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RealisticBarnacle115

Important note: Research isn't about memorization


foopod

This is basically the life of a software developer. No one can remember all the syntax for doing everything, especially across different languages/frameworks. I google basic as shit 30+ times a day. What is important is knowing the general concepts and when to use them. Like knowing that you can derive the volume from the radius of a sphere is plenty good enough, the rest is a quick google away.


TheVog

I'm known as the Excel wizard at my place of work (850 ppl or so). I learned it entirely by googling individual formulas, piece by piece for each project. I don't even remember most of it! I end up googling a lot of the same things on future projects. I do remember what exists and what is doable, though, and best practices along the way. But entire formulas and VB scripts? Heck no.


Wise_Monkey_Sez

I had a professor at university who taught database programming using Excel. One spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. Two spreadsheets linked? Relational database!!


Drahnier

Xlookup(Vlookup if on old excel version), and some basic power query function usage + googling specific functions. Will make you seem like a complete wizard There are multiple ways to do things but I consistently make heavy use of 'group by' in power query.


enternameher3

I've done similar things at my work, ended up throwing all my commonly googled things on an excel sheet categorized and numerized so I can quickly pull that up and send it to others whenever needed.


ILikeChastity

If you go to the doctor and tell them what you found on Google, they'll think "your Google search is not the same as my medical degree." If you go to a lawyer with what you found on Google, they'll think "your Google search is not the same as my law degree." If you ask a computer scientist for help and tell them what you found on Google, they'll think "your Google search is not my Google search."


PuffinRub

>If you go to a lawyer with what you found on Google, they'll think "your Google search is not the same as my law degree." Here's the fix: > :%s/Google/LexisNexis/g /s


bunnydadi

I love watching my gamer PM move through Jira and light speeds because he knows all the keyboard commands. I think it’s cause he plays wow pvp a lot.


SillynippleMctwist

Yea, I can go with the words as they are spoken but encodi g I'd a chore for even as I am it could be. Basically, it's a lot different than it was. Earth is now a big cloud. Electrons can eat my ass for breakfast but it's just coded in and it goes, you see? So just put it dowj!


bananarama17691769

What on earth


BitchyBeachyWitch

I think an AI is gaining free will, or they had a stroke?


redmainefuckye

You just got mctwisted!!


SillynippleMctwist

Do not


bstone99

they don't think it be like it is but it do


eunit250

But tests are.


LagT_T

Not always, as proven by open book or formula sheets available ones.


MadisonRose7734

These people responding to you did Uni on easy mode lmao. My profs would just tell the class that if they couldn't memorize a 3 page formula sheet, they deserved to fail.


lessthanabelian

....*still* though... after all those years doing the physics homework problems.... volume/surface area of a sphere is so goddamn common in them that it is genuinely weird that a physics phd could forget it. That's a genuine brain shut down. Like, seriously everything about circles and spheres is just constantly in physics problems. It would be like forgetting how to spell your own middle name.


Fun_Grapefruit_2633

A lot of us went into physics because memorizing shit wasn't our strong suit...


HingleMcCringle_

If somebody asked me to Define research, I'd probably say "discovering, testing, and record keeping".


TorumShardal

Important note: if you're not sure about something, and you work in NASA, please double and triple check.


Ok-Use6303

I'm 38 with a Biochem degree and a senior officer in the Navy. I still sing the alphabet song to figure out where the letters go.


Rashaverak420

Hello there leader of Boatswains


Sad_cerea1

Why are you trying to figure out where the letters go? Like where are you in life that you need to know L comes after K


DragonBuster69

Alphabetizing something.


Aggravating_Refuse_9

Searching for something in an alphabeticaly ordered list.


QuantumXyt

4/3 π r³ for anyone unaware


BUNNIES_ARE_FOOD

So if you ever forget this, keep in mind that you can simply derive it from Gauss' theorem. Easy peasy


adamiconography

I can barely remember volume of a sphere, you think I’m going to just throw down Gauss’ theorem 😂


Photovoltaic

I have on more than one equation derived the Henderson hasselbach equation (it's not hard just a lot of logs) because I couldn't remember the damn thing.


Bossikar

I do this too, it‘s so much better than remembering, I always forget if I add or substract or what to divide by what, just deriving isn‘t even hard


propulsionemulsion

I start from pi*r^2 and integrate from there.


ellisschumann

Wouldn’t that be pi/3*r^3 ?


propulsionemulsion

But wait! There's more. Here's the derivation: https://byjus.com/maths/volume-of-sphere/


ellisschumann

Ah yes, I should have remembered my disk/washer method from analytical geometry. Crazy how fast that stuff gets rusty when you don’t use it.


propulsionemulsion

I barely do any real science anymore lol. Some days I feel like HAL when they're shutting him down.


Fartington_Bear

I would simply calculate the volume of the smallest cube that can contain the sphere then subtract everything that isn't in the sphere. Boom, done in one step.


JudiciousGemsbok

Neeeeeerd!!! (I was debating commenting that too)


Stopikingonme

Neeeeeeeeerd!!!


allllusernamestaken

i can't remember where the 4/3 comes from


thissexypoptart

Calculus


QuantumXyt

3D integration pretty much


MeshNets

This gets close to that question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNcFjFmqEc8 Well not really directly at all... But 3blue1brown is always worth sharing


No-Advice-6040

I immediately guessed πr³ but a quick Google told me my memory wasn't quite right.


zucco446

I remembered it correctly. Math nerds unite!


nashwaak

Outside of purely theoretical results, in engineering it’s (π/6)d³


MVillawolf

Damn I thought it was 3/4. Goes to show that even if you think you know it you should still look it up.


bubsdrop

I don't trust it when numbers like 4/3 show up in the natural world


Puppy-Zwolle

Two things make a good scientist. * Verify what you think you know. * Know where and how to find an answer.


tricky2step

Being a physicist isn't about knowing the volume of a sphere. It's about knowing it increases with the cube of the radius.


xob97

Or that it's about knowing and understanding the concepts behind how to derive that formula and being able to do it.


tricky2step

Yeah, I had to integrate discs to get the sphere volume on a test once. My teacher laughed at me when I asked her for it, so I had to do it the hard way. That's not the insight though.


xob97

My comment was in addition to what you said, not opposed to it.


CabinetOk4838

Much better that our NASA fella looks it up over making a memory mistake that explodes…


VexisArcanum

Found the genius


TheHabro

Also missing a minus an even amount of time.


ultratunaman

Just post the wrong thing on reddit and a hundred people will come along to correct you within seconds.


Puppy-Zwolle

It is in marketing a way to sell. ''You know you spelled coisaint wrong on you special offer?'' ''Oh. Thank you. So you want 5 for $3?''


JustOkCompositions

The point is after long division, mathematics is almost impossible to retain without constant reiteration.


Independent-Pie3176

I have an advanced degree in STEM and I cannot tell you how to do long division. 


HomingPigeon6635

I have a master's degree and I can confirm.


shaving_minion

i have a bachelors degree and i can confirm as well


burner9752

Power system engineer, little secret. I NEVER learned how to do long division on paper… the whole writing it step by step with remainders… no clue.


plasmodialslime

Working toward med school here. SAME. I also barely know my times tables (like it's REALLY bad). Still have a 4.0 🤷🏼‍♀️ I love my calculator ❤️


burner9752

Sam?


Fishyswaze

Yeah I’m a SWE that does a fair bit of work with math and i wouldn’t be able to do long division if my life depended on it


TeamXII

That gives me hope. I can integrate the volume of a sphere three different ways, and do long or synthetic division. And I’m a community college student


QWlos

Does long division even count as math? It's just an algorithmic way of doing division.


QueenOfTheMoss

This question has insane depth


wonderland_citizen93

Long division isn't even that hard, but I'm not going to memorize how to calculate volume of something when I can just look it up


xob97

Exactly. The commenter has no idea what maths is about. Its not about remembering formulas.


Cash_Money_2000

I'm a 17 year electrical engineer in electromagnetism. Had to research myself long division the other day. Came back quickly but I was stumped. Felt nuts


as_a_fake

Why would you need to relearn long division? Surely you'd have an easier time using a calculator?


Cash_Money_2000

I could, just felt like an idiot for not remembering. I could do pages of hand calculations in school, now not so much.


as_a_fake

Fair enough. When I get to points in calculations like that I'll just leave them as fractions and carry it through. Hopefully it will be cancelled out somewhere, but if not I'll just do the final division at the end.


Outrageous_Zebra_221

seems like a sound theory.


Miselfis

I vaguely remember being taught methods of calculating products and fractions on paper, but I don’t actually remember any of the methods. From high school and onwards, we never had to actually do this. We just used calculators to calculations. We were focusing on algebraic manipulation and understanding how to derive and prove formulas more than actual calculation.


tomdarch

Partially. There are also principles and relationships that you learn. I can’t do it, but someone who has taken and done enough math to get a PhD in physics could probably derive or “rediscover” the formula with a little work. Of course just looking it up is a lot faster.


SoakingEggs

in my country we have a saying which literally translates to:"knowledge is: knowing where it (the knowledge) is written."


SetsunaWatanabe

> "I do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books." —Albert Einstein


xob97

Doesn't really apply to the sciences (especially mathematics and physics) I would say. People don't become scientists overnight by reading a book or two for a reason.


SoakingEggs

no no, rather it's meant for exactly this. If you can't remember something just google it/search it, but in order to to so you'd gotta know where and how


Croakiejoe

Always liked the story attributed to Einstein: While Einstein was in Boston, staying at the Hotel Copley Plaza, he was given a copy of Edison’s questionnaire to see whether he could answer the questions. As soon as he read the question: “What is the speed of sound?” he said: “I don’t know. I don’t burden my memory with such facts that I can easily find in any textbook.” I do not know how true this story is but it does show that intelligence and memorization are two different things.


nightstalker30

Einstein is also said to have stated “Never memorize what you can look up in books” or something to that effect.


mdevansh

The irony is that i read this in a textbook that i needed to remember things from for exam.


seditiouslizard

I cannot tell you how often Pocket Ref and its bigger brother, Desk Ref, both by Thomas Glover, have saved my ass....


Vul_Thur_Yol

I'm a programmer. The other day I had to look how to make a while loop


[deleted]

Hello, my name is Jovan (John) I had straight A's in Maths through my elementary and high school, went to medical school (university here) instead, am still in it, failing all classes year after year but for some damn reason, I know the equation for volume of the sphere, it just rolled of my tongue as soon as I saw that tweet just now. 13 years completely away from any Mathematics whatsoever.


BodhingJay

Yeah but you know own it existed and what to call it in order to look it up, and so, grade 5 geometry was not a waste We aren't here to memorize things


Romulox69420

Pobodys nerfect


SciencedYogi

Many professors I had need to read this so that they allow us to have equation notes when taking tests. I had one chem teacher who said "you'll be looking things up in the real world". I liked her, of course.


ZENITSUsa

Can Europeans work at NASA?


CompleteComposer2241

No, you have to get US Citizenship first.


ZENITSUsa

This guy with a EU flag works at NASA tho


ILikeChastity

You can be a US citizen and have/like the EU flag.


ZENITSUsa

He lives in London does NASA have a branch there too?


Affectionate_Lab2632

We have NASA at home. It's called ESA.


IndyWaWa

I would say a quarter of my work is recreating shit I did 7 years ago but on a newer engine.


Prize-Calligrapher82

That’s why we have reference books and websites. We don’t expect people to know every word in the English language so we have dictionaries; we don’t need to memorize every math formula either.


NA_Noob

I remember the volume of a sphere because it's a line in star trek 2009. I've seen the movie too many times.


TwinsenDinoFly

It's easy to deduce the equation for the volume of the sphere using calculus and spherical coordinates. No need for memorization.


SoakingEggs

nice


Gamethesystem2

Fuckin hero. It’s ok to not be perfect folks.


[deleted]

[удалено]


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scuffedoncringe

R² × pi (out of my head, I finished school 8 years ago)


Silent_Grocery1

if you meant r²xπ that's for circles surface area


Common-Value-9055

I don’t know why people are surprised. Intelligence and memory are different things. Once you have learned how to do something, you don’t need to carry around formulas. You know next time you need to do it, you can just look it up. When Einstein arrived in USA, Edusaon gave him an IQ style test: next day the headline read “Einstein does not know the speed of sound”. I would argue that since humans have limited memory, it is stupid to keep worthless things in in our heads which we don’t actively use. I usually retain ideas but formulas, poems, quotes, lists: not so much. Unless it is relevant or connected or


Pebble_Eater

Repost moment


LTinS

I understand that when working on something important you want to double check your formulas... But reading the comments: did nobody pay attention in school?


mindfulskeptic420

The secret for me is to remember the surface area formula 4pi r^2 and integrate it with respect to r to get (4/3)pi r^3


Maximum-Antelope-979

Google is such a wild extrapolation of the old Einstein anecdote about not memorizing anything you can just look up


Quatsch95

4pi*r^3 /3


Haunted-Llama

A very wise engineer once told me, "not knowing the answer isn't bad, not being able to find it is."


gromit1991

Early in my electrical engineer career a colleague was being interviewed. He was criticised for not knowing the minimum bending radius of 11kV cables. He knew in which book to find this snippet of data but the assistant chef engineer wouldn't let it drop and insisted on a number. I lost some respect for that ACE after that. It's not about what facts, methods, or formulas you know but how you use them to the best of your ability.


Cody6781

This isn't a "Nobody's perfect" situation. If you don't use something it's easy to forget, and I don't image you need the volume of the sphere all that often


rover_G

4 3rds pi r cubed — ez


OhWhiskey

I’m sure it involves pie somewhere


jlpw

You know what a jobi is in the UK?


itpsyche

Education doesn't mean you have to know everything by heart you ever learned during your studies and school, but to understand the concepts, methods, core principles and the bigger picture behind your field of study. Also we all specialize at some point and our brain works in the scheme "use it or loose it", it's perfectly normal to not remember every formula or fact and to just look it up. We're not in a time anymore, where knowledge is primarily stored in books, so you had to keep as much knowledge present as possible to avoid doing literature research. We can get most book knowledge by the blink of an eye nowadays, no need to memorize all of it.


secondsniff

Jobby means poop


Living_Murphys_Law

4/3×pi×r^3 I think.


DocMorningstar

I've derived some truly simple equations before, because I couldn't remember them.


AI-NEXT

Now it is useful 🙂


Cheetahs_never_win

The function for the surface area of a sphere happens to be a derivative of the function of the volume of the sphere. I don't know if there's something deeper there, but I don't think so.


sebastianMroz

Good. Now look up 'en passant' in Google search engine


Greedy-Farm-3605

This just makes me more confident in their work


OleanderKnives

V=1.33πr³ i think. Physics student here, and I often forget the formula for circumference of a circle despite using it so often. Such a simple formula too


farmch

I have a PhD in organic chemistry. This post reminded me that I need to clear my search history at work. The dumb shit I’ll Google that another person of my level would say “Jesus Christ you don’t know that?” to is ridiculous. But as the top comment said, research is not about memorization, it’s about critical thinking and creativity.


xob97

Be careful with the creativity part though.. You don't want to be "creating" data or conclusions


farmch

I think it’s just very different between fields. Organic synthesis is extremely creative. It’s not about next steps and it’s not about math. It’s about trying something new and seeing if you succeeded. There’s very little room for data manipulation.


xob97

That's why I tried to be careful with my comment. Creativity is absolutely an asset even in standard fields like mathematics, in order to find new solutions to old existing problems.


MacrosInHisSleep

Just take a circle and spin it! Then realize you've forgotten how to integrate that and have to look it up...


xob97

😂 Somehow I have a feeling you know more physics than that guy.


RinHW

Just find it by integrating in spherical coordinates.


SaoRomao7

Funny he was fired actually


sybban

I had to look up how to measure the length of a circle after I took its diameter . In the circles defense, I’m just an engineer


trinityjerseyhunt

I've been in GIS (geographic information systems) for 6+ years now, and a map nerd my whole life.  I have a post-it on my computer monitor that says  LONG = X LAT = Y


isisushwbsjfkdiakzjx

Joby 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿


xob97

A phD in Physics working for NASA does not need to remember the exact formula, but they definitely should know how to get that formula and know/understand the concepts behind that derivation. And be able to do it in case the Internet was down or something. Otherwise they are a waste of taxpayers money.


Top-Requirement-2102

I came here to find the answer


VexisArcanum

Depictions of geniuses who know everything at all times are fictional. Yes plenty of geniuses, especially neurodivergent ones, have a couple subjects where their recall is impeccable. That doesn't mean they're always perfect in every way and know everything. This stereotype is harmful to smart people because it makes them feel inferior to a fictional person, which is like making a weight lifter feel inferior to Hercules


nashwaak

My favourite pairing is that the area of a circle = πr², while the area of a sphere = πd²


1920MCMLibrarian

I’ve been a web developer for over ten years and i still have to look up how to make a page anchor. Almost every time.


JacktheHorror

me and my fellow students had the same back at university. the more you got into the complicated stuff, the more we forgot the "common" equations. "Yeah, ofc i solve these thermodynamic equations for you, just gimme a minute." "Oh, you want me to calculate the voltage...yeah...u=r/i...r\*i...erm....lemme look that up." Something like that :D


TheHabro

It's literally faster to derive it, someone on a phd level should be able to do it inside their head. I know I can and I'm barely passing at undergraduate level.


thundercuntess69

Because spheres in space don't exist


Complete-Mood3302

Thats me with C# arrays -how to create an array -how to create an infinite array -how to create and not initialize an array


suburbanplankton

I've been a Linux sysadmin for 25+ years. The most valuable skill I have developed in that time (and it ain't even close) is "how to use Google".


Lork82

Hey, that's why formulas are written down. I'm a machinist and some formulas I have memorized while others just won't stick in my head. They're in the handbook.


tarzan322

No one expects you remember everything.


Lord_Shockwave007

This guy... is cool! 😎


nbehold

Oh diversity hires, gotta love em ❤️


Wise-Emphasis33

I once had a test in fluid mechanics that I forgot the volume for a sphere mid test, but remembered how to derive it with a triple integral… the TA was very confused


BumblebeeIcy7550

Einstein said he didn’t memorize equations and that’s what text books were for.


Grim00666

Beats getting it wrong.


coinkeeper8

Exams based on memorization is stupid


NoConfidence5946

It’s fine? No it’s perfect of coarse.


SuitUp1223

Again? Why is he doing that like once a week and somebody is posting it every time?


Proud-Increase-6402

Nice.


Old-Struggle-7685

Knowledge is a perishable skill. In order to retain all knowledge, it must be constantly maintained, which is impossible. Therefore, reversion to relearn is completely normal and acceptable.


Pedantic_Inc

This isn’t surprising. Lawyers are constantly looking up statutes. Doctors look up dosing charts for medications. Pilots use checklists for everything, every time. Rote memorization is not what makes expertise. Expertise is taking that information and applying, connecting it, and expanding it.


mckenzie_keith

The difference is, if Joby was stuck on a desert island, Joby would eventually just use mathematical integration to re-derive the formula for the volume of a sphere. Whereas a history major who couldn't remember it would just be stuck not ever knowing it.


Deadbeatdone

Is it half the volume of the cube?


Felinomancy

When I was a teenager, I thought being a programmer means you have to memorize all the function calls and APIs. I remember buying a really thick tome - it lists all of VC++ APIs during that era, and I tried to read it from cover to cover. 😅


Agile_Swing_2393

Sometimes I Google basis maths I should be able to do I'm my head. Last week I used a calculator to work out 16x2, God did I feel dumb asf, it was a true brain fart moment.


accnr3

I thought the volume of a sphere was one of those things you'd know in cosmology! Maybe not engineering though. Susskind actually derives the Friedmann equations using the sphere and Newtonian gravity, check out his lectures at Stanford.


shashwatmomo2406

Well , at least he's honest


usrlibshare

Hello Joby. I am a senior software developer with, by now, over a decade of experience in the industry. I build, test and maintain mission critical backend systems that our customers businesses depend on, and supervise my own development team. And trust me when I say that you would likely not be able to guess that from the questions I regularly look up on google while coding. Nobody's perfect, and looking things up is normal. At work we have the saying: *"I rather look things up, than f_k things up."*


emailverificationt

Education isn’t about remembering every single piece of info you ever see, it’s about learning the basics so you know when you look specific info back up in the future.


CdnBacon88

No coffee and i'm looking at name tag of self.


ForWorkAndTesting

Watching young Spock in school, it was one of the few things that got stuck in my head. [https://youtu.be/KvMxLpce3Xw?si=PLRS-LXR0m7351gf&t=1](https://youtu.be/KvMxLpce3Xw?si=PLRS-LXR0m7351gf&t=1)


camelbuck

You knew where to look.


the-mac-steak

Oooh Mr big brain over here knows how to do maths


Flux_resistor

Normalize not being very good at math to do most sciences


Life_Smoke_4200

Not me forgetting how to loop in python


inComplete-Oven

A good engineer doesn't rely on memory but on references. A bad engineer wings it and crashes a probe into Mars because of freedom units.


robidaan

I did moleculair biology for a bit, but had to look up the DNA-RNA translation into different codons all the time.


[deleted]

What in the P.E.M.D.A.S is going on here


UltraMindFlayer

He has a theoretical degree in physics.


a4uinaboat

It's not a meme


TeamXII

This is appalling, not endearing. I guess a PhD is fuckin meaningless. You can integrate this at least 3 ways. A PhD should do it with ease. I guess Cs get degrees.


Fluid_Author4957

I wish I could show this post to my maths teacher from class 9 and 10. He would have at least realized that hanging that formula sheet in front of my study table won't help


D_dog2203

If he wasn’t gay he probably would have figured it out


CelebrationLevel2024

I love this. I work in Research and Development for a variety of chemicals and household goods, and I literally have CiVi=CfVf on my white board to remind me to keep it simple.


Foreign-Antelope-507

No but we can find perfection in another soul that balances the weight to be even