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Marking Schemes

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 17, 2023 by telescoper

It’s 3.40pm so I’ve reached the tea interval on the first day of marking the scripts from my first-year module on Mechanics and Special Relativity. Blogging will be a bit thin until I’ve completed this task, which will take even longer than usual as we have more students on this module than in previous years, up by more than 50% on last year. At the current rate I estimate it will take me until Friday to finish.

It turned very cold here at the weekend and I realized I had run out of food for the birds so I had to dash out to the shops on Sunday and replenish my stock. When I refilled the feeders it only took a few minutes for the robin to arrive, closely followed by starlings, a magpie, some sparrows, a woodpigeon, and then some more starlings. While I was waiting for my pot of tea to brew I filled the dispensers again.

I woke up this morning to find a very hard frost in Maynooth. The temperature hasn’t risen above zero all day so the frost is still there now. I am at home while I do the marking, which gives me an excuse not to venture out into the cold (except to feed the birds). It’s nice to be in the warm, but marking at home ensures that I am not interrupted by anyone but myself and especially not a student who might wander into my office on campus with all the scripts lying around.

Some scripts (side view)

For the last two years we’ve held this examination as an online timed assessment, but now uses old-fashioned written answer books which are much easier on the eye. I still find however that I can only managed about 30 scripts in one sitting before my attention starts to wander. I’ve therefore divided them into five packets, taking a break when I’ve finished each one. Thirty is about the number of overs you get in a session of Test Match Cricket, though I don’t stick very strictly to the same timings; I don’t always have lunch at 1pm, for example.

I’ve often discussed the process of marking examinations with my colleagues and they all have different techniques. What I do is mark one question at a time rather than one script at a time. What I mean by that is that I go through every script marking all the attempts at Question 1, then I start again and do Question 2, etc. I find that this is much quicker and more efficient than marking all the questions in each script then moving onto the next script. The reason for this is that I can upload into my mind the model answer for Question 1 so that it stays there while I mark dozens of attempts at it so I don’t have to keep referring to the marking scheme. Other advantages are that it’s easier to be consistent in giving partial credit when you’re doing the same question over and over again, and that also you spot what the common mistakes are more easily.

Whichever way you do it, grading this number of examinations is a long job, a marathon not a sprint. We also owe it to the students to be as fair as possible, all of which means taking it at a steady pace.

Now, it’s 4pm and time for the resumption…

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Mahler, Weber, Schubert and Strauss at the NCH

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2023 by telescoper

And so it came to pass that last night I took the train into Dublin for my first concert of the year 2023 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin which happened to be by the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Carlos Kalmar.

It was an unusual programme in terms of its construction. Often the menu for such concerts begin with a short appetizer but this one started with the first movement of  Gustav Mahler‘s 10th Symphony. The composer died a hundred years ago in 1910 having not actually finished the rest of the symphony, but I gather that he left sufficiently detailed sketches and notes that complete versions have been constructed, but nevertheless the first movement is frequently performed on its own. It’s quintessentially Mahler in many ways, but it’s a strange opening for a symphony because it’s a very long Adagio movement (lasting about 30 minutes). It’s a complex and weighty movement for a full orchestra, rather cryptic in nature but overall with a rather dark tone, far from the usual lollipop to start a concert!

Originally this programme was supposed to feature the Duet Concertino by Richard Strauss but it was announced last week that this would be replaced by the Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor by Carl Maria von Weber with the NSO’s principal clarinettist John Finucane. Unusually for a concerto performance, John Finucane was reading a score, which perhaps suggests he stood in at short notice but in any case the performance was very fine. The third movement, a spirited Rondo kicked off by a very jaunty theme, is probably the most familiar piece, but I particularly enjoyed the interplay between clarinet and horns in the slow (2nd movement). John Finucane had brought his fan club with him, and the audience responded warmly.

After the wine break we had Symphony No. 8 in B Minor by Franz Schubert, the famous “Unfinished Symphony”. Somewhat surprisingly, I am pretty sure that I had never heard this piece performed live until this concert.

Schubert apparently wrote the first two wonderful movements of this piece in the space of only eight days in 1822 but then seems to have abandoned it. The composition wasn’t interrupted by his death – he didn’t pass away until 1828 – so it’s a mystery why he didn’t finish it. It wasn’t even discovered until the 1860s. Unlike Mahler 10, we don’t have any idea what the rest of this symphony would have been but the two existing movements are exceptional, not least for the stream of lovely melodies. This work clearly belongs to the same world as the Weber piece (which was composed in 1811) but having one after the other emphasizes the transition from Classical to Romantic, and having Mahler on the same programme contrasts early and late Romantic in a very illuminating way.

The last piece was Music of the Spheres, a waltz by Josef Strauss, the younger brother of the more famous Johan Strauss II. It’s a jolly enough but rather insubstantial piece that seemed rather incongruous to me in this programme, especially at the end as it is the sort of piece one could imagine as an appetizer. It seems to have been decided that something was needed in place of the missing movement(s) of the Schubert Symphony, so perhaps it was meant to play the role of a dessert?

In any case it was an upbeat way to end the concert which was very enjoyable. I then made my way out into the rain to get the train back to Maynooth. For a Friday night, Dublin was very quiet indeed, perhaps because of the inclement weather and/or the post-Christmas lull. The NCH wasn’t full but there was a decent attendance and the performance was warmly appreciated.

P.S. Note that the National Symphony Orchestra is no longer the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra owing to some restructuring. Note also that it is planned to close down the NCH for at least two years for extensive refurbishment. I’m not sure what will happen to the NSO during this period.

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R.I.P. Richard Bower

Posted in Biographical, R.I.P., The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on January 10, 2023 by telescoper

I was shocked and saddened this weekend to hear of the death from cancer of Professor Richard Bower of Durham University. Richard was a leading light in the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) at Durham, though his research interests spanned observational and theoretical studies of galaxy and cluster formation as well as numerical studies. 

I heard the sad news via social media and there have many tributes to and personal reminiscences of Richard have been circulated from friends, colleagues and former students, including this lovely one by Josh Borrow. I’m sure there will be official obituaries in due course that do justice to Richards personality and achievements in teaching and research; I’ll add links when I see them.

If I can add a personal note, I only worked on one project with Richard, about thirty years ago while I was still at Queen Mary & Westfield College in London. Doing the project was tremendous fun – so much so that the paper we ended up writing bears little relation to what we thought it would be like when we started. We were both young then – I think Richard was about a year younger than me – and both had a tendency to fly off at tangents, but fortunately we were working with two responsible adults (Carlos Frenk and Simon White) who kept us in order. I think the paper we wrote is a nice one, but the real point is that the whole experience was so enjoyable that it was not only formative experience for me from an intellectual point of view but also left me with very fond memories. Whenever we met subsequently, which happened fairly frequently and conferences and on panels and the like, we always talked about what a great time that was. It’s hard to accept we’ll never have that conversation again.

I send heartfelt condolences to Richard’s family, friends and colleagues, both past and present, and in Durham and elsewhere. was an irrepressible and irreplaceable character who will be greatly missed by the entire cosmological community.

Rest in peace, Richard Bower.

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First Day Back

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , on January 3, 2023 by telescoper

So here we are, then, 3rd January 2023 and my first day back after the Christmas break. Maynooth University Campus has been largely deserted, though a few of my colleagues have been in today.

Quite a few people seem to have been down with various bugs over the holiday, including a few that have tested positive for Covid-19. We haven’t had information about actual case numbers since before Christmas but I expect a big increase when the figures are announced later this week. Hospitals are already under pressure here in Ireland so things could be quite difficult during the next few weeks.

My plans to do an in-person revision lecture were foiled by the fact that the teaching room I planned to use was locked so I adopted plan B which was to put up some lecture recordings to help the students with their revision ahead of the examination period which starts on Friday. That’s a bit early, really, as 6th January (being Epiphany) is still very much a part of the Christmas season for many people. I remember trying to arrange a meeting on January 6th years ago with a European collaboration only to be met with complete disbelief. At least the first examination for which I am responsible isn’t until Saturday.

For many of the students taking examinations in subjects I have been teaching, these will be the first University examinations and I’m sure many of them are a bit apprehensive, so I thought I’d pass on some advice.

  1. Try to get a good night’s sleep before the examination and arrive in plenty of time before the start. Spending all night cramming is unlikely to help you do well. Prepare well in advance so you’re relaxed when the time comes.
  2. Read the entire paper before starting to answer any questions. In particular, make sure you are aware of any supplementary information, formulae, etc, given in the rubric or at the end.
  3. Start off by tackling the question you are most confident about answering, even if it’s not Question 1. This will help settle any nerves. You’re under no obligation to answer the questions in the order they are asked.
  4. Don’t rush! Students often lose marks by making careless errors. Check all your numerical results on your calculator at least twice and – PLEASE – remember to put the units!
  5. Don’t panic! You’re not expected to answer everything perfectly. A first-class mark is anything over 70%, so don’t worry if there are bits you can’t do. If you get stuck on a part of a question, don’t waste too much time on it (especially if it’s just a few marks). Just leave it and move on. You can always come back to it later.

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Nolan, Moran and Schwa…

Posted in Biographical, Irish Language with tags , , on January 2, 2023 by telescoper

This Bank Holiday afternoon I’ve been pottering about at home and listening to The Full Score on RTÉ Lyric FM, which is presented by Liz Nolan. I like this programme because it consists of performances of full works rather than bits and pieces extracted from longer compositions (“bleeding chunks” as my music teacher at school used to call them). Unfortunately this programme is broadcast on weekday afternoons so I can’t listen to it often except when I’m off work.

The presenter’s surname Nolan made me reflect on how many Irish surnames end with –an. Other examples aside from Nolan include Regan, Keegan, Dolan, Coogan, Behan, Whelan and Moran. In Ireland these are all pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, as they are in English pronunciation, but curiously English people usually pronounce the last with a stress on the second syllable, i.e. Mor-AN. I’ve been pulled up for doing this on more than one occasion. Here in Ireland it’s not Mor-AN but MOR-an. A little googling suggests that the English version is influenced by the French name Morant rather than the original Gaelic Ó Móráin.

Anyway this line of thought took me to the realization that the vowel in an unstressed final syllable such as in Nolan is a very indistinct sound. You could almost put any vowel in there and get the same sound: “Nolan” could easily be transcribed as “Nolon” or “Nolun” etc if the second syllable is not stressed.

Then I realized that linguists, specifically those who study phonetics and phonology, have been there long before me. There is a name for the indistinct vowel sound in such cases: it is called schwa and is denoted by the character ə. Schwa sits right in the middle of the vowel chart. Produced when the lips and tongue are completely relaxed, it’s neither an open nor a closed vowel but something in between. It’s actually quite a common sound in English, though it’s taken me almost 60 years to discover its name! – and exists in many other languages too.

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New Year, Old Resolutions

Posted in Biographical on January 1, 2023 by telescoper

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

from Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. Eliot.

For the last three years I have been sharing a list of things I plan, to do in the New Year. Unfortunately it seems to have been pretty much the same list each time. Here it is again for completeness.

  1. Go to more live concerts. Although I enjoy the radio and recordings, I far prefer to listen to live music at concerts. Attending such events helps also support the venues and musicians as without an audience both would die.
  2. See more of Ireland. I moved to Maynooth five years ago but, apart from one visit to Galway and one to Armagh, I still haven’t travelled much beyond the Dublin area. I must get around more, especially to the South.
  3. No more working weekends. I’ve been in the office for at least one day every weekend since I started at Maynooth. I did the same when I was at Sussex too, and seem to have relapsed. I have always had problems managing my own work/life balance but I realize it’s not setting a good example to younger folk to be getting it so obviously wrong. I’ll add not reading work emails at weekends to this.
  4. Be a better colleague. This is something I think one should always strive to be, but I have particular need to improve. I know that over the last five years or so things weighed very heavily on me behind the scenes and I ended up letting people down on too many occasions. I apologize for that and will try to do better in future.
  5. Read more books. I used to be a voracious reader of all kinds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, but I somehow got out of the habit. I now have a stack of unread works that I must try to read before the year is out!
  6. Finish more things! Not unrelated to No. 4 above, I have been very poor over the last few years at completing projects and writing papers. I need to clear the backlog and get on with some new things.
  7. Do more to promote Open Access publishing. I’m not surprised that the status quo in academic publishing is proving hard to dislodge, but I believe that change can be achieved if researchers take the initiative. I’m proud of what we have achieved so far at the Open Journal of Astrophysics but there’s much more to be done.

I achieved very few of these in 2020, 2021 or 2022. The pandemic made the first two impossible but at least I managed to get out to a few concerts in 2022 and plan to see more this year. The Irish National Astronomy Meeting in 2023 is in the fine city of Cork, and I’m looking forward to going there. Number 3 changed when we had to start working from home, which made it difficult to get away from work at all but since I moved into my house in August 2020 I at least have a study on which I can close the door. I haven’t improved much on the 4th one either, although the reasons for the past two years are different. Likewise with 5 and 6. I have done as much as I possibly can on 7 but it’s been a bit of a struggle getting papers turned around promptly. I think there are a lot of busy and/or tired people out there!

I didn’t cope with the stress and isolation of being a Head of Department during the Covid-19 era as well as I might have done. I don’t know whether it was the high levels of anxiety that sapped my energy or whether I’m just feeling the effects of age. Anyway I’m glad I completed my term in September last year, and have at least managed to complete a couple of papers since then. I hope to finish another in the following week or so.

Finally I should mention that the traffic to this blog was up a massive 4.5% in 2022 compared with 2021. Interestingly the most popular post of the year wasn’t either of the two about Chorizogate (here or here) but an old one I wrote in 2012 about the Shell House Raid which came back to life because of a film on Netflix.

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The Post of Christmas Past

Posted in Biographical on December 31, 2022 by telescoper

At long last, this year’s Christmas issue of Private Eye has made it to Ireland. Just two weeks late. Too late to enter the crossword competition, mind, but better late than never.

I shall read it this evening after my New Year’s Eve supper of roast rack of lamb and a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella…

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Post-Christmas Post

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , on December 29, 2022 by telescoper

Today is (apparently) 29th December and this morning I actually got some post. Most of it was sent in the first week of December but has taken about three weeks to get here. Among other things I got: the pension statement I was waiting for (dated 2nd December), a cheque for 40 quid for winning the Times Literary Supplement Crossword Prize (posted 8th December), and a royalty statement from OUP dated, somewhat surprisingly, December 23rd. I still haven’t received the Christmas edition of Private Eye though.

I took a walk this afternoon and was quite surprised on the way to see the Maynooth Airport Hopper bus. This has been suspended since the onset of the pandemic way back in 2020 but now I find it has recently resumed. That will make it much easier to get to and from Dublin Airport if I ever have to do that. I used this service very frequently when I had to commute between Cardiff and Maynooth and don’t know how I would have coped without it. It’s good to see things gradually returning.

The bug I picked up before Christmas is still present but more of an inconvenience than anything more serious. I’ve done no fewer than ten antigen tests and never got a positive result so I’m pretty confident it’s not Covid-19. I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a few days but interestingly I’ve still been getting over 500 reads a day over the Christmas period.

I usually update my Covid-19 figures every week but no data have been recently since 20th December. Testing numbers will be pretty much meaningless because of the Christmas holiday but I’d expect to see a rise in infection levels as we head into the New Year. There are signs that Covid-19 cases are rising steeply once more – there are currently over 700 people in hospital in Ireland with Covid-19 – but I doubt we’re going to see any further lockdown measures heading into the new term.

That reminds me that I foolishly offered to do a couple of revision lectures ahead of my 2nd year Vector Calculus examination (which takes place on January 7th). The first of these will be on 3rd January which doesn’t give me much time to think about what to do. In view of my continuing low-level lurgy I think to minimize the chances of infecting anyone I think I’ll just go in, do my lectures, and come home again.

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Cut off at Christmas

Posted in Biographical on December 23, 2022 by telescoper

I don’t think I’ve ever had a less indulgent pre-Christmas week than this year. I have more-or-less recovered from whatever it was that afflicted me, except that whenever I go out into the cold I seem to start coughing again so I haven’t been out much. I decided to lay off the booze until I felt fully back to normal, with the result that I haven’t had any alcoholic drinks at all for over a week. I have also been eating very little and nothing at all of a festive richness for which I have no appetite. I will however have a proper Christmas dinner, even if I have to force myself.

Pottering around in the garden the other day I was a bit sad to find a dead bird in the garden, a young starling. I’ve tried hard to keep my feathered friends going through the cold weather, by putting out various kinds of food in an assortment of feeders, but this one alas didn’t make it.

The weather is much milder than last week (when it was positively Baltic) though we have had sleet and fog today. There is still a steady stream of birds looking for food, among them a robin that actually manages to perch on the feeder to eat. I’ve never seen a robin succeed in doing that before. The robins usual stay at ground level and collect bits that fall from on high.

Normally I get quite a few items of post at Christmas from the UK, but not this year. The postal strikes have put paid to that. Among other things I was hoping to have a go at the usual bumper Christmas Private Eye crossword, but my subscription copy has not arrived. Lots of other things haven’t arrived either, including some financial documents that will tell me when I can afford to retire. I suppose that calculation will just have to wait.

Quite a lot of Open Journal business for 2022 is still pending but it seems authors, referees and editors have now all pulled down the shutters for the break. I guess all that will have to wait until the New Year too…

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R.I.P. Terry Hall (1959-2022)

Posted in Biographical, Music, R.I.P. on December 20, 2022 by telescoper

I was very sad last night to hear the news of the death at the age of 63 of Terry Hall, lead singer of The Specials, one of the leading bands of the 2 Tone movement which swept the UK music scene in 1979. The Guardian obituary makes it clear what a tough upbringing Terry Hall had but also how firmly he stuck to his political ideals.

I was still at School in the 1970s and, though never a fan of Punk (which immediately preceded 2-Tone in popularity), I absolutely loved bands like The Specials, The Beat and especially Selecter. I enjoyed not only their music, but also their admirably inclusive multi-racial approach, exemplified by their adoption of Ska, the Jamaican music genre that paved the way to Reggae.

Being a bit of an anorak I actually managed way back then to get hold of some of the very rare original Ska recordings, principally by the superb Skatalites. This wonderful band specialized in irreverent and eccentric cover versions of movie film tunes from the 1960s including Doctor Zhivago and James Bond, plus the classic Guns of Navarone. Nowadays you can find lots of this music to download, but it was quite hard work getting vinyl recordings at that time. As well as enjoying 2-Tone itself I was immensely grateful for the window it provided to a treasure house of wonderful music.

Ska is usually played (at least nominally) in 4/4 time, but each beat is really a cluster of sub-beats forming a triplet so the usual 1-2-3-4 of the 4/4 turns into 123-123-123-123, etc . Usually the drummer puts a heavy bass accent (and usually a side stick or rim shot on the snare) on the 3rd component of each triplet, and there would be guitar chops, other percussion, and/or brass riffs on the “off” beats. It is said that this structure was inherited, at least in part, from the marching bands that played in Jamaica and it does give a kind of strutting feel to the overall pulse. But wherever it came from the beat gives the music an infectiously bouncy rhythm that gives anyone dancing to it an irresistible urge to jump up and down, especially on up-tempo numbers. The triplet structure also gives those with no sense of rhythm a greater probability of moving in time with at least one relevant beat.

Anyway, here as a tribute to Terry Hall are The Specials, in a typically exuberant live performance recorded on British TV in 1979 (a programme which I think I actually watched at the time). They are playing the theme from The Guns of Navarone as a direct tribute to the Skatalites, whose wonderful original version you can also find on Youtube here (although it is really just audio).

Rest in peace, Terry Hall (1959-2022)

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