Gödel’s Lost Letter writes an interesting post suggesting that complexity classes — categories of computational problems related by the resources necessary to solve them — play a similar role in complexity theory as elementary particles in high-energy physics. (Via Chad.) All very fascinating stuff, no doubt. But along the way a much more important issue is raised: when there is a seminar, should we have donuts before, or after?
Back then, Yale computer science used the post-talk-food normal form. That is after the talk donuts were served to the audience and the speaker. Most places then and now use pre-talk-food normal form, but Yale was different. I always wondered why we were different, but it was Yale.
I have to say that Yale is right on this one, and yet almost everyone does it backwards. Some sort of refreshments — coffee, tea, stale cookies, donuts if you’re lucky — are generally served before a colloquium or seminar, to attract an audience and presumably put people in a good mood. The problem is: we haven’t heard the talk yet, so we can’t chat about that, and if the audience is big enough we might not even know which person is the speaker.
Whereas, if donuts or whatever are served after the talk, not only do you make it more awkward for grad students to scarf some food without sitting through the seminar, but you have offered a very natural topic of conversation — the substance of the actual talk everyone has just heard. And the resulting conversation will usually be better than the desultory Q&A that follows a typical talk. For one thing, it’s just more natural to stand around and chat while sipping coffee or munching a donut than while one person stands at the front of a room and everyone else sits in the crowd (many of whom are restless and ready to scat). For another, students who might be intimidated out of asking a question in front of the whole audience can screw up their courage in a more informal setting. And most importantly, the chances that the actual speaker will get something intellectually useful out of the whole experience are enormously larger if they get to interact with a bunch of people who have just heard their talk. (Not even to mention the abomination of the usual “lunch talk,” where the undernourished speaker seminars away in front of a collection of people happily chewing away at their meals.)
I’m sure a lot of influential people read this blog. Let’s put that power to good use. What do we have to do to change the traditions and make it standard that coffee is served after the talk instead of before?
August 1st, 2009 at 9:33 am
Sean—good points, but here are a couple of arguments the other way:
We have our colloquia at 4:00 (any earlier and students/faculty who work at JLab often can’t make the talk). If the coffee/tea/cookies/cake/fruit&cheese& crackers (CTCCFCC) were after the talk, it would be after 5:15. Many with families wouldn’t be able to stay that long.
An advantage to early CTCCFCC is that the talk will start on time with everyone there. If the food was afterwards, people would trickle in between 3:55 and 4:10, and you know how awkward it can be when people come late.
Obvious solution. Have CTCCFCC both before AND after the talk, with somewhat better food afterwards…
August 1st, 2009 at 9:33 am
Duke Photonics always serves the snacks after the talk, which I happen to enjoy as well.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:34 am
I cannot speak of all of Europe, but I don’t recall ever having snacks before a seminar (I’ve never been to a US conference). Coffee during talks is fairly common, though – but people usually bring it, themselves.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:55 am
You need coffee before the talk to keep the audience alert. On the other hand, donuts before the talk promote falling asleep 30 minutes into the talk from sugar crash, even when the talk is good.
At one department I worked in, there was coffee before the colloquium and wine, cheese and crackers after the colloquium. Attendance was not always great after the colloquium (despite a free cup of OK wine), in part because people do go home at 5:30. However, it usually did encourage some people to have a conversation with the speaker.
August 1st, 2009 at 10:05 am
Isn’t it standard research protocol to reward the lab animal AFTER the task is performed? Let science be your guide.
August 1st, 2009 at 10:10 am
24 hours after science post: zero comments.
30 minutes after donuts post: five comments.
Not that there’s anything either wrong or surprising about that!
August 1st, 2009 at 10:19 am
It looks like comments are closed on the science post.
August 1st, 2009 at 10:26 am
Ben—wine after a colloquium? Alas, I’m at a public university, and it would violate several laws to serve wine without lots of permissions beforehand
Sean—three weeks ago, if the Tevatron had discovered magnetic monopoles with negative mass, spin 1/3 and a charge of pi times the electron charge, there still would have been a hundred times as many stories about Michael Jackson. Sigh….
August 1st, 2009 at 10:31 am
No, Joyce is right! Comments were closed on that post, completely by mistake. I’m sure there would be a good hundred-comment discussion going on there right now if I had clicked the wrong button by accident. (Now fixed.)
August 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
As a(n occasionally food-scarfing) graduate student, I think coffee-after actually makes it easier to eat without attending. No one wants to be caught wandering out just as the talk starts, but who is even going to notice an extra person drifting in at the end?
August 1st, 2009 at 11:03 am
Champagne before the seminar, Claret during it, and Cognac or Port afterwards. That’s the only way. Or is that dinner?
August 1st, 2009 at 11:15 am
While on the job market, I really appreciated the places that gave me coffee and some kind of sustenance before the talk — made me feel much less like a circus animal performing for my food. Especially because those back-to-back-to-back meetings with professors and deans and students all day tended to make me ravenously hungry.
My university does coffee and cookies both before and after a 4 PM talk, but almost no one stays afterward unless they are planning on going to dinner with the speaker. Part of the problem is that we don’t have a good lecture hall in our building, so there’s too much opportunity for people to scatter away on the walk back.
Regardless of coffee/tea time, I think it is absolutely necessary to give the speaker a bottle of water (or at least a mug to fill at a drinking fountain) before the talk, and I’m shocked at how often this doesn’t happen.
Another interesting question is whose responsibility are the colloquium goodies? At my grad and postdoc institutions it was the grad students (with department money, of course), but here it seems to fall to the already-overworked chair’s assistant.
August 1st, 2009 at 11:19 am
Talks are sometimes boooooooring. And a boooooring talk without coffee is more or less an experience of hell on earth. As a grad student your professor might also force you to sit through the seminar (especially if his research group is small). Thus. Bitte bitte, coffee before the talk! Cakes and sweet can come whenever, but the caffeine injection needs to be there before!
P
August 1st, 2009 at 11:53 am
Useful tip: if your speaker is likely to be boring, ensure that he/she has lots to drink before the seminar. That way, if you’re lucky, they are very unlikely to run over because they’ll need to answer a call of nature.
August 1st, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I prefer having refreshments after the seminar, to encourage relaxed discussion about the seminar or other topics, and I like to provide fresh fruit and popcorn as an alternative to cookies. We start our weekly Caltech quantum information seminar at 3pm to allow plenty of time afterward. With this gambit, we recently ensnared Sean Carroll for some fruitful conversation about eternity. Come back again soon, Sean.
August 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Cripes, does no one get lunch anymore? Y’know, talk at 11:00, Q&A for last ten minutes, those who wish to then retire to a conference room for a bag lunch from Au Bon Pain or whatever, where substantive discussion naturally ensues…? I guess if the hosting group is huge that could be a (money) problem, but IMO, if you can, you start off with coffee and something snacky before, to lure in both the starving mooches and the genuinely interested. Then afterwards, the hosting investigator takes the speaker up to the group conf. rm. for lunch. It takes some balls to crash a lab luncheon and have nothing to contribute, so typically those who didn’t report to the host but were eating the food had a good reason to be there. Peons like me were shown pity and fed as well. But for heaven’s sake, you’re going drag some poor person in from gawd-knows-where and not at least give them a seat and a sandwich right afterwards? Just lousy donuts? Misers!
August 1st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Donuts…??? What happened to bagels and lox!?
August 1st, 2009 at 4:52 pm
This may seem a bit silly, but in Tucson we went from afterwards to before several years ago in part because the physical layout & room rules required the goodies to be well separated from from the lecture hall. The result was that speaker was often buttonholed in the hall by various people piling on after the talk, while the locusts descended on the goodies, leaving nothing by the time we could pry the speaker away.
This is also may be silly, but I always preferred the energy of the crowd building up before the talk, sweeping in en-mass, versus, the afterwards situation of most people snagging a goodie and immediately scurrying back to their office.
But… Could I get you out here, Sean, if I promised donuts afterwards?
August 1st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Every geology department I have ever worked in has had afternoon talk, followed by beer and bar food.
Works well- even with day care issues, provided the kids are at a center within walking distance which stays open past 5:30.
Sometimes, the beer is sold by the student geo association as a fund raiser for their activities.
August 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 am
Coffee Before, Donuts After.
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 am
What is wrong with having donuts both before and after the talk?? It is even pleasingly time-reversal invariant.
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Marc, the wine after the talk was at a typical Large State University. I think we had a special dispensation with some understanding that the wine was unlikely to fall into the hands of undergrads. Either that, or we were just breaking the rules. However, I do agree that many Large State Universities would make it impossible, which is a hold over of our so-called Puritan heritage if you ask me. Sean should add “ridiculous university alcohol policies” to his list of grievances next time he goes on a jeremiad about science and religion.
August 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Of course not ANY old wine would do so maybe it should be reserved for SPECIAL speakers.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:17 am
There is no reason not to have refreshements both before and after a talk. A more interesting question is dinner with the speaker. I’ve seen it before and after. Before has the advantages that it gives the speaker something to do, he can familiarize himself with the audience and perhaps change the talk accordingly, it is during working hours so not such a problem for people who have to get home and the speaker can also get home if he lives nearby. Also, the speaker has to eat anyway sometime before the talk and might not know where etc. After has the advantages that one can discuss the talk, there is no strict time when it all has to end, some people and/or the speaker might want an excuse not to get home early and the speaker will probably be more relaxed. Both have their advantages. Big disadvantages of dinner with the speaker after a talk (and, to a lesser extent, before): there is usually a stable seating arrangement, so some folks are sitting too far away to converse with the speaker and also the food usually comes just when the conversation is getting interesting and tends to interrupt things.
Of course, for all advantages, one could have a meal with the speaker both before and after the talk, but that might be overkill. How can one have all the advantages of before and after without the disadvantages of after mentioned above? I found out in Finland: meal with the speaker is before the talk, and after the talk is the sauna—no fixed seating arrangements and nothing to interrupt a good conversation. (In my case, there was an additional meal after the sauna as well, but then again my host was very accomodating.)
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:57 am
I doubt that having the food after the talk will make it any more awkward for a grad student! In fact, it is easier, because no one sees you sneaking off with food when you leave the lecture hall.
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Don’t Topology conferences map coffee into donuts by diffeomorphims?
I’ve been to some very well-catered conferences, where the lavish food is in a central location adjacent to each of several auditoriums and smaller meeting rooms at, for instance, CMU. There are great conferences where one must purchase food in the hotel restaurant or a catering table set up near the main ballrooms (International Conference on Complex Systems). The huge San Diego Comic-Con (120,000+ people) is almost impossible to find food at. Seminars at Caltech often have a breakfasty and a lunchy table outside the plenary lecture hall. My worst memory was that, 20 seconds before I was to start my invited talk (I was already on stage) at an AIAA conference, someone yelled “They’re serving free roast beef sandwiches at the IBM booth” and 2/3 of my audience stampeded out the doors. I later published a popularized version as “Future Spacecraft Sensors” [Quantum, No.41, Winter/Spring 1992, pp.23-26, Thrust Publications, 8217 Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877; ISSN 0198-6686. But not the same…
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I think that’s a good idea to serve them after.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Manual TrackBack ping: A poll on what food should be served, and when.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Well if one wants to have donuts after the seminar, the seminar has to be start early (before 4 pm). At PSU we used to have cookies after the seminar which used to be between 3-4 and that gave ample opportunity to indulge in informal chats with the
speaker. Starting a colloquia before 4 is not possible because of teaching conflicts etc.
Also I have been to seminars/colloquia where there is usually a class scheduled in the same room after the seminar and that is usually inconvenient to the speaker as well as
the audience, so there is no time to ask questions.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:59 am
You’ve got to keep them waiting for the snacks or they will eat and run.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I think they should have food before and after -
August 6th, 2009 at 6:52 am
Do nuts eat doughnuts?
August 11th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
This reminds me of my days as a grad student in Chicago. I had a great adviser who purchased an espresso machine for the lounge, allowing me to stay awake for most talks! On the other hand, the astronomy grad students somehow got their department to provide cookies without the obligatory talk – avoiding the eat and run problem. Those were the days…