Links

1. Nick Rowe: The Depressing Job of Grading Exams.

2. Thomas Anderson: Conference Reviewing Considered Harmful [pdf]:

   ... We present data to show that the variability between reviewers is often the dominant factor as to whether a paper is accepted. We argue that paper merit is likely to be zipf distributed, making it inherently difficult for program committees to distinguish between most papers. We use game theory to show that with noisy reviews and zipf merit, authors have an incentive to submit papers too early and too often. These factors make conference reviewing, and systems research as a whole, less efficient and less effective ...

3. The Triumph of the Nerds: "The internet has unleashed a burst of cartooning creativity." Both SMBC and XKCD make an appearance, and so do Oatmeal and Dinosaur comics.

4. SMBC Cartoons on a mathematician's fantasy fight with a physicist and Assburger's Syndrome.