• Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Had a class where the cutoff was 17 years IIRC so it’s entirely possible that sources from the 90s aren’t accepted in their class.

    • Synthuir@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, I looked at this and wondered what was so surprising about the text; I’m the same age as this incredible paper and I’ve regularly had professors that wouldn’t accept something that old. To be honest, what I landed on is OOP is also a ‘94 baby who’s teaching their first class.

    • Linssiili@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      My partner had to write a paper about some medical procedure that was invented in early 1900s, and they had to use at least two “original research that is at most 2 years old”. The whole course was a clusterfuck.

    • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’ve never heard of this and… why? You shouldn’t cite your sources if they’re too old? What? I get that you should try to find more recent sources for certain things, so the age of a source can be relevant if we’ve learned more in the meantime… but having a cut off is stupid. Evaluate the sources and if it’s outdated information criticize that.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        It’s not that you shouldn’t cite them, it’s that you shouldn’t use them as a source at all because they’re considered unreliable for the subject you’re working on.

        Depending on the point you’ve reached in your learning career, you might not be equipped to detect and criticize an outdated source.

        Some fields also evolve so quickly that what was considered a fact just 20 years ago might have been superseded 5 years later and again 5 years later so the only info that’s considered reliable is about 10 years old and everything else must be ignored unless you’re working on a review of the evolution of knowledge in that field.

        • tuhriel@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 months ago

          And what do you do if you want to reference how fast the field moves, or why certain methods are not done anymore, but where found ‘good enough’ back in the days. You would still have to use the old source and cite them…

          An absolute cut off doesn’t teach you anything…a guidance, how to identify good sources from bad or outdated ones would be much better

      • Amaltheamannen@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Especially in fields like computer science where there are many commonly cited cornerstone papers written in the 60s-80s. So much modern stuff builds upon and improves that.

  • dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    It depends on the field.

    In an intro to physics course, I’ve cited the Principia before without issues.

    I’ve also cited the Cyropaedia in a philosophy course.

    I got a significant penalty for citing a 2013 article for a software design paper.

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      Reminds me of someone asking how to cite the Bible. Whether or not you can just go “John 3:16” or “His Majesty King James VI of Scotland and I of England, Ireland and France - 1611 ‘Authorised Version’ Translation of The Bible - John Chapter Three Section 16”

      Although if you were directly quoting it, I think stating the translation would be more important than if you were referencing it.

      • Artyom@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        The Bible, The Lord; 0 AD

        Be bold, dare your teacher to dock you points for it.

      • dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        Translations are important, and with the Cyropaedia I did need to use the translation. For the Principia, because I wanted to flex, I provided my own translation. I could have cited the text book, but that would be less fun.

    • ReadingCat
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      11 months ago

      What do you do to write for physics, philosophy and software design papers?

      • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Not OP, but attend undergrad. When I was in undergrad I specialized in chemistry, but I still needed to take breadth requirement courses in humanities and social sciences. So I did papers in chemistry, physics, statistics, political theory, ancient Greek history, and English throughout my undergrad.

      • dodgy_bagel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        I’m working on my third bachelor’s degree.

        A degree in the classics pays absolute shit, and math teachers are still paid shit, albeit slightly more than Starbucks. It turns out I hate children more than anticipated.

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
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      11 months ago

      What’s the cutoff? My instinct is 1975 but then that gives a 50 year period for ‘mid’ and only 25 each for ‘early’/‘late’. So is the cutoff between mid and late 1966?

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        I feel like early, middle and late aren’t continuous, and there’s gaps.
        I don’t think 1932 is early or mid 1900s.

        Kinda like how young, old and middle aged don’t have an immediate cutoff. A 31 year old is neither young nor middle aged, and a 54 year old is past middle aged, but they aren’t old yet.

        • Ook the Librarian@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Funny how you see gaps. I feel they overlap. For decades Like 31-34 is early 30s, 33-37 is mid, and 38 39 are late. (Late being a smaller interval because everyone likes it that way.)

          I think the about the same proportions work for centuries.

          But I definitely see gaps in being young, old, and middle-age.

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
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          11 months ago

          Hmm, I normally say (since I turned 30) that 0-29 are young, 30-59 is middle aged, and 60-89 is old (90+ is super old/ancient 😆).

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            This hurts nearly as much as the OP.

            Middle-aged starts at 30?! Fuck I’m old. At 53, middle-age didn’t start til 45, 75-89 is old, and I’d put super old at 95+.

            Then again, I may be skewed a bit since my 88 year old dad is sharper than most people I know, still works his regular job in aerospace, and drives Uber in his spare time to keep himself young. He may live to 120 at this rate.

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
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              11 months ago

              The problem with your scale is it’s all over the place. If middle age doesn’t start until 45 then is 44 young? Why are there 44 years of young, 30 years of middle age, and only 15 years of old?

              Is this some imperial age measurement?

              • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                Because human life, aging, and experience aren’t linear, they’re logarithmic.

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I don’t have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to grammar, but pluralizing dates and acronyms with apostrophes is definitely one of them.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        Yeah! They should of not used that apostrophe!

        (Fun fact, my phone apparently now won’t even let me type that phrase without it autocorrecting it to “have”. I had to manually “fix” it. Good on you, iOS.)

  • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    We started Chronicles of Narnia at bedtime last night. The first line is that it takes place when the reader’s grandfather was a child. I flipped to the copyright page and did some math. Found myself having to do a lot of prefacing with the little one. “Okay, so there used to be like no electricity at all anywhere ever. Not that long ago. Even though everything you see is electronic…”

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      My daughter likes the old Looney Tunes cartoons. But there are a lot of things mentioned or shown in those cartoons that don’t exist anymore and it’s been fun having to explain what certain things are. There was a one cartoon where my daughter asked why there would be a knob on a car’s dash that said “choke”. I have a very old car that has a carburetor (long story) so thankfully I could show her, but even that old bucket of bolts has an automatic choke.

      Another cartoon had a sort of proto-Elmer Fudd that was taking pictures of wildlife, and I had to explain what all this equipment was he had with him. He had a camera that used a squeeze bulb for the shutter and had a hood to cover the operator.

      For me, I think it’s interesting that in the original Star Trek, there were no screens with text on them. There were screens, but they showed video or images instead of text. That’s because back when ol’ Bill Shatner was on the camera putting commas in places they don’t belong, there was no such thing as a computer screen with text. You entered data into a computer with a teletype, and it gave your answers back on a printout.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Gotta wonder if this how people born in 1880/1890 felt when/if people in the 1920’s referred to 1894 as the late 1800’s

    • Player2@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      I’m not sure where you’re getting that the paper is due tomorrow. It looks like they do have class tomorrow with that teacher though

        • nyctre@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Do you really have finals just after a break? The student calls it a “final paper”. I really don’t think that was break homework .

        • leggettc18
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          11 months ago

          WTH you have cruel professors. Break would imply no office hours, so no way to ask the professor any questions or clarifications between when the paper was assigned and when it was due. Unless you’re implying it was assigned sometime before break and then was due the day break was over.

  • danikpapas@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I might be retarded but what’s wrong with the post? The year is specified quite unconventionally, but that’s all i can see.

    • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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      11 months ago

      The student implies the late 1900’s was very long ago, and the Twitter poster found that hurtful possibly in a joking matter.

      • jettrscga@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Hearing someone talk about a time that you vividly remember as a generic 100 year historical era.

        It feels like someone dropped those decades into an archive folder with the rest of history and left it to collect dust.