The Simpsons, that is. Here’s an article about using the show for the instruction of higher math. And here’s the unofficial Simpsons episode index for math references.
[Via The Corner]
* Reference is to the episode in which Homer asks the same question about donuts.
The Simpsons, that is. Here’s an article about using the show for the instruction of higher math. And here’s the unofficial Simpsons episode index for math references.
[Via The Corner]
* Reference is to the episode in which Homer asks the same question about donuts.
Chad Orzel has a couple interesting posts about the relative value of literacy versus numeracy in both society and the academy.
…I do think there is an imbalance here, and it bothers me. If a student were to come in and say “You know, I just can’t handle literature classes. I’m no good at reading, and I’m not comfortable with it, so I don’t want to take any English classes,” most faculty would think that there’s something wrong with that person. And yet, I hear functionally equivalent statements about math every time I bring this subject up. Bright people will say “I think science is really neat, but I just can’t handle math,” and see nothing wrong with that.
If a student professed a distaste for reading as frankly as some express their distaste for math, we’d think that they were intellectually stunted. Illiteracy is a sign of a learning disability, while innumeracy is shrugged off as just one of those things.
I do think that one could argue that in fact much of critical theory in literature is unadulterated crap. Does anyone think that it would be as easy (or even possible) for an English major to hoax a physics paper as it was for Alan Sokal to mock postmodernists? Clearly Sokal understood much more about the literary theories (to the slight degree that they’re not nonsense) than any of the humanity professors will ever know about physics–at least enough to pull the wool over their eyes.
What’s dismaying to me is that for many, it’s not only acceptable to have no ability at math, but many take perverse pride in it, and are often rewarded both in academia and in life.
[via Derek Lowe, who has additional commentary.]
In the midst of deconstructing Michael Behe’s latest channeling of Bishop Paley, Ron Bailey agrees with moi about the Intelligent Design controversy (not surprisingly), and identifies the real problem:
It is not the role of public schools to confirm the religious beliefs of their students. Parents who want their children to benefit from the latest findings of science would reasonably be irked if evolutionary biology were expunged from the public school curriculum. There is another way around this conundrum. Get rid of public schools. Give parents vouchers and let them choose the schools to which to send their children. Fundamentalists can send their kids to schools that teach that the earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. Science geeks can send their kids to technoschools that teach them how to splice genes to make purple mice. This proposal lowers political and social conflict, and eventually those made fitter in the struggle for life by better education will win.
My comment was:
if science is a religion (in the sense of a belief system, which I think it is), then is it a legitimate subject for public schools? As I’ve said previously, this is largely a symptom of a much larger problem–the fact that we have public schools, in which the “public” will always be at loggerheads about what subjects should be taught and how. But given the utility of learning science (something that I employ every day, whenever I troubleshoot my computer network, or figure out what kinds of foods are good or bad for me), I think that it is an important subject to which everyone should be exposed. But if I were teaching evolution, I would offer it as the scientific explanation for how life on earth developed, not a “fact” or “the truth.”
The problem arises when some scientists, blind to their own faith and its tenets, come to believe that their beliefs represent Truth, and that those who disagree are fools and slack-jawed yokels. And with that, I come full circle in once again agreeing with Hugh that the media does a disservice to the debate when it doesn’t respect the beliefs of those who feel that their children are being indoctrinated away from their faith.
We will never resolve this conflict as long as so many continue to insist on a “one-size-fits-all” school system.
[Update a few minutes later]
Along those lines, here’s a pretty scary story (though not a new one, to anyone who’s been paying attention), or at least it should be for parents with kids in public schools:
According to benchmarks for middle school education, the top objective for the district’s math teachers is to teach “respect for human differences.” The objective is for students to “live out the system-wide core value of ‘respect for human differences’ by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors.”
Priority No. 2 is where the basics come in, which is “problem solving and representation
[Warning: Extreme Political Incorrectness Ahead!]
Here’s an interesting article that says that human tribes without words for numbers larger than very small numbers (e.g., one) have trouble counting:
Some argue that–at least until recently–the Pirah
John Derbyshire has been fighting the good fight over at The Corner. He describes why I’m always hesitant to get into this subject, and why the battles never end over at Free Republic:
I like a good knock-down argument as much as the next person, but I must say, ID-ers are low-grade opponents, at least if a bulk of my e-mails are any indication. They are still banging away with the arguments I first heard when the whole thing first surfaced 10-15 yrs ago. “What use is half an eye?” “The odds against this are a trillion to one!” etc. etc. There is nothing new here. I understand why biologists get angry and frustrated with ID-ers. All the ID arguments have been patiently refuted many times over. The ID-ers response is to come back with… the same arguments.
Derbyshire co-blogger Jonah has some thoughts as well.
If this story is right, they have helped seal their doom by signing Kyoto:
At the peak of the last ice age, which began 70,000 years ago, 97% of Canada was covered by ice.
The research showed that without the human contribution to global warming, Baffin Island would today be in a condition of “incipient glaciation”.
“Portions of Labrador and Hudson Bay would also have moved very close to such a state had greenhouse gas concentrations followed natural trends,” said the scientists.
The experiment had probably underestimated the amount of ice that would exist today in north-east Canada without human interference, they said.
I don’t know whether this is true or not, but particularly in light of the broken hockey stick, I find it just as plausible as the hysteria coming from the global warming types. And if it is right, apparently we aren’t doing enough to stave off the return of the glaciers.
Time to go out and fire up the ol’ SUV.
All the mau-mauing by the faint-hearted women scientists and feminists has compelled Larry Summers to back down from his perfectly reasonable speculation on one of the causes of the numerical disparity between men and women in the professions of science and math. Too bad.
I hoped that he would say something like the following: “I’m sorry that my remarks were so misinterpreted by so many who should be more capable of calm, rational analysis. I hope that they’ll go back and read them again. I also regret that this incident has shown so many in academia to be antithetical to the spirit of debate and free inquiry. Perhaps, though, this can be a lesson for us all, and used as a basis to discuss the broader issues of how dissenting speech has been shut down on campuses all over the nation.”
Alas, it was not to be. Sadly, he basically retracted instead. I hope that when he left the press conference, he at least muttered, under his breath, “E pur si muove…”
I’ll be that a lot of mothers, wives and girlfriends are going to be emailed copies of this story:
“We know that mites can only survive by taking in water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their body.
“Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die.”
Errrr…except that the dissenter is getting his story out in the Washington Post. I’m always amused by these major newspaper stories about the brave dissenters who think that they’re being oppressed, and that the public isn’t getting the “truth.”
But the article contains a couple of key nuggets:
“I’m strictly trying to understand the Earth as a planet,” said Hansen, who started his career studying the clouds around Venus but switched in 1978 to climate modeling.
Great. Go for it. But what makes you think that renders you a policy expert, particularly on matters that affect the national and global economy?
John Marburger, the president’s Science Advisor is quite pithy on this point:
“I take his work seriously. His work has had a big impact on this administration’s climate-change policy,” Marburger said. “But he’s not an economist. The fact that he’s a good scientist does not necessarily make him the best person to formulate policy that would affect the economy.”
That’s what most people in the policy debate miss. Kyoto and CO2 reduction enthusiasts complain that the people making the decisions don’t understand the science. But what makes them experts on all the other aspects of policy that would be affected by their nostrums?