Here’s an old NBC news report speculating about technology in the year 2000. Apparently “something called the Internet” will be important. HT: Sorting out Science.
The Mono project, an open source rewrite of Microsoft’s .NET framework, is more mature than I thought. From Hanselminutes.
“Cloud” is a good metaphor for most of what I hear about “cloud computing” because it’s so nebulous. But Michael Stiefel has some solid things to say on the subject.
Quote from Word Aligned blog “One day software will be the most reliable component of every product which contains it.” — Tony Hoare. I’m not as optimistic as Mr. Hoare, or I at least thing “one day” is far away.
Joakim Karlsson says in his post The Locality of Code Changes “The probability that you will change a piece of code in the near future increases when you make changes to that code or to code in its vicinity.”
Fun with an MRI machine. NB: The block is aluminum, not iron. Magnets don’t attract aluminum. But aluminum can conduct a current induced by a magnetic field. HT: Ovablastic.
This blog is now available as a podcast. I’m experimenting with the Odiogo service to automatically create an audio version of the blog text. The speech quality is surprisingly good, much better than the Windows speech synthesizer.
You can listen from the web page or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes etc. Let me know what you think.
Mathematical artwork from Chris Henden: finite projective plane balanced incomplete block design binomial expansion
(A lot of mathematical art is gimmicky. Interesting, but not beautiful. Chris Henden’s work is beautiful. I believe people would enjoy it who had no appreciation for the math that inspired the artwork. Here are a couple non-mathematical pieces by the same artist: life drawing, Abu Dhabi.)
Andrew Gelman’s take on the statistics of the recent election in Iran. Note that he says “let me emphasize that I’m not saying that I think nothing funny was going on in the election. As I wrote, I’m commenting on the statistics.”
Six of the seven deadly sins are easy to define, but one is more subtle. The seven deadly sins are
lust
gluttony
greed
sloth
wrath
envy
pride.
Sloth is the subtle one.
I discovered recently that I didn’t know what sloth meant. When I first heard of the seven deadly sins, I thought it was odd that sloth was on the list. How would you know whether you’re sufficiently active to avoid sloth? It turns out that the original idea of sloth was only indirectly related to activity.
The idea of a list of deadly sins started in the 4th century and has changed over time. The word in the middle of the list was “acedia” before it became “sloth,” and the word “sloth” has taken on a different meaning since then. So what is acedia? According to Wikipedia,
Acedia is a word from ancient Greek describing a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one’s duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression.
In short, “sloth” did not mean inactivity but rather a state of apathy. As Os Guinness says in his book The Call
… sloth must be distinguished from idling, a state of carefree living that can be admirable, as in friends lingering over a meal … [Sloth] can reveal itself in frenetic activism as easily as in lethargy … It is a condition of explicitly spiritual dejection … inner despair at the worthwhileness of the worthwhile …
Sloth and rest could look the same externally while proceeding from opposite motivations. One person could be idle because he lacked the faith to do anything, while another person could be idle because he had faith that his needs would be met even if he rested a while. The key to avoiding sloth is not the proper level of activity but the proper attitude of the heart.
I ran across a blog post this morning that makes some excellent points about timed exams. Here are three points from Jon Dron’s blog post What exams have taught me:
that slow, steady, careful work is not worth the hassle — a bit of cramming (typically one-three days seemed to work for me) in a mad rush just before the event works much more effectively and saves a lot of time
the corollary — adrenalin is necessary to achieve anything worth achieving
that the most important things in life generally take around three hours to complete
As Marshal McLuhan said, the medium is the message. That is, the context of a message may speak louder than its content. Still, I’d like to defend timed exams in a limited context. You need to have quick recall of some facts. There are some skills you need to practice to the point that they are second nature. Not because these things are ultimately important but so you don’t have to think about them and can move on to other things.
Joel Spolsky gave an example along these lines in his recent podcast. He said that Serge Lang once began a calculus class with an algebra quiz, one expression to simplify. Thirty seconds into the quiz, it made everyone stop and turn in their work. At the end of the year, he compared the final grades to the grades on his algebra quiz. The students who got A’s in freshman calculus were almost exactly the same as those who were able to simply the algebra expression quickly. (The story begins around 8:12 in the audio file. It’s also on the transcript wiki.)
There are a couple ways to interpret this anecdote. One is that Lang’s exams measured quick reaction time and that students who were able to do algebra quickly were also able to do calculus quickly and thus succeed on Lang’s exams. There may be some truth to that. But I think more fundamentally, those who had mastered algebra were able to pay attention to the new material. Because algebra was second nature to these students, they could think about calculus.
I agree that typical hour-long exams are artificial and create some perverse incentives. I see a place for leisurely evaluation: take-home exams, projects, portfolios, etc. But I also see a place for timed evaluation, even quiz show-like rapid recall, though such evaluation need not factor into assigning grades. I think Jon Dron’s criticism is that timed exams are usually not created deliberately. I don’t think he would necessarily find fault with someone explicitly identifying a list of fundamental skills and explaining that these need to be performed quickly. I believe his criticism is that everything is evaluated in a rush by default.
Thanks to Daniel Lemire for pointing out Jon Dron’s post. Read Daniel’s commentary here.
My wife and I took our family to the Chmielewski Blueberry Farm this morning. There were blueberries everywhere, so my wife and I decided we’d only pick the ones that were harder to reach, and we’d look for the biggest ones that were perfectly ripe.
While we were picking, my wife and I talked about how much fun this was since there was an abundance of berries. And we talked about how it would be no fun if you had a scarcity mindset, competing with everyone else and trying to pick every berry possible. Someone a row over from us commented that it was a little competitive because the berries were a somewhat picked over. I don’t know what he meant by picked over: we picked over 14 pounds of blueberries while being selective about what we picked.
As we were leaving the farm, I struck up a conversation with an unpleasant older woman. She was carrying less than a pint of berries and complaining that the berries were so scarce. It’s hard to imagine we had just come from the same farm.
Ever wonder why so often the evil characters in literature are more interesting than the good ones? Here is an explanation from novelist P. D. James, taken from an interview with Ken Myers.
I suppose that wickedness reveals itself often in action. Goodness also does, but is on a quieter plane. Good people very often reveal their goodness through the whole of the quiet revelation of their character in the ordinary events of life. I mean, if a good person is being courageous, he’s probably being courageous in facing rather ordinary troubles. If you like: sick children, a sick wife, and uncongenial job. … Goodness is very seldom dramatic, I think. And it is much more easy to write about drama.
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that is an unreasonable world, nor even that is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
Today is Cinco de Mayo, the holiday that celebrates the Mexican army’s defeat of French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.
Cinco de Mayo is unusual in that it is a Mexican holiday more popular in the United States than in Mexico. According to Wikipedia,
While Cinco de Mayo has limited or no significance nationwide in Mexico, the date is observed in the United States and other locations around the world as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.
Cinco de Mayo is a bigger holiday in Texas than Texas Independence Day. (Readers unfamiliar with Texas history may be surprised to learn that Texas was once a sovereign nation. The Republic of Texas existed for nearly a decade between gaining independence from Mexico in 1836 and joining the United States in 1845.)
Texas Independence Day, March 2, usually goes virtually unnoticed. However in 1986, the sesquicentennial, there was a big celebration in Austin. Activities included baking the world’s largest cake. The left-overs were distributed to the dorms at the University of Texas and so I had some of the cake. Quite a bit, actually. You might think that a cake baked for the purpose of setting a world record would be barely edible, but it was actually pretty good lemon cake.
The previous post was an answer to a reader question. I would like to write more posts answering questions you have. Please send me your questions or suggestions for blog posts. You might ask me something I don’t know or something I don’t have the time to work on, so I’ll have to be selective with what questions I answer, but I’d like to answer a few questions now and then.
