Archive for the 'Mathematics' Category

Not quite a wave

Posted in Art, Computing, Mathematics, Research, Science on March 6th, 2008

Not quite a wave

Sometimes you’re just minding your own business, trying to get a little science done, and a little art pops out at you all unexpected.

What?!? You want to know where this comes from? All is revealed beneath the fold…

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Feel free to smack him for me

Posted in Education, Mathematics, Politics, Science on February 18th, 2008

'How it works' from xkcd.com

It actually took me a second to get it - how annoying that a web comic would actually be subtle enough to challenge a little :-).

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Nerds on parade

Posted in Mathematics, Mildly amusing, Video on December 14th, 2007

A wonderfully nerdly performance of mental arithmetic. I found his use of word mnemonics to remember large numbers quite cool.

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Transforming our thoughts about teaching

Posted in Computing, Education, Mathematics, Science, Video on December 12th, 2007

This wonderful little video (produced by some U of M Twin Cities mathematicians) has apparently been viewed over 1 million times now, which is a lot more views than it would ever get in class. I frequently run into faculty that are very intent on holding on to their teaching ideas and techniques, and certainly not sharing them openly with the world. They see those ideas as “their property”, to be guarded and controlled as much as possible. It’s a weird attitude, because almost none of them will ever see any money from those ideas, and the potential for wider viewing and usage is just so much greater if they open up (as in this case).

A good video like this takes a lot of time to produce, but faculty often put in huge hours on their lectures, labs, and demonstrations. Get it out there!

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High school math = Teh Good

Posted in Computing, Education, Mathematics, Science on July 29th, 2007

How science is done
Pharyngula has a nice discussion of report looking at the impact of high school math and science classes on performance in university science courses. The short version? Definitely take math, as that improves performance in all the sciences in the study (biology, chemistry, and physics). Taking science in high school tends to help performance in that science in college, but doesn’t help much in the other sciences.

They don’t say anything about computing (but, sadly, most high schools don’t offer much in the way of meaningful computer science courses), but my experience suggests that much the same is true there: A solid math background is a definite win. Have some programming experience can help, but it can also get in the way if you end up needing to unlearn a lot. And any advantage one has from prior programming experience tends to wash out within the first yer (sometimes the first semester), while some solid math background continues to be an advantage all through the major.

The error bars are pretty huge, which isn’t entirely surprising given the variable quality of both instructor and student (both in high school and university). It would be interesting to better understand what role the quality of the high school instruction plays in the correlations. Does, for example, a bad science class actually have the potential to hurt you later on?

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But what about “Moon Unit”?

Posted in Education, Mathematics, Politics, Science on June 17th, 2007

2007 Byte Bash - 41
WeatherGirl tipped me to an Observer article entitled “Names really do make a difference“, and I keep wavering between “Oh, surely not!” and “Well, duh, that was pretty obvious”. Apparently giving a girl a “girlie” name significantly reduces her likelihood of studying math and science:

Both subjects [math and physics], which are traditionally seen as predominantly male, are far more popular among girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren and Ashley, which have been judged as less feminine in a linguistic test. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.

The (highly speculative) causalities are the reasonably obvious ones: Seeing names like “Barbie” or “Breeze” on the class list or application form brings beaucoup baggage to the party. This is hardly a win, especially since the patriarchy already ensures that females already have plenty of baggage when it comes to science and math. It’s also telling, if not entirely shocking, that giving boys certain names can have similar effects. Seeing “Bubba” on the football roster might elicit a snicker, but likely no surprise; seeing “Bubba” at the math league finals, on the other hand…

So it would seem that some parents have a fair bit to answer for:

‘A name is part of an impression package,’ said Mehrabian. ‘Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.’

In the case of the Zappa family, I’m voting for “arrogant”; Frank certainly wasn’t ignorant.

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LaTeX for WordPress!

Posted in Computing, Mathematics, Weblogs and CMS on February 21st, 2007

I just discovered via Abstract Nonsense that there’s now built-in support for LaTeX in WordPress! Now that’s way cool…
TeX math cheat sheet

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Memes-ville: Five things you don’t know about me

Posted in Education, Family, General, Mathematics, Music on February 20th, 2007

Bristles and pages
This is arguably a poorly formed concept since its meaning can vary wildly depending on the referent of “you” but, hey, if Mr. Tozier is silly enough to tag me I’ll play along :-).

  1. I’ll start with something really random and meaningless: I have short pinkie fingers Actually, the fingers themselves are proportional to my other fingers, but there’s something a little off in the bones of the hand and both my pinkies start “too soon” and thus end about a joint short when compared to their neighbors. Its not exactly a big deal, as I didn’t even realize it until I was 13 or 14, when my piano teacher and I noticed it when I kept doing long reaches with my fourth finger insead my fifth. While I’m sharing trivial physical abnormalities, I also have a slightly curved spine, and smaller feet than expected for someone my height. My mother blames it all on smoking enthusiastically during both her pregnancies.
  2. I’ve only considered leaving UMM once since coming here in 1991. As a Reed (math) grad, I had always dreamed of helping found the computing department at Reed. They weren’t kind enough to set something up just as I was coming out of graduate school :-), but did advertise for their first computing faculty a few years after I came here and I couldn’t resist the opportunity. I didn’t even make the interview, but I have no regrets. I’ve been (and continue to be) really happy here at UMM.
  3. Like Bill, I read very slowly, although I think in different ways than Bill. I read slowly to begin with, and tend to do lots of daydreaming and thinking about what I’m reading on top of it. This is one of the reasons I’m a crap citizen of the blogsphere and related on-line worlds. There’s just way too much great stuff out there, and I’m way too slow a reader to stay on top of them. I suspect that’s one of the reasons I like Flickr; I can process a lot of images in the same time it would take me to read a fraction of PeeZed’s output.
  4. Dr. Seuss (and my son) helped me learned to sing. I’d always enjoyed music, but only started singing with any regularity when Sub-Evil Boy was born; it was nice singing to an (infant) audience that was so wonderfully non-judgemental. Reading lots of Dr. Seuss at the same time also taught me volumes about timing and rhythm. While I don’t miss diapers, I definitely miss reading to him every night.
  5. I have an Erdős number of 4. (Go to the Erdős Number Project for more info on how to compute your own Erdős Number.) The cool thing for me isn’t the number itself, but that it was lowered from 5 to 4 by a UMM alum (Nick Hopper) who I did research with when he was an undergraduate with. He went from here to CMU, where his advisor (and co-author) was Manuel Blum, who has an Erdős number of 1. Absolutely one of my highlights of my career at UMM, and I suspect this will be as low as my Erdős number ever goes. Rather remarkable it’s apparently the same as Bill Gates, but I suspect there are precious few other similarities between us.
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There’s a Carnival of Mathematics!

Posted in Mathematics, Weblogs and CMS on February 19th, 2007



math

Originally uploaded by Akash k.

I just stumbled across the fact that there’s a new Carnival of Mathematics, with their first edition up a bit over a week ago. The next edition is due to be posted on the 23rd on Good Math, Bad Math. Thanks to The Science Pundit for the pointer.

As far as I know there’s no carnival for computing - does anyone know different?

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Do we need to be requiring more math/science in high school?

Posted in Education, Mathematics, Science on February 10th, 2007

Every cell is like a city
As I mentioned before, I took part in a panel discussion on women in science and math last week. One of the issues that came up in the discussion was the importance of requiring math and science courses, at least through high school, and perhaps into college. The argument was that as long as technical subjects were seen as “hard” and “uncool”, many kids would avoid them even if they had aptitude, and often even if they had interest. This means they come out of their “awkward teenage years” underprepared for and underexposed to science and math, often ensuring that they don’t pursue these subjects any farther later in life.

The situation in the U.S., where math and science requirements are often minimal at best, was contrasted to that in various parts of Europe and Russia, where everyone was expected to take math up to (and perhaps including) calculus, along with several years of science. The public school I attended in Montevideo, Uruguay, when I was an exchange student back in the late 70’s required everyone to take math (they were doing something like pre-calc), physics, and chemistry, whereas most of my classmates in Texas had stopped taking math and science courses a year or two earlier.

And while this obviously has the potential to hurt all kids, it particularly affects groups who are already stigmatized in this regard. 13 and 14 year-olds who are being bombarded with with idea that math/science is “hard”, that they (or their group) are “not good at it”, and that it’s “boring” or “nerdly” or irrelevant to their future, are then that much more likely to turn away and do other things.

So, do we require more math and science in junior high and high school in the U.S.? If we agree that it’s important, how do we make it happen effectively?

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