I am a great fan of the intelligent use of technology. Indeed, I like David Bailey have spent a great deal of my career advocating just such use. The story below is an unexaggerated description of one of the most frustrating encounters I have ever had with a major company. I am left wondering whether Telstra . . . → Read More: Why I love my Telco
|
||||
|
The notion that humans often take actions and pursue goals due to subconscious desires and instincts dates back to Sigmund Freud, who suggested, among other things, that repressed sexual urges underlay some human behavior. Freud’s theories were later judged unreliable and largely nonfalsifiable. In any event, until recently it was assumed that conscious decisions . . . → Read More: Latest research indicates we unconsciously pursue goals Many readers will be familiar with the Jeopardy! television show, which is the most popular quiz show in North America. One of the present bloggers confesses to watching it almost every weekday evening when not on travel (and hardly any other television program). The other blogger is also a keen armchair contestant. In this show, clues . . . → Read More: IBM’s “Watson” to compete against Jeopardy champs [This article has also been posted Here.] A large fraction of the public still does not accept the most basic facts of modern geology, such as the notion that the earth is many millions of years old. For example, fully 45 percent of Americans insist that the earth was created at some time within the past . . . → Read More: How reliable are the radiometric methods used for geologic ages? In the summer of 1950, while having lunch with colleagues who were chatting about recent reports of “flying saucers” in the news, nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi suddenly blurted out, “Where is everybody?” [Web2002, pg. 17-18]. Behind his question was the following line of reasoning: (a) There are likely many other technological civilizations in the . . . → Read More: Fermi’s Paradox and Stephen Hawking Recently considerable attention has been drawn to the fact that some errors were found in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and the fact that, as revealed in a set of emails exchanged by some leading climate scientists in the U.K., the report had been “dressed” to some extent. Many now claim . . . → Read More: Creationism, global warming denial, and scientific integrity Introduction Question: What mathematical discovery more than 1500 years ago: Is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, single discovery in the field of mathematics? Copyright law has always been a confusing arena, but recent developments have grave future consequences. We begin by noting that most of the world lives under different copyright laws: European Union, Commonwealth, Japanese, and other dispensations differ widely. See the CEIC’s writings for a record of details relevant to mathematical publishing. For instance, under . . . → Read More: The confusing morass of copyright laws The latest results for math and science education in first-world nations such as the U.S., the major European nations, and Australia are not particularly encouraging. In the following table, the first two columns contain the latest results from the “Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study” (TIMSS) for Grade Four and Grade Eight, respectively [Institute2009], . . . → Read More: Sad state of math and science education [This is a condensed version of a paper written by one of the present bloggers (Borwein). For the full article, with references, see http://www.carma.newcastle.edu.au/~jb616/psychology.pdf.] Some years ago, my brother Peter surveyed other academic disciplines. He discovered that students who bitch mightily about calculus professors still prefer the relative certainty of how-and-what we teach-and-assess to the subjectivity . . . → Read More: The psychology of mathematics |
||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Math Drudge - All Rights Reserved |
||||
Comments are closed 