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I would be interested in learning more about your degree, green mariner, because I must confess that I can't imagine what a post-secondary degree program in Geography would look like. What were the major components of your program, and what career field did you pursue after graduation?
well, i am the graduate of a geography curriculum in the fine state of south carolina, as well. ( i think green_mariner is too but i'm not sure. )
just as an example -- one of my professors was an original designer of the GPS system. In his class we learned about basic concepts of geodesy, how the ellipsoid represents a digital model of the earth, and a lot of the mathematical calculations behind it. the utility of which is digital GPS-based surveying.
other things you might learn -- cartography (how to make maps visually appealing), geostatistics (how to apply statistical principles to geographic data), web mapping (how to display map data over the web), aerial photo analysis (how to identify features from aerial photos), remote sensing (how to extract features automatically from LiDAR and Aerial datasets).
The general field of (maps + location based data + large databases) is called "GIS", which expands into the traditional disciplines of IT, software development, scripting, web development, and database management.
... and then you've got the whole "Economic Geography" and "Human Geography" sub-disciplines, which include things like political analysis, economic/suitability analysis (i.e. whats the best location to build a starbucks)
you also have a great deal of environmental science / physical geography, understanding land forms, understanding how biology and chemistry affect the environment -- learning how to take samples of the environment and map them in order to understand patterns.
There's a ton of other stuff but you get the idea.
Latest in a long line of dumb threads making the most bizarre connection between "liberal" behavior and "nonliberal" behavior.
I consider myself well above the average in terms of knowledge of geography, etc. But, frankly, geography knowledge is not terribly important or relevant in most people's lives. Including that of my supervisor, who holds multiple degrees, including English, law and philosophy....so he is obviously very educated and not dumb. And yet lost a bet recently when he adamantly asserted that New Jersey was to the east of Brooklyn.
Oh. And HE went to the seminary too and was about 5 seconds shy of becoming a priest.... so maybe while we are drawing baseless and illogical conclusions, we can start there.......
well, i am the graduate of a geography curriculum in the fine state of south carolina, as well.
just as an example -- one of my professors was an original designer of the GPS system. In his class we learned about basic concepts of geodesy, how the ellipsoid represents a digital model of the earth, and a lot of the mathematical calculations behind it.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Maybe something of value will come out of this thread after all. What career field did you pursue upon graduation?
Last edited by randomparent; 11-25-2013 at 08:25 AM..
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Maybe something of value will come out of this thread after all. What career field did you pursue upon graduation?
when people ask i usually say, "we learn states and capitals."
but, i am in the GIS field. I work as sort of a hybrid GIS Professional / Developer. It is good work if you're technically inclined... if not, it will suck.
basically, my employer hands me a single critical task that must be accomplished. This task would normally take a group of 10 people a year to accomplish by manual means. It takes about an hour per week, and spend the other 39 hours/week looking for something to do. (hence my prolific city-data account.)
Ha! I like your sense of humor, and I appreciate the positive turn this thread is taking. Having pursued an entirely different course of study at university, my geography education ended in high school. In any case, thank you for sharing. You've definitely opened my eyes.
I think the most entertaining part of this thread is not so much that the people in this video didn't know the capital of Canada, but that 90% of the people on this thread who sneer about it immediately googled the answer because they, too, did not know.
The reality is simply that ALL of us have limited knowledge and going to a well-respected college or university is no panacea that bestows ALL knowledge on students. All it can do is raise the level of information a person possesses.
That said, I'm guessing that this apparent lack of knowledge speaks, in part, about the relative youth of interviewees than about their level of intelligence. It also speaks to great editing since none of us have any idea how many students answered correctly but were, for obvious reasons, excluded from the video.
Finally, if you believe that this is indicative of anything and if you believe that this video is representative of Harvard students, you really need to worry. After all, Harvard is usually seen as one of the top schools in the nation and in the world. If your premise it true and if these are America's brightest young individuals, then America is headed for a lot of pain.
In other words, there really is no reason to buy into the message of the video unless you lack the ability to perceive it within context. We know that Harrier is unable to do so - or he would have worded his OP differently - and there are quite a few others who clearly fall for the most basic mechanisms of propaganda: Selectively highlighting individuals that further your message without offering validation that they are, in fact, what you purport them to be (Harvard students) and without explaining how many people, in total, needed to be interviewed in order to create a video of some ten or so students who did not know the correct answer.
Congratulation to all of you for clearly demonstrating how easily you can be manipulated. You are government's dream - you believe everything thrown at you while you are convinced of your intellectual superiority. Machiavelli would just laugh, laugh, laugh.
I think this is also something people misunderstand. I took an Intro to Geography class my freshman year at college - it wasn't a requirement, aside from fulfilling my general education requirement, and unless one was a Geography major it's unlikely they would go beyond this course. Countries/capitals wasn't a feature of the course. It was much more of a broad survey to the study/profession of geography, mapmaking, various projections, GIS, cultural/environmental geography, discussion of the different fields of geography, etc. When I was the TA for an Intro to Political Science course, we did do map tests, but they were a fairly small portion of the grade and they were countries only.
i think you're referring to GEOG103 at USC -- if so, that's the specific course that inspired me to pursue GIS as a profession. I was slogging through the horrible drugery of the Comp. Sci curriculum, and my eyes lit up when I saw what you could do with GIS.
Finally, if you believe that this is indicative of anything and if you believe that this video is representative of Harvard students, you really need to worry. After all, Harvard is usually seen as one of the top schools in the nation and in the world. If your premise it true and if these are America's brightest young individuals, then America is headed for a lot of pain.
Many big-name universities abandoned their geography programs decades ago, if they had them at all. When I was in school, Harvard didn't even have a geography department.
It really wasn't seen as being "useful" until ESRI came along and blew everybody's mind.
i think you're referring to GEOG103 at USC -- if so, that's the specific course that inspired me to pursue GIS as a profession. I was slogging through the horrible drugery of the Comp. Sci curriculum, and my eyes lit up when I saw what you could do with GIS.
I am indeed! Nice to run into a fellow Gamecock out there. Who did you have it with?
I am indeed! Nice to run into a fellow Gamecock out there. Who did you have it with?
i forgot the guy's name, but he was kind of red-faced, chunky, and wore glasses. i don't think he's still teaching there.
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