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Domain: calpoly.edu

Stories and comments across the archive that link to calpoly.edu.

Comments · 113

  1. Not a new idea! by Silicon_Prophet · · Score: 1 · on Could The Moon Power Earth?

    We've known for some time the mooon could power the earth... we just thought it would be with Tidal Power!!

    PS. not my site.

  2. Re:Gopher is alive and well by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on What Happened To Gopher?
    Every major web browsers support Gopher...

    Not in my experience. I tried to get to our faculty directory from a machine that only had IE, and it refused me, saying something about an unsupported protocol. I was stunned for a moment, then I realized that MS probably didn't care about Gopher, so why support it? Sad.

    And, yes, I checked the URL in the Preview and it works for me. If it doesn't work for you, it's not my mistake. TTFN.

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  3. Do practical things with students by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on E-Commerce Tools For Students, What's Required?
    Cliff, when you said I wish more colleges would look to do practical things like this with their students, I started to write in indignant response. Then Yoda told me: "Breathe in, breathe out. Calm. The force flows through you."

    There are some schools which have students do practical, hands-on work. Mine: Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I'm a graduating Mechanical Engineering student, and in the ME department, our capstone design class is doing a project for a company (Disney, Raytheon, Applied Materials, and a host of small companies). We have eight weeks from receipt of project to presentation, and our four person teams typically do more or better than similar industry teams with more time. Disney asked 5 students to make a life-size robot hand for their rides, because they couldn't. The students did pretty well (I think they had problems with life cycles), and they only had 8 weeks to think, design, calculate, build, test, and present. While taking a full load of senior level classes. (Hmm, I dropped into bragging mode.)

    Yes, there are practical schools. I know that practical is important, but I don't want us to forget that there is also a very necessary theoretical aspect to school, which is hard to get outside of school.

    End Rant. :)

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  4. Do practical things with students by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on E-Commerce Tools For Students, What's Required?
    Cliff, when you said I wish more colleges would look to do practical things like this with their students, I started to write in indignant response. Then Yoda told me: "Breathe in, breathe out. Calm. The force flows through you."

    There are some schools which have students do practical, hands-on work. Mine: Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I'm a graduating Mechanical Engineering student, and in the ME department, our capstone design class is doing a project for a company (Disney, Raytheon, Applied Materials, and a host of small companies). We have eight weeks from receipt of project to presentation, and our four person teams typically do more or better than similar industry teams with more time. Disney asked 5 students to make a life-size robot hand for their rides, because they couldn't. The students did pretty well (I think they had problems with life cycles), and they only had 8 weeks to think, design, calculate, build, test, and present. While taking a full load of senior level classes. (Hmm, I dropped into bragging mode.)

    Yes, there are practical schools. I know that practical is important, but I don't want us to forget that there is also a very necessary theoretical aspect to school, which is hard to get outside of school.

    End Rant. :)

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  5. Re:Teeth on Sweatshirts by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on Gears, Computers And Number Theory
    Cal Poly, San Luis Obsipo. The student section of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) has had gears on four of the last five T-shirts we have made.

    Disclaimer: I was the Chair of the club last year.

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  6. Elementary school teaches Arithmetic, not Math by Louis_Wu · · Score: 3 · on Math Education-Is There More To It Than Just Numbers?
    We teach math to enable students to live in our society. Beyond that, it's just frosting on the cake. Some people (like my mom, who teaches math to junior high kids [11-14 years old]) maintain that kids do not have abstract thinking ability before ~13, for the most part. So teaching it would be hard in elementary school.

    1)

    Of all the subjects which is the most important for the development of the student? That is, which subject gives the most skills to the student beyond the actual information taught? Why?
    Reading. Period. After that, she can teach herself. But "A, B, C" isn't enough, which is why English classes are so key, they give practice in reading. English class doesn't teach anything about reading; for that see "How to Read A Book" by Mortimer J. Adler.

    2)

    What is the goal of teaching Math to children?
    So that "the future of America" will be able to live in the "America of the Future(TM)".

    3)

    Is it to give them skills to manipulate numbers or does it accomplish something else (or maybe both)? What are those skills?
    Again, until high school, it's just coping skills. Then, higher thinking is slowly introduced. Slowly.

    4)

    People often say that math teaches abstract reasoning. Is this so, how and why? Could there be a better way to accomplish this?
    Math teaches abstract reasoning, arithmetic does not.

    From "Mathematics Dictionary" 5th Ed.

    Arithmetic n The study of the positive integers (1,2,3,4,5, ...) under the operations of addition, subtraction ,multiplication, and division, and the use of the results of these studies in everyday life.

    Mathematics n The logical study of shape, arrangemant, quantity, and many related concepts. Mathematics often is divided into three fields: _algebra, _analysis, and _geometry. However, no clear divisions can be made, since these branches have become thoroughly intermingled. Roughly, algebra involves numbers and their abstractions, analysis involves continuity and limits, and geometry is concerned with space and related concepts.

    Thought that I would clear the definitions up a bit. Basically, you don't hit mathematics until high-school. So elementary 'math' doesn't teach abstract reasoning, though it may teach reasoning on some level.

    5)

    With the development of small computers and calculators do you see the role of math education declining? Why or why not?
    You always need a gut-level check of whatever you are doing. If you don't know that 1882*1000 should be bigger than 1.9, you won't realize that you divided instead of multiplying.

    In engineering we occasionaly finish a complex analysis which has many possibilities for making mistakes by doing a "sanity check" where we use a less precise but simpler method to check our answer. Stress analysis of a spring using elasticity methods is a good example. I had a 3/4" stack of paper for my analysis, with the pages covered in calculus and static analysis. When I was all done, I checked my spring constant equations against a handbook equation, and I was close. So I assume that I was 'right'. Without the sanity check, I wouldn't really know.

    6)

    Why are children often forced to memorize multiplication tables and do long division?
    Because it is actually useful. Not just for engineering students like me, but for checking the high-school dropout who is ringing up your groceries: if he puts the decimal in the wrong place, your loaf of bread is $10, not $1. That is much easier to check if you know that $10 is 10 times $1, and that multiplication by 10 can be done by moving the decimal point. An ability to do basic arithmetic cannot be thought unnecessary when our society is ruled more and more by numbers. (Politicians use polls, we all use prices, homeowners use mortgages, nearly everyone uses credit cards. To understand all of this, we must understand arithmetic so well that we don't have to check to see if we did it right; arithmetic must be nearly second nature.)

    7)

    Why is it that students who have some deficiency in math are stigmatized as "not so bright" more often than children who fail to do well in other subjects? Conversely, why are children who excel at math considered gifted (more so than other subjects)?"
    Because it seems that our society thinks that math is hard (to quote Barbie), so if you can do math, you must be smart. That one is mostly societal.

    BTW,
    Are the people in your class primarily from the sciences or the humanities? I ask because I have noticed a trend at my university that the students who use math in class regularly (physics, engineering, chemistry, etc.) think that math is an essential life skill for everyone to know, and the students in the humanities (psychology, english, history, etc.) see math as useful in balancing a checkbook, but beyond that, it seems to have little point. "Why did I have to take algebra? I've never used it?" When this comes up, the science types insist that math is an essential skill, but are hard pressed to find "real life" examples of how algebra or geometry could be useful. And we aren't even up to basic Calculus in the discussion! I would like to find a way to convince people that math is useful, not just arithmetic.

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  7. Re:BZZZT... wrong by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on Philip Greenspun Answers
    A great school attracts great students, great teachers [I am using the word 'teacher' because what matters is the ability to convey the material, which is teaching; professing is to "declare or claim" :)], and great supporters (businesses, professionals, retirees).

    But "Ivy League schools" are not the best option for everyone. And I'm not refering to those who couldn't get in anyway, I'm refering to the high schooler who is trying to decide between engineering at Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford. (Yes, I'm from California. Bit of a bias, but I am also looking at the U.S. News ranking of the best undergraduate engineering schools with Ph.D. programs. Sometimes 'best' needs to be defined in terms of what you want. If you want an education which emphasizes practical, hands-on, do it yourself, go out to the shop and weld yourself a bike, you might not get as much as you want at an Ivy League school as you would at others.

    I know, I go to a great school. Cal Poly was ranked 4th in the nation for the best undergraduate engineering schools without Ph.D. programs, ie. we concentrate on teaching undergraduate engineering. To compare, the US service academies (West Point, Annapolis, and US Air Force Academy) all rank below us, and they are considered world-class. Our graduates are known for being good engineers the first week on the job, quality contributors, intelligent people.

    Basically, you don't need Ivy to be great.

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  8. Re:BZZZT... wrong by Louis_Wu · · Score: 1 · on Philip Greenspun Answers
    A great school attracts great students, great teachers [I am using the word 'teacher' because what matters is the ability to convey the material, which is teaching; professing is to "declare or claim" :)], and great supporters (businesses, professionals, retirees).

    But "Ivy League schools" are not the best option for everyone. And I'm not refering to those who couldn't get in anyway, I'm refering to the high schooler who is trying to decide between engineering at Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford. (Yes, I'm from California. Bit of a bias, but I am also looking at the U.S. News ranking of the best undergraduate engineering schools with Ph.D. programs. Sometimes 'best' needs to be defined in terms of what you want. If you want an education which emphasizes practical, hands-on, do it yourself, go out to the shop and weld yourself a bike, you might not get as much as you want at an Ivy League school as you would at others.

    I know, I go to a great school. Cal Poly was ranked 4th in the nation for the best undergraduate engineering schools without Ph.D. programs, ie. we concentrate on teaching undergraduate engineering. To compare, the US service academies (West Point, Annapolis, and US Air Force Academy) all rank below us, and they are considered world-class. Our graduates are known for being good engineers the first week on the job, quality contributors, intelligent people.

    Basically, you don't need Ivy to be great.

    Louis Wu

    Thinking is one of hardest types of work.

  9. Re:Mandrake Installer by Big+Ben+August · · Score: 1 · on MandrakeSoft Covered in Upside
    That Mandrake installer is 2.2 kernel-framebuffer based, isn't it?

    The Cal Poly LUG was doing an install shindig in January with Mandrake 7.0... and one machine just wouldn't go to the graphical part of the install. I thought it was because he (like me) had an unsupported card and the framebuffer didn't work. And of course there's no way to fallback to the text installer...
    (BTW... Caldera's X-based installer worked fine for him.)

    --Ben (very happy with Mandrake 6.1, thanks) August

  10. Re:I'm going to get it for this one.. by pshuman · · Score: 1 · on Geek Christmas Ideas

    Almost half the guys in computer science at my school ride. (CalPoly, SLO)

    In fact we have our own club (not geek exclusive though)

  11. Write support by dboynton · · Score: 1 · on CDRW UDF Filesystems for Linux?
    The read support in UDF is coming along nicely, thanks to Ben Fennema. Ben is working on the write support, but progress is hampered by lack of support in the IDE and SCSI CDROM drivers. They have no write (or DVD) support at all. That leaves us with the very ugly choice of going direct to the hardware from within a filesystem driver.

    If anyone wants to help out with this project, what I think we need the most right now is someone to work on patches for the IDE & SCSI drivers to support the SCSI3/MMC command set. Please visit my TryLinux site and join the mailing list if you're interested.

  12. More UDF links by Spruce+Moose · · Score: 1 · on CDRW UDF Filesystems for Linux?

    Ben Fennema's URl is actually here

  13. More UDF links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on CDRW UDF Filesystems for Linux?
    UDF is still in pretty early stages of development.

    Ben Fennema seems to be most active developer at the moment. The current UDF driver only supports reading, but work is beginning on writing. TryLinux has a project page for UDF, which includes links to the specs.

    There is also a mailing list (for developers, pretty low-volume) here. Send 'subscribe linux_udf' in the body of the message.