[PRL] How to Provide Information to a Black Hole

Mitch mwand1 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 24 22:32:19 EDT 2008


A very nice piece from Shriram on how to write effective letters of
recommendation.

I wish there was something we could do with it that would improve the
quality of the letters we get (without, of course, giving away our
secret key). Could we maybe put something on our web site?

Sent to you by Mitch via Google Reader: How to Provide Information to a
Black Hole via Notes from a Sticky Wicket by Shriram Krishnamurthi on
3/24/08 Some years ago I was talking to a visiting scholar who was a
faculty member in a foreign country. I asked her why letters from her
country seemed to be so uninformative. She pointed out that there,
faculty never read letters: they only write them. Even graduate
students are admitted purely on the basis of test scores.
The facts were hardly surprising--after all, this is the system I grew
up with in India--but after hearing the way she put it, the proverbial
bulb lit up. If you never evaluate letters yourself, how would you know
what letters should and shouldn't contain? The feedback--admission
decisions--is seemingly random, and therefore of little use. [Yes, I
know, that isn't the same as a black hole. But admit it, the title got
you reading.]
Read on...


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