any computer mathematics system can easily accomplish. Either you are going to go into a technical discipline where having a conceptually grasp of integrals matters or you can just blindly plug them into a computer.

So give up making students memorize the various tests for series convergence, tricks for integrating etc.. Hell give up teaching computations at all in 16A/B. Slow it way the hell down and just do basic qualitative reasoning about functions, derivatives and integrals, e.g., focus on things like if we know the derivative is positive here what does that tell us about the function.

However, that choice to abandon the established curriculum is rightly something that needs to be handled by the department as a whole. Indeed, I suspect it would have long since been adopted if other courses (like intro econ...yet again not really for econ majors) didn't assume students had these tools. Changing the math curriculum in this way would first require other subjects change theirs...something that won't go over well and would take time.

<comment><USER79> > Surprise surprise, the students like the guy who doesn't make them learn

His students go on to do other courses. Those students do better in those courses than the students of his colleagues. Do you disagree with that?

<comment><USER55> Statistically insignificantly better. As tested by the chair of one of the top statistics departments in the country. Yet AC is convinced all these people are out to destroy his life. He is hired as a lecturer as part of an experiment to see if lecturers can teach calculus more effectively than permanent faculty. Statistics shows he isn't significantly better. Add to that the fact that he's disliked by the math department for personality issues, and there's really no reason to keep him.

<comment><USER13> Sure. But you do realize that means he teaches _at least as well_ as anyone else in the department, if not better. And he's beloved by his students (as evidenced by the evaluations).

So would you rather have a professor that teaches on par with the department and has strong rapport with his students, or a professor that teaches on par with the department and does not have strong rapport with his students?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> More rotten news from Berkeley. Just this week, it was revealed that the university administration decided a warning was sufficient punishment after a Title IX investigation revealed Prof. Geoff Marcy participated in a decade of abusive and harassing behavior.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/science/astronomer- apologi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/science/astronomer-apologizes- for-behavior.html)

<comment><USER81> > In June, the university concluded that Dr. Marcy had engaged in > inappropriate behavior with students, including groping them, kissing them > and touching or massaging them.

Very gross.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'm not sure if "complaining about getting fired" counts as "whistleblowing".

I'm not necessarily inclined to take this guy's side of the dispute just because I read it first.

<comment><USER83> I think this goes far beyond complaining about getting fired, and delves into the pernicious attitudes of the department's faculty. For example:

 _" Given the success I am having with students, one might think that the Mathematics Department leadership would be expressing curiosity about how I am achieving that success. Instead, Craig Evans [the interim chair of the department] in early 2014 asked me 'If you had a job at McDonalds and came along with all these new ideas, how long do you think you'd carry on working there?' The fact that the now Interim Chair of the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department should compare undergraduate education to fast food reveals everything you need to know about how students are regarded by the leading clique of men at the helm of the Mathematics Department of the number one public university in the world."_

Should faculty be punished for having new ideas about teaching (which happen to be successful[1], and well-liked by students)?

[1] _" My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was 0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with another instructor."_

<comment><USER12> Should departments have standards they expect their lecturers to enforce?

People would actively welcome new approaches to teaching math. It's fucking frustrating not getting through to your students or having them dislike the course. Most of the faculty has tenure and the focus is largely (but not entirely) on research. THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE ARE THREATENED BY HIS SUCCESS IS ABSURD.

He is succeeding in the truly obvious way. Lowering standards and making it easy for students to ace his class without the skills the university has deemed necessary.

If he was really so deeply gifted at teaching he could have just used the same final exam as another faculty member and taught his students that material. Why doesn't he?

<comment><USER84> I'm not sure you read the article correctly. He was asked to make his tests easier, and his students performed better in subsequent classes taught by different professors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> "Here is an email I wrote to my students in the Fall of 2013 that went viral, and was read by more than 1 million people."

That's a very strong statement for a mathematician to make. I wonder how he can prove that 1 million people "read" it.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is ludicrous - I was taught by Professor Ogus, and he had an excellent grasp of didactic techniques. He dedicated a large amount of time to having me come in during office hours so I could do a mock lecture before it was actually delivered, and I could compare notes when he delivered his. Yes, he was exacting and demanding, but it made me a better student.

The fact that a lecturer with low standards happens to be popular with students is irrelevant. The math department has a large presence on campus because it is the best in the world. My advisor was Robin Hartshorne, and I took advantage of courses with a Fields medalist. That sort of department has standards that it enforces because it demands quality, not coddling.

This is all underlined by the fact that the lecturer in question states he has a breakdown of some sort due to the stress of the position. We're to take this seriously? I feel for the man, but it clearly indicates that the criticisms might be divorced from reality.

If you're too weak to excel in an environment filled with the world's top researchers, and where you are responsible for your own achievement, then find another school where they let prop comics teach math and spoon feed you.

<comment><USER7> I'm still learning mathematics. I'm in fact largely teaching myself. I can assure you, though, that a Fields medalist is not required to teach me Differential Calculus (Math1A). In fact, I'd prefer it if they didn't.

<comment><USER86> Likely you don't care because you have no intention of pursuing mathematics in a research capacity at any point. However part of the experience for those who care more about math than an easy "A" is ensuring you have access to amazing role models early on. People who take an interest in you, and spend some of their incredibly valuable time shepherding you through a unique, beautiful field.

Where is your sense of wonder, or your desire to know these exceptional people while observing how they think? How myopic. If you're at Berkeley, you're wasting your time being bitter and hopefully you'll transfer. That isn't a personal criticism, so much as recognizing that a top research university isn't for everyone, and the unique resources and access it provides should be given great weight or you shouldn't be using them.

Professor Ogus cared, as did almost all of my professors. I was amazed I could take classes and spend time with people who are shaping our understanding of mathematics. It's the same shock you have when you go to the SFMoMA and realize that some of the greatest post-Impressionist works in the world are sitting entirely unprotected in front of you. It impacted me, it impacted the way I think, and I will always value what they did for me. An adjunct simply can't provide that experience, and if you're just looking to pass Math 1A go to a community college for those credits. If you want to make a mark and know some of the brightest minds of our age, go to Berkeley.

<comment><USER7> No, that's not it. My reasoning is very simple - in all likelihood an extremely advanced mathematician will be incredibly bored by very simple mathematics, and not want to spend much time explaining it clearly.

Unless they are that rare commodity - the extraordinarily talented mathematician who can remember what it was like to struggle with the basics and who is able to keep the teaching of concepts simple enough it doesn't go over the head of the class, or go too fast - then I would prefer to be taught by someone who cares about imparting the basics of mathematics in an understandable and reasonably paced way.

I've been to lectures where a clearly brilliant mathematician was teaching basic maths, and it nearly turned me off maths. You speak of killing wonder: well, there you have it.

(P.S. I'm an Australian who will never get the opportunity to go to Berkeley, and I'm definitely not bitter! If I was doing highly advanced math, then in that case I'd want a Fields medallist teaching me!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Keep in mind how you would handle this situation if you managed a large and well-established dev team with procedures and policies you worked hard on and are proud of.

It is not enough for a team member to be fantastic in a solo role. I'd be more interested in hearing from other faculty than I would from the students, who don't much experience actually working with Coward.

<comment><USER88> His entire job was teaching students, so I don't give a rat's ass about what the rest of the faculty thinks if the students like him and perform well.

<comment><USER89> Right. I was skeptical in first few paragraphs, since students' teaching assessments do have their flaws. But if there was a statistically significant improvement in his students performance in later classes, then the man's doing his job.

Yes, there could still be confounding factors. He is seen as an enjoyable lecturer, and students who care about their classes enough to select the better lecturer might be better students. But still.

If you want to continue the analogy to software engineering, the modules he's producing are students, and they are meeting their specifications (later performance) quite well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Unpopular opinion, but I think he's being overly dramatic.

"My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was 0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with another instructor."

0.17. Not even a whole point.

Student evaluations don't really count since those are highly subjective. Students tend to hastily mark whatever they want on them because they want to get the evaluations over with as soon as possible. If a professor is somewhat amicable and invests a moderate level of effort into his/her teaching, then it's not hard to score at least a 6 on average on these evaluations (as students would mark either 6 or 7 in such a case).

Anyway, his performance as a lecturer is irrelevant to his argument. There are three criteria that junior faculty are assessed against in order to become tenured at UC Berkeley (or, otherwise, dismissed): teaching quality, reputation and research. Funny how he left out the last bit. He hasn't published anything since 2013.

And the university is probably firing him to hire another professor at a cheaper salary in order to save money, contrary to his belief that the university is firing him because of disagreements with his teaching philosophy. Universities tend to do this to professors who don't have much research potential and don't teach specialized, upper division courses. The UC system is crippled financially, so departments are more inclined to carry out dismissals of non-tenured professors who don't publish much and who solely teach lower division courses. Non-tenured professors can be fired at will. That's just another day in the life of academia.

The part about the micro-managing harasser and treatment of women, staff and lecturers is definitely worrisome, though. But we need to be careful about believing in these implications absolutely because of Coward's state of mind at the moment. He has already blown the quality of his teaching out of proportion.

<comment><USER91> He isn't employed as a research professor. He's employed as a lecturer. Berkeley does have a lecturer position with security of employment (commonly called lecturer SOE or teaching professor). These positions are evaluated on teaching rather than research. I don't know how common it is in other departments, but I know the EECS department employs several teaching professors (which means many classes, especially 61A and 61B, are taught by professors whose primary job is teaching).

<comment> Ar-Curunir The math department here traditionally doesn't hire long-term lecturers, as mentioned in one of the email chains Coward attached.

<comment><USER7> That's a pretty poor reflection on the math department!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ghidra Capabilities – Get Your Free NSA Reverse Engineering Tool [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rsaconference.com/writable/presentations/file_upload/png-t09-come-get-your-free-nsa-reverse-engineering-tool_.pdf <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19315273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19315273)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone created a discord or IRC for this yet? I'm keen on learning a tool like this, and would love to be able to discuss it with others. If anyone wants, I will, but if that's a bad idea then let me know and I won't. Just looking to learn from others more experienced than myself!

<comment><USER4> I would join in if something like this existed. I'm still a beginner though, so I wouldn't be able to provide a lot of guidance on how to use anything.

<comment><USER3> Do you think I should put one up?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps a freenode channel? ##ghidra seems to be available.

<comment><USER3> I set up the discord!

[https://discord.gg/RcSBc6](https://discord.gg/RcSBc6)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A slight offtopic question but related to this release: if you were the CEO of Hex-Rays/Hopper/Binary Ninja etc, what would you do about the release of Ghidra? It will clearly impact your business and it even might be better than your current product.

So how do you respond to Ghidra? Is there a way to leverage it?

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like that thanks to Sleigh, adding support for decompiling additional IAs will be rather easy. I can barely believe how straightforward it looks, just looking at the code in the Processors directory. Some IAs there don't even need the Java code, to be supported.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how it integrates a built-in _binary diff tool_. Version Control basically lets you watch a binary as it evolves over time. This can be used to check if bugs have been patched, to inspect new code for bugs (which are often less well-tested than existing code), and to try to work out what recent patches have fixed (so you can target older versions with new exploits). IDA doesn't ship with such a feature, and plugins which do implement it are kinda clunky, so I'm excited to see what the version control feature will bring.

I am also curious as to what was _left out_ of the public release. It's clear that not everything was included (even though there's a lot here).

</comment><comment><USER9> Reviews of it seem alright. Still have yet to see the source code added to the repo :)

<comment><USER10> Isn't the source code zipped up alongside the binaries?

<comment><USER11> For Java, not for native code. Fortunately we have Ghidra to look at itself?

<comment><USER12> > Fortunately we have Ghidra to look at itself?

The all-time classic "Reflections on Trusting Trust"[1] seems relevant again here.

[1] [https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p7...](https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

<comment><USER13> You're welcome to use Hopper/IDA Pro/Radare/Binary Ninja…</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Media for Thinking the Unthinkable (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/ <comment><USER2> Bret Victor is the modern day equivalent of Alan Kay. Hopefully in a decade we will see the fruits of his ideas everywhere in tomorrow's software and machines.

<comment><USER3> Maybe. I find his talks fascinating and energizing (he's clearly a sharper guy than me), but Dynamicland feels like the ornithopter of ubiquitous computing. It will be cool, clever and instructive - but why mess around with all that paper and dots when AR will do that and more?

<comment><USER2> I didn't mean to suggest Bret's projects and his output will literally manifest as-is in the future. I don't want paper dots or 80's style dynabooks in my living room. My intention was to say that I hope his ideas are catalysts for the next generation's innovators like Alan Kay's ideas were.

<comment><USER4> My main criticism of Victor is that his software demos overshadow the concepts. They're extremely flashy and don't recenter the main thesis.

And the concepts themselves are more like popularizations of the Engelbart-Kay dialectic than an original perspective.

Despite that, I reference his talks fairly often, so I guess this is a case of "Thanks, I hate it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a well-hidden note in the footer that is well worth a read.

[http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/note.ht...](http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/note.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been thinking about this exact same problem. I also think that unthinkable for one person is not necessarily unthinkable for another - because people tend to create their own mental models, however robust or limited, to help them understand things. Sometimes the reason I have a difficult time learning something is simply because I haven't found the right mental model.

Oh, and human language is a subpar medium to transfer thoughts and ideas.

The effects of finding new mental models can be profound. It spurs advances in science but probably also has the potential to reposition our thinking when it comes to more abstract concepts like existence, god, etc. I think we can become an overall wiser species by searching for the mental models that fit us best.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really did not understand what the DynamicLand is about. I get that vaguely it is a place to think physically and share ideas. But how will it be implemented concretely ? For example lets say i want to learn about aerodynamics or electromagnetism. The only possible way i could think is to do the math and think about the equation mostly in solitude. How would DynamicLand change the learning ?</comment>


"Fallen obelisks, pillars of light, the crystals are enormous..." - <AUTHOR> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/crystal-giants/shea-text

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of a level from Lemmings.</comment>


Show HN: Build a Python REST API in 5 Mins with Flask and Arrested - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/python-rest-api-toolkit/build-a-python-rest-api-in-5-minutes-c183c00d3465 <comment><AUTHOR> We released Arrested ([https://arrested.readthedocs.org](https://arrested.readthedocs.org)) a few weeks. This is a follow up post covering the basics and marks the beginning of series of weekly posts covering lots of different topics relating to RESTFul API design in Python.

If you have any questions please ask!

<comment><USER2> IMHO, if you used the space you waste on the "clickbait" for an explanation of what a user might learn when they

 _Before we get stuck into creating a new endpoint I'd recommend you take a look through the code we generated above to familiarize yourself with some of the components of Arrested._

you'd have a better introduction article. I'm not going to install cookiecutter and run through the the commands just to get context necessary to understand _your first introductory article_. Is it really that complicated to set up that you need cookiecutter?

E.g. it takes until after that point that you get to "Btw, that set up a database as a datastore", which is a fairly important part of the equation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi detaro.

Thanks for the reply. I can't disagree with your points. I should be clearer about my usage of the cookiecutter template right from the start over my poor attempts at being funny :D

I'll have a think about re-shuffling the content.

Thanks again</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What CI/CD tools do you use for your small software biz/SaaS projects? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I start a new software project I like to build out a CI/CD process. Typically, I would spin up Jenkins, SonarQube, OWASP Zap and other ancillary tools depending on the type of development.
But lately, I've realized what a headache dealing with managing all of this is and I end up spending less time being productive and more time messing with these tools.
I've been playing with various hosted CI/CD systems but most of them seem to be too simplistic, too expensive, or both.
I really like the idea of GitLab-CI and their auto-devops. My main issue is that as far as I can tell, the deployments require Kubernetes. And while I am the biggest K8s fanboy for the corporate world, for a smaller project I think it is way overkill.
CodeShip looks like a strong contender with being able to build out docker-compose like sets of containers to use in your pipelines. I haven't played around with this one enough to see if you're able to interact between containers (i.e. scan the resulting image after a docker build).
Drone.io looks promising, but it is self-hosted and I'd really rather a hosted solution.
I'm curious what other people are doing for their own projects. <comment><USER2> Use k3s, you have the equivalent of docker-compose spinning in less then 5s.

</comment><comment><USER2> Gitlab-CI. But only for Dev, not for actually controlling the production.</comment>


Ask HN: Does logical thinking attenuate emotions? - <AUTHOR> I believe that, a few years ago, I read an article that claimed that activity in regions of the brain associated with rational thinking tended to be correlated with less activity in other regions associated with emotions.
Anecdotally, I feel that, after I have been focusing on a technical project for a prolonged period of time, it's more difficult for me to empathize with others.
Did I generate a false memory and confirmation bias, or is this actually a thing? <comment><USER2> I think that, since a person can give full attention to only one thing at a time, you might well be exclusively focusing on your thinking and ignoring your feelings. It is not uncommon for people to use their intellectual faculties in this way... millions of techy nerds have done the same thing, sometimes for a large part of their lives.

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment contains no substantial evidence whatsoever. I wasn't looking for a personal diagnosis, I was looking for an answer to my question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hosting my WordPress blog entirely on Amazon S3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slowping.com/index.html%3Fp=76.html <comment><USER2> Holy cow, $60/month for one VPS strictly used for educational projects? You can find and build 10 VPS's (US based) on <http://www.lowendbox.com> for less than that, granted you wont be on Amazon's network, but for small projects and testing distributed services they are great.

<comment><USER3> A $15/month micro would likely have sufficed, and you can get that down to about $8/month with a reserved instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice hack.

However you really should look into static website generators such as Jekyll, Octopress or Hyde. They provide a much cleaner interface for that kind of stuff.

<comment><USER5> I'm a big fan of Mynt (<http://mynt.mirroredwhite.com/>) - it's very simple and easy to understand, but is powerful enough to do just about anything you need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting hack. Werner Vongels, CTO of Amazon, wrote about how he did a similar thing, hosting his blog (albeit not a Wordpress one)on S3:

[http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2011/08/Jekyll- amazon-s3...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2011/08/Jekyll- amazon-s3.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not host it on a mini-vps with the wordpress install but use supercache and force it to always use the "logged out" copy (and don't allow registered users).

Then it bypasses wordpress and php entirely via htaccess and becomes entirely static.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm, the search should be 'fixed' too. That, along with getting rid of most plugins, and the comments, means that WordPress is only retained for its moderate flexibility and admin interface.

As people say, static generators along with a small toolkit of your own will probably produce better results. But what is proposed is a compromise between an already started job and a good cost-scalability ratio, though…

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool but the URL structure seems crappy from an SEO standpoint. I wonder if there's any flexibility there when generating static files from WP.

</comment><comment><USER10> important note: you are not hosting a wordpress blog on s3. you are hosting a static dump of files on s3. move along. nothing to see here.</comment>


Astronomers discover first Thorne-Żytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star - <AUTHOR> http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/06/04/astronomers-discover-first-thorne-%C5%BCytkow-object-bizarre-type-hybrid-star <comment><USER2> This is one of the things I most love about the process of science: things predicted by a theory are posited to exist, and subsequently discovered, matching the prediction to such amazing degrees. T-Ż Objects, gravitational lenses, the Higgs boson, _& c_, are all examples of how well we understand our universe.

<comment><USER3> that shows one more time that the Universe follows the, relatively, simple laws we'd discovered so far. Why? I mean a whole notion of "physical law" as uniform principle applicable through the Universe... Why "c" is "c" everywhere? Instead of say interaction speed being limited by 0.7c here and 1.5c there with change happening abruptly discontinuous and unpredictable (of course may be this is what really happening, and it is just our perception of physical world that is "smoothed" and regularized out...)

<comment><USER4> It's something analogous to Occam's razor combined with the principle of least surprise applied at a very large scale.

Given our observation of the 'laws' locally the assumption that they hold universally is the simplest explanation. It would require something a lot more complex than what we generally observe for such laws _not_ to hold universally.

The places where the laws break down (big bang, inside black holes (do they) and other extremities) are as far as we're concerned not places we are likely to visit and are nice examples of how forceful you'd have to be to get out of the set of laws that we observe locally. It's probably safe to say that any place where the universally observed laws do not hold are places where energy levels are in play that we'd do best to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's an earlier HN thread on the possibility of these objects. It contains some good explanatory links: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020517)

<comment><USER5> Here's an explanation of how these objects can remain stable I had posted previously, for folks that don't want to go through the whole other thread:

Because the density of the neutron star and the Red Giant are so different (average Red Giant density is about the same density as water), the neutron star can keep a distinct structure/orbit for 1000 years or so. When it gets to the core, fusion occurs in a halo around the neutron star instead of through the normal sort of fusion you'd get in a Red Giant core. This leads to a different ratio of nuclear isotopes, which is how you can determine these objects aren't typical Red Giants.

The resulting objects survive around 70 million years before the neutron star core absorbs enough mass to turn into a black hole. However, the predicted rate of birth/death of these objects indicates there may be a few of these in the galaxy at any given time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Url changed from [http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/star-within-a- star...](http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/star-within-a-star-weird- stellar-hybrid-discovered-140604.htm), because the colorado.edu post looks like the announcement closest to the original source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think more than anything, research like this proves that if a particular type of Object, no matter how bizarre-sounding, is not ruled out by theory, then it will be eventually found in the Universe somewhere.

The Interstellar drives cannot get here fast enough! What else is out there?

</comment><comment><USER8> Gee, where's a graph of temperature and density as a function of radius? GOT to be a super wild graph!

</comment><comment><USER9> The part of me who played too much Star Control II hopes this means that if we've found a TZO out there, we might find TZO crystals on Pluto someday :)</comment>