Barry wrote: > ...and the most ego. I found this chart interesting, in that the longest > Ph.D. dissertations seem to be in the > fields most subject to opinion -- history, antrhopology, political science, > communication, english, sociology, > and education. It's almost as if the grad students in those fields are > already preparing for an academic life > characterized by the belief that the more they say about their opinions, the > more they can pretend they > aren't opinion.
There are so many things wrong with this, it's hard to know where to start. It displays the most incredibly lazy thinking. If you click anywhere on the chart, it will take you to the blog post it illustrates, and you'll find the point of it was not about what dissertation length in various fields signifies, but rather was about a data-mining formula the blogger had devised. Barry probably didn't even read the post, or he'd have seen the single paragraph that mentioned the potential significance of the results--only to dismiss it: "I’ve selected the top fifty majors with the highest number of dissertations and created boxplots to show relative distributions. Not many differences are observed among the majors, although some exceptions are apparent. Economics, mathematics, and biostatistics had the lowest median page lengths, whereas anthropology, history, and political science had the highest median page lengths. This distinction makes sense given the nature of the disciplines." IOW, the disciplines in question are what determine the page length. It takes more pages to do justice to topics in some disciplines than in others. That "ego" is involved is only Barry's fantasy, for which he has no evidence or basis. As is so often the case, he simply felt the need to take a dump and rant for the zillionth time about what he fondly imagines are the inflated egos of others--the implication being, as always, that he is blessedly free of such a flaw. Seems to me that having an obsession with others' egos is the most definitive possible sign that one has serious problems with one's own ego. But that's just my opinion. (snicker) > The chart reminds me of an old college professor of mine who had a big > rubber stamp that he would wield > mercilessly on papers he thought deserved it. It was the letters "B.S." -- > always stamped in red over > offending paragraphs or pages. When asked what the initials stood for, he > would smile and say, "Bloated > Syntax." Why Barry thinks this has anything whatsoever to do with his topic is...uh...unclear. "Bloated syntax" is a problem in academic writing generally, and it has to do more with poor writing skills than anything else. Whether "bloated syntax" characterizes longer dissertations in particular fields (at the single university from which the stats were derived) is unknown; you'd have to, you know, actually read them. So Barry, how long was your dissertation? > http://priceonomics.com/the-average-length-of-dissertations/ > http://priceonomics.com/the-average-length-of-dissertations/
