Slashdot Mirror
Winnie Wrote a Math Book
SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."
Back in 1994, Barbie thought differently.
Math is hard!
But the judge says I'm not allowed within 100 feet of her.
"If the man of the house gets home from work at 5:30 and dinner takes 1.25 hours to prepare, at what time should you start making it?"
"If your makeup costs $40 and you put it on once a day, how much does it cost per application if the makeup runs out after 70 days?"
"If the cake recipe calls for the oven to be at 400 degree fahrenheit but the oven only has celsius....
Trolling is a art,
Website Hosting
yeah i heard she was a math wiz years ago. a geeky friend of mine had a huge crush on her. i, myself, was always partial to jane leeves, gillian anderson, winona ryder and alia shawkat. oh, and of course i cant forget mila kunis.
I don't think one book, even if it looks like the rest of the teen girl trash rags, is going to overcome a decades of social pressure to avoid being seen as "nerdy." What we really need is to have high schools that don't go out of their way to reinforce the perception that going to state for ****ball is the pinnacle of achievement.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
If it ain't 90% Greek then it isn't a math book.
Actually this is a good idea the problem is that today there are reports that boys are trailing girls academically. Part of the reason is if they make an All girls school or make programs that are designed to help girls they do so sometimes at the expense of the education of the boys. But if such programs or All boy public schools are made then there is a community cry. Boys and Girls think differently, they need to be taught differently.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There's a hot female geek
Rock-paper-scissors will have to decide this, guys.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Most people cannot distinguish an outlier from the the average.
...that a book aimed at increasing numeracy has horoscopes? What next? Feng Shui in geography texts?
It even includes ... and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work
Or as geeks call it, PORN!
My six-year-old daughter is currently enthralled with Cyberchase, a PBS cartoon that actually does a pretty respectable job teaching basic math concepts. Her singing of its repetitive and insanely peppy themesong is driving my out of my mind, though.
This tread is worthless without pics... of hot, math using girls. /whaddaya mean, wrong website?
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
OMG!!! Math!!!
There'd be Olympic medalists and ex-porn actresses in your sections, retired musicians joining your lab, grad students selling their screenplays and quitting the lab...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
My first impression of the book review was - "Oh gawd, a math book went 'OMG Ponies !!111'".
But I've sort of realized that form follows emotion and in a world where Math is not consider cool (not in India though), something like this which stands away from the boring beige world of mathematics would get more eyeballs into the basic subject. Not that I'd consider some of it boring, by any stretch of imagination. And who hasn't rewritten math problems into "real" problems ? (xkcd has become lame of late - I suspect after his visit to MIT).
But such wedges into the insular cracks of things could be nice - to let people burn through the "Thou Suckest" phase of learning anything new. Especially when the field is full of elitist fifty year olds ("elite" is good, "elitist" is bad).
So if it makes a bunch of girls pick up math, good - just the same way Asterix&Obelix makes me want to learn French ... we all just need a reason, to make whatever we're doing cool (ah, the tyranny of cool).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
So what, the ugly ones don't use math?
Completely true. Here's one shining example. http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2007/mar/01/ev olution_professor/
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Aren't logic and rationality integral to math? I would think that horoscopes contradict that basic reasoning.
I'd also generalize HER polylogarithm!
Who else thinks she is hot?
When I graduated high school, the top ten students that year were girls. That was true at 3 other high school graduations I went to that year. When I graduated college, the valedictorian and salutatorian were female. I don't believe these were rare cases. So what's this "gap" they talk about? Seems to me the guys are falling behind.
What is the point of forcing (or "encouraging") people to learn mathematics at all? Those who want to learn it, can use regular textbooks because the subject is interesting by itself, without horoscopic bastardizations. And those who don't want to learn -- well, there are some 3 billion people in Asia whose children do learn ;)
Grundes!
Just a few days ago there as brief thread on alt.tv.wonder-years about the math stuff that Danica McKellar did, and then someone came up with a link about the process of naming theorems, where the author cites the "Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem".
Here is the link to the article: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_09_05.html
On statistical physics, Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z^2.
Now that Winnie wrote a math textbook with doodles and other silliness, does that mean Madeline will write a french textbook dripping with seduction?
It's clear that many people don't think there's an educational gap between men and women anymore, or if there is, that it's the men that have to catch up. I'd posit that while more women succeed in school today than men, a woman's educational status and intelligence can be a hindrance in some arenas while the opposite isn't true for men. Education and money-earning potential are typically masculine traits and are highly associated with power.
Think about the powerful men of the world. How many of them have a powerful woman beside them? How many have an educated woman for a spouse/significant other? How many powerful men simply have somebody to act as a piece of eye candy attached to their arm? I'd bet that the number of men with eye candy is much bigger than the number who have somebody who is an intellectual equal or is actually smarter than them.
Developmental scientists have named the behavioral manifestation of this competence object permanence.
Convergent evidence indicates that frontal lobe maturation plays a critical role in the display of
object permanence, but methodological and ethical constrains have made it difficult to collect neurophysiological
evidence from awake, behaving infants. Near-infrared spectroscopy provides a noninvasive assessment
of changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin concentration within a prescribed
region. The evidence described in this report reveals that the emergence of object permanence is related to
an increase in hemoglobin concentration in frontal cortex. Also, a few choice Natalie Portman quotes:
* "I loved school so much that most of my classmates considered me a dork."
* "Smart women love smart men more than smart men love smart women."
* "I'm going to college. I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star. "
Your slashdot horoscope - Astrology for nerds, stuff that doesn't matter
The moon is in Saturn's fifth house (or rather, Saturn's fifth moon's picture is in your house) and Venus is never around. Capricorn is not in Virgo, and Alpha Centauri is four light years away, sucker!
AR1E5
You will get pissed off and throw your soldering iron across the room. You will not get laid tonight.
T4URU5
You will work overtime trying to clean up that code. You will not get laid tonight.
G3MINI
You will think you're getting laid tonight, but you won't.
C4NCER
You should stop smoking. Also, you will not get laid tonight.
L3O
You will sit around wondering WTF this "getting laid" thing is
V1RGO
Um.... yeah well...
LI6RA
You will either read a book or write one. I will not be about getting laid.
SCORPI0
You will bitch at a strange woman in a bar and wonder why you can't get laid. At least you'll get outside for a while!
SAGATARIU5
As are a homosexual you won't get laid. If you think you're hetero, you're wrong. Why do you think you haven't got laid?
AQU4RIUS
You will have fish for dinner. She won't go to bed with you.
P1SCES
You will masturbate to porn
There is no huge gender gap between males and females in education. Infact on average females do slightly better overall in schooling(they are more obedient). This gap is a myth created by marginal feminist groups that through lobbying, media campaigns, funding their own research and then hiding the results They have created this false public perception that females are shortchanged and victimized. There is a small male advantage in math and science achievement but boys trail more behind in all other areas.
In the USA the true underpriveleged group which has a huge achievement gap in education is young African American males. If you want real facts read the paper Taking the Boy Crisis in Education Seriously... by Krista Kafer.
Great job Winnie Cooper, you wrote a book to address a pretend gender gap that is a myth created by manipulated research findings like that of a debunked study entitled "How Schools Shortchange Girls". Mrs. Cooper propagating this myth only helps to make it harder to deal with the real problem of underachieving males that belong to minority groups, who really need attention.
mnemonics are fine if you are just trying to get through a math class. Also the use of "made up" words to describe symbols in math _can_ be fine... But thanks to a math teacher in high school a lower case omega is forever "worble" and a lower case zeta is "glarf" or "scribble". Unfortunatly these terms surface at the most embarrassing times now that i'm a computer science/electrical engineering major.
If 10% of all Slashdot accounts are current, and 25% of all posts relating to women in math and science are derogatory, what percentage of people that post to slashdot are going to get laid tonight?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...typically don't need media attention to complete their lives. Nice to be reminded they're still out there.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Every time any adult tries to be cool in order to get kids to pay attention to a subject in school that they hate, they fail miserably. This is not (only) because adults simply aren't cool, but because the ploy is blazingly obvious. The funny thing about teenagers, is that they are the way they are in no small part because they've grown intellectually to the point where they can recognize lies and propaganda. This sort of thing only reinforces the idea that adults are clueless and generally to be ignored. See also: public service announcements by MC Hammer or Flava Flave.
I'd have to admit though, that she does have one important ingredient in the textbook. That she demonstrates that you can be simultaneously pretty and intellectual (and includes other examples). If she could lose the cheesy teen-mag look, I'm sure we'd see some progress.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"If your ex-husband, who was earning $45k per year, looses his job but now collects 30% of that in unemployment, and your alimony was calculated at 67% of his net salary while employed, what differential (minus child-support) must now be applied in order that he may loose his other testical?"
Tara Smith, a Professor of Epidemiology, and author of the science blog Aetiology (which I like) reviewed the book here , and has a short interview with Danica.
McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude
I wish she graduated *my* summa cum laude!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Hey this is a step in the right direction. Next we can see the FSF trying to recruit more women to the cause and replace Richard Stallman with $random_hot_chick. We can have all the gnu utilities spit out butterflies and sunshine into the console. Top ten renaming suggestions
man to woman
cat to kitty
tar to blush
gzip to gbuckle
make to bake
gimp to cuddlepuffthingy
Anyone taking honours-level mathematics will author thousands of proofs before they graduate. In and of itself it's no big deal. I'm left wondering whether she proved a conjecture that had not yet been proved, or had found an alternate proof for an important theorem, or (most likely) had derived new theorems with accompanying proofs. What field the mathematics was done in might also have been a nice addition.
Baseball is the only truly divinely inspired game (Soccer comes close).
On the Ninth Day, G-d created Baseball.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I've seen many snide comments here, and it's disappointing.
The world needs more educated people of both sex.
I haven't seen the book, but if it helps reach young girls then it will pay a life time of dividends, and maybe even more.
http://www.freecitizen.com/
And if just talking about looks and all, showing fit and lean, non-obese women is a good thing. We've got a horrible obesity problem out there, so, some skinnier role models are a good thing IMHO.
I agree it's a good thing if young people have fit role models. However, young people are constantly bombarded these days with images of people so perfect as to represent a crushingly unattainable standard of perfection, and I don't think that's a good thing.
A fit, attractive young girl might feel ugly in comparison with some Hollywood actresses who started with good genes, work out quite a bit, had plastic surgery to enhance certain bits, and are carefully photographed wearing makeup and amazing clothes. And then the image is edited with Photoshop to improve it even more! Even those actresses don't look that good all the time, but those are the only images the young girl sees, and she feels hopelessly ugly.
A fit, attractive young boy might feel pathetic in comparison with some famous guys who started with good genes, work out quite a bit, and then spent several months preparing for one particular day. (You know those photos where every single muscle stands out through the skin? How bodybuilders look in competition? Yes, those guys spend months to look like that on one particular day. They dehydrate themselves for the last couple of days too, to get the so-called "dry look". More info here.) The famous guys don't look that ripped all the time, but those are the only images the young boy sees, and he feels hopelessly pathetic.
I know I'm smart in general, but that doesn't mean I'm smart all the time about everything. When I was an overweight teen nerd, I just figured I had genetics predisposed towards overweight and the guys with muscles had better genes. I tried dieting and I ran cross-country, but I never for a moment considered that maybe I should lift weights too. It was a shock when, a couple of decades later, I finally figured out that working out a gym would work for me too. Posters with Arnold Schwarzenegger might have reinforced the "I'll never look that good" attitude, but posters of someone with whom I could identify might have convinced me to look into working out at a gym.
As to causes of obesity: I think the worst one is that people don't really know what to do about it. There are so many different books, diet plans, etc. and it's hard to figure out which one works.
But I think I know the secret and I'll give it to you. You need to change your diet, and eat healthy foods in the correct proportions; you need to do aerobic exercise, like running or bicycling or swimming; and you also need to do strength training. If you do all of that together, you will get healthier and lose excess fat. (And the strength training can be as little as three hours per week... actually the hardest part is managing the food, really.) My bible on this subject is the book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. (Disclaimer: I don't get anything for referring you to that link.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
From your post I'd say we need a "spelling is hard" book.
lets create a dumbed down, silly math book with purposely misspelled words just so we can appeal to little girls.
How insulting to girls.
Lets make a similar math book for all the boys who aren't interested in math. It should feature GI Joe's using math to kill each other, aliens, and anything gross or violent. For the older boys lets throw in some soft core porn to get their eyes on the page (males are after all more visual, right?).
Come on! This is rediculous. While I applaud her good intentions, I have to wonder why such a thing was not necessary for girls like her to be interested in math? I am all for making learning fun, and math books are about as dull and boring as it gets, but I see no reason why it has to be dumbed down and made gender specific.
My 9 year old girl is great at math, without this.
There are better ways to get kids to learn. Or, rather, to not turn them off to learning, since they start off wanting to learn and then we destroy that desire later on.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
From webster:
'reciprocate'
2 : to move forward and backward alternately
'reciprocal'
1 a: inversely related : opposite
Is it so hard to understand that a reciprocal is opposite? 1/n becomes n/1 or if it were a real mathbook 1/theta thus theta/1
And the edition for advanced classes is called: 'Math Swallows'.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
OK, we're beyond off-topic now, but here goes.
What's the point of writing "G-d" for "God"? You clearly mean "God", and at some point that becomes such a common substitution that it's effectively equal to writing "God" in the first place. If it's a sin in your religion, to engrave his name or something like that, don't you think he'd be just as pissed that you invented an alternate spelling as a loophole?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
the replies in this mess should go far to ensuring this place remains a "SAUSAGE FEST" jeezous...amazing how people might have reached the conclusion that people on ./ don't evar evar get laid.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
When you hold constant things like degrees earned, time in the workforce, IQ, wealth of the parents, and so on woman earn almost the same or more than men. The "gap" is mostly determined by life choices like their major in college and having children and being out of the work force. Out of people with my degree it is well known that woman make more money with the same amount of experience, and it is similar in other jobs as well.
Creative Demolition
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
People stop spouting off myths. The myth you are supporting has no basis in facts. The shady small interest feminine group the American Association of University Women created this false perception of female victimization in schooling to give more resources and attention to girls in schooling at the expense of other groups.
...
... ... "I telephoned David Sadker to ask him directly about the serious charge that his famous study had disappeared. He could not send me a copy of the report." ...
...
First off no one but feminist interest groups really stress this gap thing and others who follow their well created myths. What about the important gap of women vs. men in Major League Basebell where no women is represented? Women and men do not have to compete in everything. You do not hear much hype about a male gender gap in nursing, teaching elementary school, etc. because there are no male groups to whine and moan about non-issues but there are feminists and fake women studies courses in universities.
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html
"But the idea that the "schools shortchange girls" is wrong and dangerously wrong. It is girls who get higher grades in school, who do better than boys on standardized tests of reading and writing, and who get higher class rank and more school honors. It is young women who enter and graduate from college far more frequently than young men. It is women who have made dramatic progress in obtaining professional, business, and doctoral degrees. The great gender gap of the 1960s in advanced degrees has almost closed, especially in the professional fields to which ambitious women aspire. In the view of elementary and high school students, the young people who sit in the classroom year after year and observe what is going on, both boys and girls agree: Schools favor girls. Teacher think girls are smarter, like being around them more, and hold higher expectations for them."
"The American Association of University Women (AAUW) put itself on the political map through its highly publicized 1992 report: How Schools Shortchange Girls. The media trumpeted the message around the world: In the schools, as in so many other areas of life, females are victims. Girls are silenced in the classroom, suffer a decline in self-esteem at adolescence, and fall far behind boys in such crucial subjects as science and mathematics. As the AAUW Executive Summary declares:"
"Neither girls nor boys nor the nation itself are served by politicized research and "noble lies." Major assertions in the AAUW report are based on research by David and Myra Sadker that has mysteriously disappeared. Evidence which contradicts their thesis that the schools shortchange girls is buried in supplemental tables obtainable only at great difficulty and expense. Such shady practices undermine public confidence in social science research. This damage done by the AAUW report will have repercussions that last far beyond the immediate issue of whether either girls or boys are shortchanged in the school."
If college was all it took to make you smart we would be a hell of a lot better off. That's for sure.
Creative Demolition
From what I understand, it's a Jewish thing--only my Jewish friends do it.
From what I last heard, one is not supposed to write out the name of God where it can be erased, because one is not supposed to erase it. The famous workaround is that everyone writes G-d to mean "God" and don't have to worry about erasing the name.
I have no clue if it's law or superstition or custom or whatnot.
Who is the target audience for this book? Kids who are already into math will be embarrassed/disgusted with the teen mag layout, and kids who aren't won't read a math book even if their parents buy it for them and say "look, this actress you may have seen on Nick at Nite wrote a math book!" I think just about anyone would wince at the "breaking a nail" cliche in the title, although I suspect Ms. McKellar's not to blame.
Many of these kinds of efforts look like they were produced by someone who is more concerned with being on record with supporting women going into science and math than actually having a real effect. That's why we end up with textbooks crammed with mini-biographies of Sophie Germain and Ada Lovelace that nobody will actually read and that anyone with enough brainpower to do basic algebra will recognize as tacit admissions that a woman mathematician is an odd duck indeed.
McKellar looks like her heart is in the right place - she's presumably wealthy and is a professional actress, and yet she still devoted serious time and energy to studying math. Presumably she wants others to share her enthusiasm for an interesting and potentially lucrative field of endeavor. But I very much doubt that she was "turned on" to math by a book like this. I imagine that her supportive family and the confidence boost that came from being a TV star helped overcome the anti-math stigma.
Of course, as much as the stereotypical mathematician is not feminine, he's not particularly masculine either, not an effeminate man precisely, probably more of a modern-day eunuch. Certainly no young men go into mathematics to impress their peers, so I think a more important question would be why young women are more influenced by "peer pressure" than young men.
Is it low self-esteem? Women think they can't get ahead except by being "cheerleader" types? Or high self-esteem? Women think they *can* become cheerleader types if they wear uncomfortable enough clothing and enough makeup, while nerdy guys figure they couldn't make the football team in a million years?
...and condescending.
How is it not ?
The truly talented are the ones who need to work hard, who need to be supported and encouraged, not the profoundly inept. It's enough to pander to the unremarkable without stooping to such prattling idiocy as this.
"Refliprocals"... Oh good god. Please.
This book includes horoscopes. Am I missing something? Aren't horoscopes un-scientific? Isn't that teaching girls to be less educated?
I'm sure the book sounded good on paper.
And if so, then SO WHAT?! The point is to make math fun and interesting. If adding a horoscope does that, then there is no reason not to add one. Similarly, if a Feng Shui example can be properly made to provide a way to make someone understand some piece of geography, then why the hell should it not be added?
Stop looking at the delivery mechanism and look at the results. You sound like the kind who would get pissed off if his pizza was delivered by horse-and-buggy instead of by car even if the pizza was still delivered on time.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Am I seriously the only person who saw the title and wondered why a Bear of Very Little Brain would be writing a textbook?
If any of my little cousins end up saying the word refliprocal I swear I'll hunt this woman down and punch her in the face!
Hillarious...
I'd give you all my mod points, if I had any and could do so.
Speaking of which, where did I put my mod points...
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Ignoring the usual trolls here, McKellar did adopt a tabloid-style format that much of the /. crowd would usually deride. Therefore, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by much of the relevant discussion.
But, from what I understand, that's the best approach since the target audience has been fed this format for a number of decades. Actually, I anticipate that mothers will buy it (for their kids) and even flip through it themselves given the probably that they will appreciate the similarity.
And quit whining about the appearance of horoscopes. If horoscopes appear in teen magazine, and you're trying to adhere to the teen magazine format, then something that resembles a horoscope had better be included. In fact, if it was done well, the audience may remember the math the next time they see a similar horoscope (analogy: count the number of Simpson's parodies do you notice on a daily basis).
I applaud the goal and concept but the hardest (and most crucial) part is having the content itself read like a teen magazine. I have no idea how to make that happen, but I'm not the one attempting this. Hopefully McKellar has that talent. Good luck.
This is not my sig
You are the fringe lunatic. I gave links to two research papers(NOT YOU) that point to this kind of research of men actually falling behind in general in education, you are just talking making things up without consulting the actual research. I took the time to read on the papers and know that this gender gap no longer really exists if anything in general boys are behind girls and need more attention, this is a myth created by women groups like AAUW and their popularized 1992 report which I mentioned. But I am sure you forgot the already with your low level of dialectic argument.
... "The gap in performance between American men and women in the natural sciences and in mathematics is genuine and indeed a cause for concern. But this gender gap, it is also important to recognize, affects the prospects and careers of very few people. It is far from a monumental social problem. In 1994, for example, 450 American men received doctorates in mathematics compared to 146 women. In the physical sciences, 2,335 American men received doctorates compared to 659 women (NCES, 1996, Table 266). To achieve parity in mathematics and the physical sciences would affect fewer than 2,000 women a year"
... "The AAUW's own commissioned research in fact undercuts the position it trumpets---that girls receive less attention than boys. The AAUW sponsored a nationwide survey of 3,000 children between grades four and ten which forms one important statistical base for its glossy, highly publicized reports (American Association of University Women [AAUW]/Greenberg-Lake, 1990). When I tried to obtain a copy of this report, I had a difficult time.
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html
Here is some info about how hard this report is to obtain that popularized this mythical gender gap against women in 1992, which I am sure is another conspiracy theory:
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html
"While the politicized version, How Schools Shortchange Girls (1992) is available for a mere $16.95, obtaining the full data report requires a payment of $85.00 for unbound xeroxed pages. The AAUW provides an 800-number for ordering its reports, but the person I called at this number knew nothing about the full data report. I then called the AAUW offices, left messages, and waited for weeks to get telephone calls returned until I finally located someone who knew of this report.
"That the AAUW should make the report difficult to obtain is understandable. The data from their own report do not back up the charges they publicize---that girls receive less attention from teachers.
When asked about their personal experience, boys and girls reported receiving virtually identical amounts of attention from their teachers (Table 13). The gender differences that occur are trivial, and sometimes favor boys and sometimes favor girls."
I'm kind of peeved that you're so close-minded you think a little teeny bit of creativity is terrible.
Forgive me for putting words into the parent poster's mouth, but I think he was NOT peeved by the "teeny bit of creativity". Rather, he was peeved that superstitious garbage (horoscopes, namely, and yes, they are superstitious garbage) was being inserted into the last place where it should be: a math textbook.
Similarly, if you want to present geography material using Feng Shui rules to outline the discussion, then go for it.
Likewise, if you want to use the Majesty of Jesus Christ to outline the discussion in English, then go for it. Hell, if it makes science learning more "fun", then why not present it using Flat Earth rules? Whatever keeps the classroom discussion going, right? We've got to get through that lesson plan at all costs!
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Damn she got beaten with an ugly stick. Total butterface.
..... how much double standards have come to dominate our discourse.
Let me elaborate.
Imagine for a minute if a successful male role model had written a book explicitly for boys, in the tradition of the classical textbooks on engineering/science/mathematics, and emphasised rigour, and used examples exclusively applicable to males, using language which boys would be comfortable with (but girls would probably not). Imagine he used the default (i.e., masculine) pronoun throughout, so as to make it easier for boys to identify with any example given. Imagine that he completely ignored all the usual PC-language nonsense which the "progressive" crowd in educational circles is so fond of nowadays, and used a no-bullshit, call-a-spade-a-spade approach which boys can usually instantly grok, and are more comfortable with. Further, he would have tried to make mathematics more "manly" by making short work of the idea that boys who like mathematics are "nerds" or other social outcasts, and by identifying it with masculinity throughout the ages. Imagine he tried to bring out the kick-ass-ness of many male mathematicians throughout history, while implicitly linking their masculinity with both their mathematics and their kick-ass-ness - showing it as a complementary triad.
Now imagine that this book had succeeded - imagine it managed to convince a large number of boys to actually learn and like mathematics, and also proved to be something which sparked off a mini-revolution in schools across the country (extremely unlikely, I know, but please bear with me for a moment). Imagine it set off a pro-mathematics trend, or managed to correct the more pernicious effects of the anti-rigour and in general anti-intellectual atmosphere found in many schools today, with special reference to the subjects of mathematics and science.
What would have been the reaction?
Most probably, irrespective of the merits of the book itself, and the work it may have done it get a large number of boys interested in mathematics, it would have been denounced as social commentators, feminists, assorted people from the left, maybe a few from the right, and educationists, as discriminatory, sexist, and insensitive, with probably the "racist" epithet hurled in for good measure.
However, when a feminine role model does it, this thought does not even occur to us. We take it for granted that special books by females for females are, in some mysterious and unquestionable fashion, immune to criticisms which would be levelled against any male who did the corresponding thing for his gender.
This is not to suggest that we should criticise this author. To the contrary, in fact - she has taken efforts to rectify what she sees as a larger cultural problem. She must be applauded for that.
However, the point is that, the same way we applaud her, we must also applaud the hypothetical male author outlined above, for both are working towards a noble goal - that of education - in the way they think they can contribute the most. That is more than can be said for the vast majority.
By ignoring the differences between the genders, we do society and the individuals in it, through the medium of our education policies, a great disservice. By non-judgementally accepting the differences, and optimising our education systems to take them into account, with differently structured books for girls and boys in junior and middle school is the need is felt for such, we can improve education for everyone, instead of making attempts to forcefully fit it into out pet ideological framework.
Denying the reality of the differences between the genders because it does not fit in with our political worldview is, IMHO, as irrational as denying that some scientific fact because it does not fit in with our religious worldview.
More generally, while speaking of mathematics, it is my opinion that teaching it in a rigorous but intuitive manner is an absolute
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
This is not an attack against the poster, it's pointing out that everyone tends to notice when people are black but not when they're Scots. When 'being black' and 'being Scottish' mean the same thing in this country, either racism will be over or we'll have some unhappy Scots;)
(Is pointing out African American are underprivileged and discriminated against as a class flamebait?)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Girls are told they're supposed to aspire to beauty above all else. The idea here is to show them that you can have that without giving up intelligence.
In other words, the book is telling girls that they don't have to sacrifice what is most important to them (their marketability to men, measured primarily in looks) to have a geeky job. Therefore, the book that you're praising is part of the sinister "they" who are telling girls that they're supposed to aspire to beauty above all else.
Or maybe what you observe isn't actually the sinister machinations of a wicked patriarchal plot. Maybe women's desire to be beautiful to men is mostly an innate desire. Doesn't that seem to coincide with men's mostly innate desire to have as many sexual partners as possible?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
All words are made up.
If a math book needs to include "a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry", perhaps the audience isn't really all that interested in math. Maybe you can trick them into enjoying math with baby talk, but they will never ever be as good at math as somebody that doesn't need 'cute doodles' to be interested in it. Maybe you can put a horoscope in a 'boy' math book so they can see the value of horoscopes, eh?
That should have been one became a Chiropractor and ANOTHER became a drunk...
Softcore spread in Maxim:
2 860/danica_mckellar.html
http://www.maximmag.co.uk/maximgirls/celebrities/
Makes me wish she'd calculate my root.
"You have liberated me from thought."
Are women really that stupid?
I really hope this doesn't mean the end of intellectual thought in the world. I can see it in the history books of the future now...
"Once Danica McKella coined the term "refliprocal" to coax retarded and lazy young girls (who are normally too absorbed in pop-culture fads) into understanding and enjoying math, society (which in those times was directed almost entirely by women's interests) took the final set in abandoning intelligent forms of writing in favor of acronyms, abbreviations, slang and the rest of the mindless drivel commonly used in text-based communication. Having abolished proper English, other core forms of intelligence began to fad away until all remnants of human intelligence were lost."
Although, I guess it's more likely that this would appear as a random scribble of feces on a wall. And it would likely be interpreted by other neo-humans as tasty wall sauce.
[/hyperbole]
"solid progressive thinking" - Well, after decades of fighting the pinheads who want to dumb computers down, it's nice to know the other subjects are in the same shape.
In fact, scholastic subjects are *constantly* the target of "solid progressive thinking" - New Math, Ebonics, Montessori method, et al. Just wait until these young women get into the real world and find out their manager doesn't humor their use of 'refliprocal'. Then they get discouraged when they notice that the rest of their peers learned real math, while they were taught the special bubblegum-flavored 'math lite' because, presumably, their feeble brains just weren't capable of understanding the same math everybody else uses.
Typical Western Capitalist thinking - Students failing? Don't teach harder; just teach less! After all, it's not like we expect them to deal with a far more advanced and complex world, is it?
The issue of girls 'underperforming' in Maths has been tackled strongly since the 90s. What has not been addressed successfully is a corresponding inequity in performance of boys in English. In Australia, in EVERY field, girls are out performing boys under the age of 25. It depends how you measure it of course. If you consider whether on average boys or girls score higher, then it is girls, if you look at the top say 10%, then in a maths unit there will usually be more men, but the top student may be a girl (much more likely than 20 years ago).
I think that there has been a tragic overlooking of boys performance in English. For many years there has been an agenda to say that girls are capable of doing anything boys can; with a particular focus on offering scholarships for women in engineering, and targetting women in early high school for mathematics education. These have both done a lot of good for increasing participation of women in Mathematics/Engineering. Alternatively, we are now faced by a chronic shortage of male primary educators, and teachers in general, and there is probably a need for scholarships addressing this issue.
Something as important as the ability to communicate should not be assumed to be 'difficult' for boys to learn. My personal experience is having attended a boys school that was one of the strongest maths schools in my state, but one of the weakest in english. This was part accepted as a 'boy thing', part ignored as unimportant. A noticable difference is that maths was streamed from first year high school until the end, whereas english was only streamed for the last 2 years. I believe in coeducational classes to benefit both boys and girls and a departure from an educational focus on the gender differences of each group and more on the educational similarity
M.
"Mayim Bialik -- star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience"
whoa!
oh marmalade.
From TFA:
WN: Would you say you're on a mission(ary position)?
McKellar: Yes. Absolutely.
I can see lots of people complaining about "dumbing down" maths as if there's something wrong with that... I can see why there could be complaints about, say, simplifying an English language course by changing things - because that would remove some of the content. Arty subjects are inherently hard, but I see no reason why mathematics can't change some of its language and methods to make it easy for students, because although I'm not prone to saying "when are we ever going to use any of this nonsense in real life" in my math classes, the fact is that the vast majority of people won't do mathematics past high-school level (algebra and arithmetic etc, the essentials). You don't need to know all the complexities of mathematics unless you're doing it (or a related subject like physics) at college.
Yeah, it's quite important to know the distinction between "lose" and "loose" when testicles are involved.
Jokes like that are the reason I desperately wish that technology had advanced to the point where I could punch someone in the nuts via the internet.
I was going to say that I was waiting for someone to invent the whore-o-scope - a device for scoping out whores. Then I remembered that the webcam had already been invented.
Getting girls to do math is great.
Now what about my skater boys who think math sucks (thanks to UCSMP's Everyday Math, his grades went from A to C- in 1 month).
It's really sad that you have to use this kind of dumbing down to reach people. For god's sake if you can't grasp the word reciprocal and its underlying concept then you have problems!! Far more problems than a single "book" is going to solve. I'm absolutely disgusted that it was published like a teeny mag. If one has no determination to learn they are not going to learn, period. It is a shame when someone who is supposedly smart thinks they have an answer in something that is completely moronic. Sesame Street Syndrom: Designing an eductaion medium that relies on flashy picures or constant stimulation to capture the pupil's attention. Our education "system" was degined to make you view knowledge as boring. It starts young, by the time they get that book it is already too late; the damage is done to society even if they lurch through all the "hard" math. The only reeaon math is "hard" (whaah! whaah!) is because it is delivered out of context. People need problems to apply the abstract concepts of math to. By the time they have graduated highschool though they don't don't even know what "abstract" means!! This book is just more or the same problem; more Sesame Street. If people were taught to learn they would care enough about SOMETHING to apply math to themselves.
While you may mean this jokingly, compared to most of the rest of America, your grammar is superb. I read quite a bit of junk on teh intarwebs these days and I think that - as far as grammar is concerned - the bar has been lowered a bit too far. And I don't mean to implicate just teen texters; quite a few of the emails I get from engineers and other 'professionals' these days read like pages from a kids' book, yet these people (in most cases) hold advanced degrees in their fields. In most instances I can puzzle out the meaning, but when did flawless, written English become some sort of arcane art?
The best math always is. It's hard, gives you a headache, you lose sleep trying to figure it out. But once you do you are astonished at how elegant it is and how it all fits together so beautifully. And it doesn't matter in the slightest what anatomy you have between your legs, or what your 23rd chromosome pair looks like.
I object to the word "mathematics" being debased to elementary-school arithmetic. But that's another matter.
...laura
Do baseball matches take 5 days?
reciprocity is a bad word for girls to know?
Do you know the enrolment figures for your local university? Where I live there are 3 women entering for every 2 men. And yet the message we keep getting is that it is women that are being held back, discriminated against etc.
Why not check your local university and see what it's like where you live.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
And I have a crush on Winnie Cooper AGAIN. I thought I was over that crap 15 years ago.
put it in the bit bucket
Teenagers, despite occasionally lacking all other intellectual faculties, always know when an adult tries to deceive them.
Rather than telling kids that math is "cool", we should tell them the truth: that math is the difficult yet incredibly fascinating process of rigorous (usually quantitative) reasoning, and that it can yield interesting and useful results if learned and applied correctly. Even the teens who still hate math will at least respect the adults that told the truth about it.
Well said!
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
nerdy? at nicer schools competition to get into college is incredible. it is hardly nerdy, with parents pushing kids into extra curriculars and sat study programs there is intense competition going on with both sexes. it isn't the 1950's any more. anyone that pretends it is just lives in fantasy.
never mind the FACTS, women are the majority at uni's now. women dominate programs like medicine, doctors not just nursing. nerdy keeping them from being doctors?
give me a break.
they don't have to be told, its simple evolution. its an advantage for a woman to be attractive. it can bring wealth far beyond what a math degree can bring. there are models making massive amounts of money for photoshoots and "acting". male models make relatively little by comparison. its perfectly rational to leverage beauty into money.
male homemakers? do you know why this is unpopular? do you???? WOMEN DON'T WANT SUCH MEN!! surveys show women only want to date men with equal or higher education with higher salaries than themselves. very few want to marry down to get a man willing to be the wife. its a problem that is easily solved by marrying down, but women don't "want" that. you say male homemakers aren't respected, well main lack of disrespect is from the women. men do what they need to do to become successful so they can marry a good woman, there is no current incentive to do anything different. its unrealistic to believe its going to change anytime in the near future. we are talking human nature here after all, women have been competing for the most powerful men for the longest time. women that can offer beauty and personal sacrifice are going to out compete some chick with a math degree and no time to raise children any day. thats just the ugly reality. Leaving morons to turn their offspring into morons was society's worst mistake in some centuries - almost on a par with accepting the notions of the state and religion. Until those three notions are reversed, things are going to continue to get worse, not better. whats moronic? spending all your time at work until you are unfertile and old? or having children and a balanced life? evolution certainly considers one superior to the other. "smart" isn't always what you think. You should not feel badly about paying someone to clean for you. First, it gives you time to do other things in life that add to your well being, which will make you and society better. Second, it provides income to another person who can then use the money to improve his or her situation. Everybody wins. I also pay someone to clean, though it is every week because I have a dog that sheds like crazy.
actually you should, because by the reasoning being pushed you are oppressing them. you should be teaching them high level math so they can become liberated instead of making them your slave.
Why does the media flip out over a few points difference in math scores where girls do not do as well, while the fact that the suicide rate for boys is five times higher than that of girls is mentioned only to be discarded, like in this weeks Time magazine?
Anything to create interest in the sciences.... 4 stars
This is the actress that I often point to when I explain the concept of limited acting "range." If you watch those old Wonder Years, you'll see that she has exactly one emotion: anxiety. Happy scene? She's anxious. Sad scene? She's anxious. Any other scene? She's anxious.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, that's just YOUR WOMAN and she's an idiot (and you for marrying her).
QED
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
men do what they need to do to become successful so they can marry a good woman, there is no current incentive to do anything different.
Except to, y'know, eat, and become socially justified in their existence. The traditional patriarch's view of the world has "a good husband" being a man who is socially and financially independent plus surplus to provide for a family. The "purpose" of the woman is perceived to be the perfect childbearer and accessory for the man- A woman who is attractive to a man is provided for because she becomes his accessory and benefits from his social and financial capitol.
The problem with "independent" women is that independence isn't enough. An "independent" woman is just independent, and there's no implication that she can actually be in the place of the traditional patriarch. Homemaking men could change this perception.
evolution certainly considers one superior to the other.
Discussion over. Social Darwinism is a pseudoscience.
+5, Truth
Starting with "parallelepiped" probably wasn't the best way to explain the determinant to non-mathematicians.
Fortunately, it works in two dimensions, too. Draw a parallelogram:
A_____B
/ *** /
C_____D
Get the coordinates of each of the vertices:
A = (1, 3)
B = (5, 3)
C = (0, 0)
D = (4, 0)
The area of the parallelogram is the base (4) times the height (3) = 12. Geometry.
Now pick any two sides and call them your vectors -- say, CA and CD. These two vectors span the parallelogram.
CA = [1 3]
CD = [4 0]
Then the area of the parallelogram ABCD is also the (absolute value of the) determinant of the matrix created by placing those two vectors in columns:
| 1 4 |
| 3 0 |
det = | 1*0 - 3*4 | = | -12 | = 12
Same number. Linear algebra.
To get to what the previous poster said, picture exactly the same thing in three dimensions instead of two. A parallelepiped is a three-dimensional parallelogram, more or less -- a block, optionally tilted, is an example. So, given a 3x3 matrix, turn the three columns into vectors, and picture the space that the vectors span. The determinant of the 3x3 matrix is the area of that block.
So now you know better than most beginning math majors what a determinant is.