Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cognitivescience

Help me take control of my education! Law, cognitive science...

macg02 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:27:22 -0800

Help me take control of my education! Law, cognitive science... Hi! Long time reader, first time asker. I'm 22, Irish and have studied up to now Law and German as an undergraduate. I've just had a pretty rough experience during a year abroad in Germany, the net result of which is that I have to repeat a year back home.

That has to do with some unrelated personal issues, which I'm dealing with now (finally...!), but it was made a lot worse by the feeling I'm losing control of my education.

Ok, so I chose to study law, against the advice of my parents who thought I'd be more philosophically or linguistically inclined. At the most anxious point over the past year I thought about packing it all in and starting again with computational linguistics.

That's getting at where I want to go, but I then don't want to abandon law totally.
I think the law/computational linguistics choice represents two sides of what I'm ultimately trying to get at - the nature of argumentation, and its implications/uses.

I don't want to abandon law totally... It's just I don't want to study 'just' law...

Further, I have, with little consistency, tried to learn in my spare time (for 'learn,' replace: reading a few popular science books), about persuasion, linguistics, jurisprudence, cognitive science, rhetoric, logic, economics, psychology, yadda yadda. The whole learning on my own gambit worked in the past, especially with languages, but I was studying those languages at school, working towards exams, learning on my own because class was boring. Now there's no structure to my self-directed learning, and no goal in sight.

It feels like I'm trying to do it backwards - if I was in America I'd study liberal arts first, with all those cool things like cog sci, lingusitics, languages; satisfy my curiosity, and then go on to law school...

So do I try and quell my dillettante-ish quest to learn everything to do with language and logic, and just get on with studying law?
Do I try and satisfy my lust for learning and keep on with studying those things at home, with little to show for it?
Or is there a post-graduate programme or field of studies I'm overlooking? I'm thinking of something like Symbolic Systems at Stanford (which seems more undergrad orientated) Would anyone even take me?

I'd love to do like Joseph Campbell and spend 5 years reading intensively in a shed in the wilderness, but I'm dealing with anxiety/add issues; I really think I'd fall apart without more structure and short term goals...

Thanks if you've read all of this! I'm driving myself crazy trying to tie these things together in some kind of coherent, worthwhile sense. Part of this is definitely me upset that *maybe* I'm not as smart and successful as I imagined myself to be, but I think I could do well if I got reenchanted by education. I could also just try and get by in the real world, but education does mean a lot to me.

Bonus points if you can suggest cool futuristic fields of study, and how to get at them - you know, neural networks, ontologies, natural language programming (all this stuff has to have links with law) - I'd even like to try programming, but as alluded to, I don't think I could do it on my own; I'd need structure: it would just become one more thing amongst all the other cool learning vying for attention. I'd prob start, then drop it after being distracted by a shiny penny and deciding numismatics is what I *really* want to study..

Thanks

MRes? MSc? MPhil? WTF?

tickingclock — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:50:02 -0800

Canadian interested in UK graduate schools, but thoroughly confused by the different conventions used across the Atlantic! Please hope me! I have a BSc in cognitive science from a Canadian university and would like to pursue graduate studies in a related field at a UK university; ultimately, I am interested having a career in research, either in academia or industry. The graduate application process is big and scary, though, and I am further intimidated by the different terminology that is used across the Atlantic.

1. From what I've read, graduate studies for both Master's and Ph.D. fit under the umbrella term of "postgraduate"; is this correct?

2. What is the typical graduate study track in the UK? In Canada, students generally complete a Bachelor's, then a Master's, then a Ph.D.; is this similar to what is typically done in the UK? I wanted to check, because I heard that in the US, students typically do not get the intermediary Master's.

3. Assuming that I need a Master's degree, which of the following is the most appropriate for continuing to a Ph.D: MRes, MSc, and MPhil? What is the distinction between them? Are some of these degrees perceived to be more prestigious than others?

4. I did pretty well on both the general and subject GRE, scoring 750 or higher on all sections. If possible, I would like to include this information somewhere on my application as the graduating average from my Bachelor's was okay, but not great (A-). Is this a good idea? If so, where would I be able to include such information? I am guessing that UK schools don't generally care about GRE scores.

Bonus. If you have recommendations for good cognitive science programs or some general tips for a Canadian expat in the UK, please send them my way!

After some Googling, I have a rough idea of what I should do (i.e., look at postgraduate research programs), but it would be great to get some clear answers from people and confirm that I am looking in the right direction. I don't really have people I can ask about this sort of thing, so I look towards the wisdom of the hivemind. Thanks in advance!

I need examples of really bad research.

tickingclock — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:35:23 -0800

I am looking for examples of really bad research. I am the teaching assistant for an undergraduate research methods course and I am collecting examples of some really bad research to show students. These experiments can be bad in any number of ways: bad design, faulty reasoning, misuse of statistics, poor writing, and so forth.

So, MetaFilter, do you have a favourite example of bad research? If you have recommendations for blogs or websites that address issues like this, that would be great, too. (I recently came across a nice blog discussion on a paper that claims that global warming causes suicide rates to increase...)

These examples are meant to be fun for the students, so the more cringe-worthy, the better. Bonus points if they are related to cognitive science.

Thanks in advance!

Getting into Grad School with a substandard GPA

Alex404 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:16:43 -0800

I'm looking for advice on apply to grad school along the lines of Computer Science/Cognitive Science. Major problem: Low CGPA blues. I've reviewed some of the previous threads on this topic, and they've been helpful. However, I don't think the overwhelming sense of panic that wells up on a regular basis in me will be assuaged without some personalized advice, so I'd appreciate anyone who knows the ropes on what it takes to get into grad school to weigh in on this. The short of it is that when I finally graduate in two years, I hope that I can get my GPA up to a 2.7. Here's the long of it:

Flew threw high school getting a 90 average without ever doing a shred of work. Got into the University of Toronto.
Went. Recieved a CGPA of .73 in my first year. Dropped out. Moved to British Columbia for two years. Had fun. Came back.

At this point I still didn't know what I wanted to do, and still didn't know how to study. Flew threw another three years of random courses. When it finally dawned on me that I really, really, love academics, that I've assumed all my life that I was going to go to grad school, and that I was royally fucking up, I changed my tune. At this point I had 15 credits under my belt with a CGPA of 1.7.

After having taken courses from roughly 12 different departments, I decided that I would pursue cognitive science and artificial intelligence, which means that, since I do want to graduate before I'm 30, I had to get a computer science degree in three years. Over the last academic year, I scored a 3.9. I stumbled with some summer courses that I was taking, only scoring a 3.0, which is probably what has caused the latest cycle of panic and depression, leading me to post here.

So... some questions. Assuming I can get straight As for the next two years, am I still fucked?

I'm pretty sure I can get stellar recommendations, because I'm always very involved in my classes, and usually come off as knowing exactly what's going in.

I've also been told by some follow students that U of T is notorious for marking very hard, and that some grad schools do note this. I find this somewhat dubious, but I guess, in general, does anyone know if U of T rings a positive note with admissions?

I could go on like this for a while (and am trying very hard to restrain myself), but really I'd just appreciate any information on how best to improve my chances on getting into a good masters program. (Any specific information on the nature of those few cognitive science departments in the world get bonus marks)

Recommend me some recent books on cognitive science.

handee — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:24:21 -0800

Can anyone recommend any good, recent popular science (or undergrad/grad level) books about the way in which our brains work? I'm up-to-date with the computational side of things. But my batchelor's was 10 years ago now so I am aware that neuroscience, psychology and philosophy will all have moved on. I'm thinking along the lines of "Consciousness Explained" (Dennett, '92), "How the Mind Works" (Pinker, '99), "In the palaces of memory" (Johnson, '92). But more recent. Like, at least this century.

Linguistics and Cognitive Science

tranceformer — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 10:40:18 -0800

What sorts of things has linguistics added to the field of cognitive science? Im looking for concrete examples of ideas and concepts that the field of linguistics has contributed to the field of cognitive science. Just a basic idea of the sorts of things that linguists theorize about how the mind works, the sorts of research they do etc.

Associative memories

PercussivePaul — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:45:36 -0800

How is it that a song can trigger memories about a time in your life? I lived in San Francisco for a four-month period earlier this year and often listened to a particular radio station where they often played a particular song. Recently I was startled after hearing that song to suddenly be bombarded with memories of my time in the city. They were abstract memories, kind of like a flashback - images, sounds, smells, nothing concrete.

I told a friend of mine that lived with me in SF at the time and he reported the same experience - but not when he deliberately listened the song. He only had the 'flashback' effect once when the song came up unexpectedly in his playlist and he was half-listening to it. Further experimentation on my part confirmed that deliberately listening to the song does not induce a flashback.

I'm sure this is something that many people have experienced but does anyone know how this actually works, i.e. what's happening in our heads? Could you deliberately tie your present experiences to a song through repeated listening? And could you deliberately induce a flashback?

What is Interesting?

JZig — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:09:17 -0800

What makes something Interesting? Specifically, what is it about fractals, The Game of Life, the screensaver on my laptop that keeps distracting me (whoo, xscreensaver), and abstract art that causes me to stare at them for long periods of time without getting bored? It's not relevance or usefulness to my life, and it seems to be more than just the low level interest that, say, shiny things offer. Cognitive Science/Psychology and personal experience answers would both be appreciated!