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What Professors Really Mean... |
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Saturday, 20 April 1996 |
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What your professors "really" means when they say:
"This paper will omit a review of the more recent literature in
favor of..."
Translation "I don't know if anything has
been written on this since my dissertation."
"Various authorities agree..."
Translation "I overheard this in the hall."
"It is well established in the literature..."
Translation "I can't find the original
reference."
"It is suggested that..."
Translation "I wonder if..."
"The implications are clear."
Translation "The implications are not clear
(or I would have specified what they are)."
"It was observed that..."
Translation "One of my students noticed
that..."
"No discussion would be complete without reference to the
contributions of..."
Translation "I need another footnote on
this page."
"Of great theoretical and practical importance..."
Translation "Of interest to me..."
"Further research will be necessary for a complete
understanding of the implications..."
Translation "I can get another publication
out of this."
"This research has left many questions unanswered."
Translation "I didn't find anything of
significance."
"The typical results are shown."
Translation "The best results are shown."
"It is believed that..."
Translation "I think..."
"It is generally believed that..."
Translation "A couple of other folks think
so too."
"Correct within an order of magnitude..."
Translation "Wrong."
"Thanks are due to John Doe for assistance with data and to
Mary Smith for her valuable consultation..."
Translation "Doe did the work, and Smith
explained to me what it meant."
"This finding has not yet been incorporated into general
theory..."
Translation "Perhaps my next graduate
student will make sense of it."
"A statistical projection based on these results."
Translation "A wild guess."
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