Daniel Colquitt

A very applied mathematician at the University of Liverpool | Governor at St. Thomas of Canterbury RC Primary School | Lucky husband & proud father | Views are my own &c. I use and develop new mathematical techniques for the study of wave propagation, localisation and fracture in complicated materials. Outside of work I have very little time for anything else other than doing as my two young daughters tell me. When I manage to steal a few minutes, I enjoy reading Fantasy, coding, & gardening. Somewhat obsessed with Disney.

@danielcolquitthttps://danielcolquitt.com

I failed

March 1, 2023•175 words

On February 10th, I set myself a challenge: to write for 100 consecutive days. Those of you who have been paying attention (why on earth have you been paying attention to this?!) will have noticed that I failed spectacularly, only manging to do 11 days. Part of my motivation for doing this was that, although I spend quite a bit of time critiquing and editing the writing of others - my students, colleagues, and collaborators, I spend very little of my time actually writing. Although it feels som...

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Eating the frog

February 21, 2023•94 words

I need to start eating the frog. It seems that every few days of my #100Days writing challenge (or at least on days four, eight, & ten) I struggle to think of something to write about. This paucity of inspiration coincides with the occasions when I leave my writing until the evening. Tomorrow, I will write in the morning. I’m not sure about what. Day twelve of one hundred. This post is part of my #100Days writing challenge, in which I have challenged myself to write for 10-20 minutes fo...

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Imperfect proofs

February 20, 2023•507 words

Mathematics is often presented as a very sterile subject, particularly in colleges and undergraduate courses. Exercises and theorems are accompanied by perfect solutions and proofs. In order to solve X you should do A, B, and then C. It’s easy to see the attraction of such an approach — after all maths is the pantheon of logical arguments and, usually, there is only one “correct” answer. However, maths doesn’t work this way in “real life”. No one conjures a theorem out of thin air and then proc...

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Writing is hard

February 19, 2023•329 words

It turns out that writing is harder than I thought. The idea of writer’s block is never something that I’ve accepted. Perhaps it is because almost all of my writing is technical or scientific in nature. I’ve never stared at a blank piece of paper unable to write — you just start writing. Maybe it helps that, by the time that I come to write something, I have almost always completed the creative aspects of the work. For a mathematician, creativity happens when thinking about a new problem and dev...

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Into the unknown ... again

February 18, 2023•329 words

Yesterday I met with one of my PhD students, who has recently started. I had set the student a preliminary toy problem to solve to help them get up to speed with the relevant topics for their project. I like using this approach for new students as it gives them something tangible to focus on beyond the nebulous literature review and piles of reading. The problem is one that I — along with some members of our group — had solved before, so I knew what the solution should look like. However, when ...

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I don't want to write tonight

February 17, 2023•161 words

It‘a Friday night and we’re having a movie night with the kids (Guardians of the Galaxy, if you must know). And yet, my #100Days writing challenge demands that I write for ten minutes. So this is it. At the end of a long week, I honestly don’t feel like writing — I just want to sit down with my family and watch a fun film. Friday nights are my time to switch-off and unwind. A welcomed respite between a hectic working week and a busy weekend of kids activities and household chores. So you’ll for...

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JOCM

February 16, 2023•129 words

JOCM — The Joy of Cancelled Meetings Whilst I do my very best to honour all my commitments, there are few emails that spark as much joy to receive as those that cancel meetings — even meetings that I have arranged and that are on interesting topics. I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to cancel our meeting… There is absolutely no need to apologise for giving me my time back. Indeed, getting back an hour of my working day will probably be the highlight of my day! Another short one today,...

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Context switching

February 15, 2023•516 words

Yesterday I wrote about the many hats that academics have to wear. A side-effect of wearing many hats is that you can very easily fall into the trap of constantly context switching, which significantly affect your productivity. The negative effects of context switching are particularly deleterious for academics who need extended periods of time to dedicate to deep work. Briefly, context switching is the act of moving from one task to another, unrelated, one. The problem is that it takes cogniti...

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The many hats of an academic

February 14, 2023•475 words

Yesterday’s post (Not today) prompted me to think about the many hats that I wear as an academic. This is not new and I am certainly not the first person to write about the many roles expected of modern academics. However, it is still not readily recognised outside academia, or even within some parts of academia, how varied are the responsibilities of academics. The most visible, and easily understood, part of our role is that of the teacher. We teach, prepare resources, design and mark assessm...

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Not today

February 13, 2023•184 words

Despite it only being day four of my #100Days writing challenge, I really don’t feel like writing today. But that is the whole point of the challenge — to write even if you don’t feel like it — so, here goes… The reason that I don’t feel like writing is that I’ve had a really long and tedious day at work. Today was the deadline for return my marks for my two first semester modules, which meant checking and transcribing marks, entering them on spread sheets, and writing reports on the outcomes. ...

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Note taking redux

February 12, 2023•803 words

Yesterday, I posted about note taking and @[email protected] asked me to explain a little bit more about my paper indexing system. Initially, I was going to go to town on this and include pictures, diagrams, and detailed instructions. However, the central idea behind the #100Days writing challenge is that you write for 10-20 minutes each day. Moreover, as I said in my response, the method is nothing special and is mostly common sense. So this post will be a brief summary of my method, ...

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Note taking

February 11, 2023•401 words

I love writing on paper. In fact, I am a bit of a stationary snob. My favourite paper is Clairefontaine Triopmhe and my favourite notebooks are the A5 Leuchtturm1917s. And, up until very recently, I kept a physical notebook which contained pretty much all my personal and work life. I carried it everywhere with me and it had a detailed indexing system so that I knew were everything was and could find it quickly. My notebook contained notes from meetings, plans, to do lists, ideas for new projects...

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My #100Days writing challenge

February 10, 2023•270 words

I recently started using Standard Notes as my primary notetaking app (more on this in a later post). Standard Notes has an associated blogging platform Listed, which allows you to publish your notes as blog posts. Whilst exploring Listed, I came across the 100 Day Writing Challenge by moughxyz, one of the creators of Standard Notes. The premise is very simple - sit down for 10 minutes and write for 100 consecutive days. The idea is that by simply forcing yourself to write about anything will ove...

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