I've been using computer-based social networking since the 1980s, at that time on dial-up systems. Sure, now I'm over 50, but I haven't invaded anyone's party, all you young guns have joined in ours. And that's not an invasion: you're welcome (as long as you've brought a bottle).
strings "vibrate" in higher dimensional space. What are the strings made of?
one of the major hurdles to string theory is gravity. why is it as weak as it is? Hey, I'm trying to lose weight as it is. The last thing I want is for gravity to be any stronger!
Isn't it funny how we don't even capitalize "black hole?" Why would we? I can't think of any of the standard capitalisation rules that would apply. Unless your name happens to be Black Holes.
Suit yourself, but maybe then we should ask Magritte to change his painting to "Ceci n'est pas un pipe"? Ça serait plus logique!
(Seriously, would you care to point me to the aforementioned post? I'd be interested in your logic, maybe even in your newsletter;-) Lost in the mists of/. but I said pretty much the same thing that time.
But his "meaning" is most likely something along the lines of "this was one of the times I almost died". Which is more interesting than catalogging what he ate and how well he pooped each day during the extent of the narrative. Just so. But why is it more interesting? And why that particular incident?
He wasn't well versed in literary criticism, so he wasn't attempting to include recurring themes of common narrative or anything of the sort. He just wanted to tell his story and (probably) make a buck. Exactly the same is true of the storytellers that Propp studied -- he studied traditional folk tales. The point is that he and others have found that there are recurring elements of stories that make them work as stories. You might not be aware of them, but if you don't use them at least subconsciously then your stories will be rambling and incoherent at best, not even recognisable as stories at worst. Being able to recognise and analyse those elements is a useful critical skill, and so quite reasonably forms part of Eng. Lit. and Eng. Lang. teaching.
He wasn't trying to use the alligator as a representation of the slave master or any of the other host of ridiculous nonsense my professor was either dishing out or lapping up. Ah! The Marxist Theory perspective. From a Feminist Theory perspective it may have represented the vagina dentata and his fear of the feminine or fear of castration. All outlandishly speculative, of course, and if anyone says that is the meaning then yes, it's fair to call BS on them. But I reckon it is reasonable to speculate on why he chose that particular incident (the reasons might be subconscious, of course), and, more importantly, to remember that what we have is the text, not the narrator, that the reader must construct meanings from the text, and that any reading that can be constructed from the text (without doing violence to the text) is a valid meaning for that reader of the text itself whether or not the author intended it, so if the professor found that meaning valuable then it is a valid meaning (not the meaning). It would be interesting to see the actual text to see if there were similarities in the way the slave-master and the alligator are described, which would reinforce the professor's reading.
But, you see, that means that means that the correct answer is that there is not a correct answer.
There is a correct answer though. That answer is it's not intended to represent anything. It's an alligator plain and simple. Professors X,Y, and Z are wrong and just spouting silly nonsense to try and make themselves sound like they're insightful when they aren't. It's not as simple as that. Although it is a narrative of actual events, a full description of everything that happened would occupy countless volumes. The storyteller has selected from innumerable incidents precisely which incidents to relate. The narrator has chosen to devote space in the narrative to the alligator, rather than, perhaps, a pretty bird in the distance, because the narrator believes that this selection in some way makes for a better narrative. The alligator was an objective fact, with no meaning in a random universe. The selection of the alligator for inclusion in the narrative was a subjective act, with a meaning in the telling of the story. I'll go further and name "professors" A and B: In Vladimir Propp's theory of narrative a recurring theme of popular narratives is that the hero is attacked in the pursuit of their quest, and the alligator provides the potential for such an attack. William Labov, on the other hand, would, I believe, take a more generic view and suggest that the narrator has chosen to mention the alligator because it provides a "complicating action". It may have been subconscious, but the narrator certainly did "mean" something by choosing to include this incident.
When I was doing this sort of theory in linguistics we compared different accounts of the same incident, as reported to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the selection of which objective events to report, and the relative status given to different objective events, had very clear meaning. The meaning in this case might be more muted, but it is most certainly there.
Zero is not automatically an insignificant figure. I never said it was.
A zero to the left of the decimal point but to the right of a non-zero digit IS significant. Zero is only significant when it's either:
* To the left of the decimal point and there are no non-zero digits further left, or
* To the right of the decimal point and there are no non-zero digits further right.
No, whatever you've been taught, you can't make rules like that (besides which you've got the attempt wrong -- the first zero in 02.0 is certainly not significant, but your first bulleted rule says it is). If I make a measurement and it comes out as 20000 +/-2 then all of the zeros are significant. If it comes out at 20000 +/- 20 then the first three zeros are significant but the last one isn't. You can't tell just by looking at the number, you need more information. I could say "the measurement is 20000 to four significant figures", or I could be more precise and say "the measurement is 20000 +/-20" (I should probably add a confidence limit if I'm being really picky), but otherwise you can't tell.
Ok, perhaps this math 101 question is a way of illustrating it. What is 19999 to three significant figures? For a bonus mark, how can you tell it's to three significant figures?
Wikipedia gets it right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures (at least at the moment -- you might have edited it by the time other slashdotters look:-) -- although there is a "bar convention" to show the significance of trailing zeros before the decimal point, it "is not universally used; it is often necessary to determine from context whether trailing zeros in a number without a decimal point are intended to be significant".
The origin of the $222000 probably has three significant figures, because that's probably how precisely the person who was setting the fine was working in their mind. However, once the fine is set, it is $222000.00, eight significant figures of cents, as she would discover if she tried only paying $221999.95. Those last zeros are significant.
The difference in the number of significant figures between the juries mental processes and the actual fine, even though the actual number is the same and has the same meaning, is an interesting one in the recent debate on another story over whether math is objective.
So there is no correct answer because the question itself doesn't even make any sense. If you had 2 different professors asking the same question, the "right" answer is entirely dependent on what they consider quality bullshit.
But, you see, that means that means that the correct answer is that there is not a correct answer. The correct answer is that "professor A suggests that the alligator represents x, whereas professor B suggests it represents y. However, it is arguable that both of these positions fail to take proper account of Doctor C's position, which rather suggests z. Further, all of these positions are dependent on D's theory of representationality. If a different model of representationality is used then different conclusions may be reached."
All of it objective fact. On some courses they like you to give personal opinion, in which case you add something like "I find p and q the most valuable views because [...], but this is a subjective view so a different reader may quite reasonably value the possible interpretations differently". Again, all pretty incontestable. And it's not bullshit -- it shows your tutor that you really understand the debate. It might not look useful -- you're not saying anything new. But below doctorate, you're not/supposed/ to be saying anything new, your supposed to be demonstrating that you understand (and that you realise that anybody who gives a single, closed interpretation of a text -- especially after Bakhtin and Barthes -- is bullshitting).
Sure, this is college level, and at lower levels in the educational system there is more emphasis on memorisation of facts and stock answers. Which is probably why I flunked this stuff at age 15 but am never dropping below "merit" (touch wood!) and mainly getting "distinction" doing it at University level.
No, English is hard. Math is objective, therefore Math is easy. English is insane, and therefore hard. Alternatively, math is abstract, so it's hard, English is concrete so it's easy. Different people find different things easy, different things hard. I've been getting good grades in English at undergrad level whilst challenging the course material at almost every turn, because I'm able to present a strong case for my position. Certainly at the higher levels, English is not about regurgitating received wisdom (I found computer science -- even at postgrad level -- was far more intolerant of alternative approaches).
My main problem with math is terminology. Mathematicians have a nasty habit of naming every concept, so it involves a lot of memorization and retention, which is not always something humans are good at. Fair point, but every discipline has its jargon. I'm doing a linguistics degree for fun at the moment, and I always struggle to work out the difference between "dialogality" and "heteroglossia". And it took me a while to realise that the PATA drive in my computer was really just a good old IDE.
Totally unrelated here, but I was thinking that maybe you should change your signature to be grammatically correct.
A signature in french is "une signature" (signature is feminine). I cringe every time I see someone using that signature here on/. I've addressed this before on slashdot. What part of "Ceci n'est pas" don't you understand?;-)
Well, at least I hang around with sharp people in the hope that some of the kudos bounces my way. See, it works!
Hmm, I seem to be a "no preference" on learning style. I don't mind stuff coming in sequentially but I seem to be good at spotting links even across subjects. What I can't do is memorise. I hardly remembered any formulae for my math exams, because I found it easier and more dependable to derive them on-the-fly as needed. I did remember the formula for quadratic equations, because my father offered me cash if I did, but I could just as easily derive it.
A couple of years ago, I spent a semester teaching pre-calc at the local community college (the pay sucked and I couldn't keep up the schedule of teaching part-time, not with the time requirements of my full-time job), and this was their approach. One of the head instructors did his PhD dissertation on pedagical techniques for math and came to the conclusion that the "traditional" approcah of teaching math is - at least in the US - ass backward. It seems to be pretty much the same in the UK. I can't help feeling that it's like teaching music by getting everybody to memorise the classical rules of harmony, getting the students to harmonise lots of pieces and marking them according to the rules, but never letting them hear what any of it sounds like. Yes, sure, math does have a strange sort of abstract beauty in itself, but most people will never see it, just as I have friends who can look at a music score and say "gosh, that's beautiful" whilst I won't know until somebody (possibly me) plays it. For most of us, the abstract symbols on the page have to be translated before they mean anything to us.
If the teacher would have said, hey this will help you make video games I personally would have put more effort into the problems. Yep. When we were doing matrix transformations at school, our teacher couldn't give us any possible use for them. It wasn't until years later when I wanted to apply 3-d transformations to a plane image on my computer screen that I discovered how useful they were (and years after that, when I was involved in aircraft navigation systems, that I discovered their use in solving overdetermined simultaneous equations and in Kalman filtering). Ok, maybe neither of those will appeal to a jock, but I bet they're already pretty good at basic statistics and know how to work out batting averages...
You know, I wince when people say that. Yes, math is hard, but then, music is hard. Creative writing is hard. Any subject is hard if you don't get it, and even if you do get it, any subject needs hard work to get good at it. Yes, math needs abstract thinking, and some folks are better at that than others, but then, some people are better at pitch and rhythm than others. Picking on math in this way is sowing the seeds of defeat.
One of the math books I have (I can't remember which one) starts with a riff about how most folks want to drop math as soon as they can, but then it lists a whole list of subjects (things like "how to avoid getting ripped off", "how to play the stock market", "how to save time and effort by taking shortcuts on common problems", "having fun with games and puzzles" and so on) and speculates that pretty much everyone would want to take a few of those options. The trick is, of course, that they're all math. I'm convinced that the reason most people hate math is because it's taught in an almost completely abstract way (because the teachers have to get through the syllabus in a limited number of class hours). Teach it the other way -- take real problems and show how math can solve them or generalise them, and I reckon a lot more of the students would go along for the ride.
A friend of mine used to teach remedial physics to a college class. He wasn't much older than the students, so he started the first class by pretending to be another student and mixing with the others as they came in. In the process he discovered that most of them were bikers who had to get the physics qualification to support a motor mechanics apprenticeship they were doing. After some consternation when they discovered he was really the teacher, he started by asking them how they would tune a 2-stroke engine; what effect the things they were doing would have on the engine, and how they would measure the effects. This led them through all sorts of physics, from friction and levers to gas laws and fluid flow. He got every student through the exam, because he made it relevant. The same can be done with math, and it makes it a whole lot easier.
I'm sure that at least part of the reason students find math[s] difficult is that much of the time it seems dull and irrelevant. It might be worth looking at some books by popularisers of recreational math[s], who relate it to real life (or at least to interesting anecdotes) in fun ways. You'll still end up having to do classes or read real textbooks, but if you've learned to see some of the possible fun in it, and learned the puzzle-solving "aha!" satisfaction that mathematicians get, then I think you're likely to get on better with the grind work. Authors to look out for include Martin Gardner (especially his earlier maths stuff -- his humanities essays probably won't be any direct help), Ian Stewart and John Allen Paulos -- I'm sure others can add to that list.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using computer-based social networking since the 1980s, at that time on dial-up systems. Sure, now I'm over 50, but I haven't invaded anyone's party, all you young guns have joined in ours. And that's not an invasion: you're welcome (as long as you've brought a bottle).
What's stopping MS just getting a puppet company asserting patents on their behalf? Not that they've ever [fnord SCO] do that, of course.
Doesn't matter for the Daily Sport, as long as she has big [no carrier]
(Seriously, would you care to point me to the aforementioned post? I'd be interested in your logic, maybe even in your newsletter
There is a correct answer though. That answer is it's not intended to represent anything. It's an alligator plain and simple. Professors X,Y, and Z are wrong and just spouting silly nonsense to try and make themselves sound like they're insightful when they aren't. It's not as simple as that. Although it is a narrative of actual events, a full description of everything that happened would occupy countless volumes. The storyteller has selected from innumerable incidents precisely which incidents to relate. The narrator has chosen to devote space in the narrative to the alligator, rather than, perhaps, a pretty bird in the distance, because the narrator believes that this selection in some way makes for a better narrative. The alligator was an objective fact, with no meaning in a random universe. The selection of the alligator for inclusion in the narrative was a subjective act, with a meaning in the telling of the story. I'll go further and name "professors" A and B: In Vladimir Propp's theory of narrative a recurring theme of popular narratives is that the hero is attacked in the pursuit of their quest, and the alligator provides the potential for such an attack. William Labov, on the other hand, would, I believe, take a more generic view and suggest that the narrator has chosen to mention the alligator because it provides a "complicating action". It may have been subconscious, but the narrator certainly did "mean" something by choosing to include this incident.
When I was doing this sort of theory in linguistics we compared different accounts of the same incident, as reported to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the selection of which objective events to report, and the relative status given to different objective events, had very clear meaning. The meaning in this case might be more muted, but it is most certainly there.
By the way, I apologise to any punctuation zealots for the omission of an apostrophe in that posting. Here it is: '
You know where to put it!
* To the left of the decimal point and there are no non-zero digits further left, or
* To the right of the decimal point and there are no non-zero digits further right.
No, whatever you've been taught, you can't make rules like that (besides which you've got the attempt wrong -- the first zero in 02.0 is certainly not significant, but your first bulleted rule says it is). If I make a measurement and it comes out as 20000 +/-2 then all of the zeros are significant. If it comes out at 20000 +/- 20 then the first three zeros are significant but the last one isn't. You can't tell just by looking at the number, you need more information. I could say "the measurement is 20000 to four significant figures", or I could be more precise and say "the measurement is 20000 +/-20" (I should probably add a confidence limit if I'm being really picky), but otherwise you can't tell.
Ok, perhaps this math 101 question is a way of illustrating it. What is 19999 to three significant figures? For a bonus mark, how can you tell it's to three significant figures?
Wikipedia gets it right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures (at least at the moment -- you might have edited it by the time other slashdotters look :-) -- although there is a "bar convention" to show the significance of trailing zeros before the decimal point, it "is not universally used; it is often necessary to determine from context whether trailing zeros in a number without a decimal point are intended to be significant".
Your fine is now $1,000,000, to one significant figure, so we'll accept any payment between $500,000 and $1,499,999.99. Is that better?
The origin of the $222000 probably has three significant figures, because that's probably how precisely the person who was setting the fine was working in their mind. However, once the fine is set, it is $222000.00, eight significant figures of cents, as she would discover if she tried only paying $221999.95. Those last zeros are significant.
The difference in the number of significant figures between the juries mental processes and the actual fine, even though the actual number is the same and has the same meaning, is an interesting one in the recent debate on another story over whether math is objective.
But, you see, that means that means that the correct answer is that there is not a correct answer. The correct answer is that "professor A suggests that the alligator represents x, whereas professor B suggests it represents y. However, it is arguable that both of these positions fail to take proper account of Doctor C's position, which rather suggests z. Further, all of these positions are dependent on D's theory of representationality. If a different model of representationality is used then different conclusions may be reached."
All of it objective fact. On some courses they like you to give personal opinion, in which case you add something like "I find p and q the most valuable views because [...], but this is a subjective view so a different reader may quite reasonably value the possible interpretations differently". Again, all pretty incontestable. And it's not bullshit -- it shows your tutor that you really understand the debate. It might not look useful -- you're not saying anything new. But below doctorate, you're not /supposed/ to be saying anything new, your supposed to be demonstrating that you understand (and that you realise that anybody who gives a single, closed interpretation of a text -- especially after Bakhtin and Barthes -- is bullshitting).
Sure, this is college level, and at lower levels in the educational system there is more emphasis on memorisation of facts and stock answers. Which is probably why I flunked this stuff at age 15 but am never dropping below "merit" (touch wood!) and mainly getting "distinction" doing it at University level.
Well, at least I hang around with sharp people in the hope that some of the kudos bounces my way. See, it works!
Hmm, I seem to be a "no preference" on learning style. I don't mind stuff coming in sequentially but I seem to be good at spotting links even across subjects. What I can't do is memorise. I hardly remembered any formulae for my math exams, because I found it easier and more dependable to derive them on-the-fly as needed. I did remember the formula for quadratic equations, because my father offered me cash if I did, but I could just as easily derive it.
You know, I wince when people say that. Yes, math is hard, but then, music is hard. Creative writing is hard. Any subject is hard if you don't get it, and even if you do get it, any subject needs hard work to get good at it. Yes, math needs abstract thinking, and some folks are better at that than others, but then, some people are better at pitch and rhythm than others. Picking on math in this way is sowing the seeds of defeat.
One of the math books I have (I can't remember which one) starts with a riff about how most folks want to drop math as soon as they can, but then it lists a whole list of subjects (things like "how to avoid getting ripped off", "how to play the stock market", "how to save time and effort by taking shortcuts on common problems", "having fun with games and puzzles" and so on) and speculates that pretty much everyone would want to take a few of those options. The trick is, of course, that they're all math. I'm convinced that the reason most people hate math is because it's taught in an almost completely abstract way (because the teachers have to get through the syllabus in a limited number of class hours). Teach it the other way -- take real problems and show how math can solve them or generalise them, and I reckon a lot more of the students would go along for the ride.
A friend of mine used to teach remedial physics to a college class. He wasn't much older than the students, so he started the first class by pretending to be another student and mixing with the others as they came in. In the process he discovered that most of them were bikers who had to get the physics qualification to support a motor mechanics apprenticeship they were doing. After some consternation when they discovered he was really the teacher, he started by asking them how they would tune a 2-stroke engine; what effect the things they were doing would have on the engine, and how they would measure the effects. This led them through all sorts of physics, from friction and levers to gas laws and fluid flow. He got every student through the exam, because he made it relevant. The same can be done with math, and it makes it a whole lot easier.
I'm sure that at least part of the reason students find math[s] difficult is that much of the time it seems dull and irrelevant. It might be worth looking at some books by popularisers of recreational math[s], who relate it to real life (or at least to interesting anecdotes) in fun ways. You'll still end up having to do classes or read real textbooks, but if you've learned to see some of the possible fun in it, and learned the puzzle-solving "aha!" satisfaction that mathematicians get, then I think you're likely to get on better with the grind work. Authors to look out for include Martin Gardner (especially his earlier maths stuff -- his humanities essays probably won't be any direct help), Ian Stewart and John Allen Paulos -- I'm sure others can add to that list.