My biggest gripe with how grade level "education" is done is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have career "educators" who "educate", instead of how it's done in almost all other aspects of life where practitioners of a given discipline do the teaching. Kids are taught maths from people who don't do any work in mathematics, are taught science by people who don't do any science, heck - are taught "sports" by people who didn't ever have a sports career... Yet you don't see "medical educators" teaching the doctors - it's the doctors who do it... Crazy, I agree. At least in the U.S., the adorable exception to this rule is music teaching: it's kinda hard to fake being able to play an instrument and understanding music theory, so at least most music/instrument teachers are musicians who can teach from experience and not from edict.
When I was younger, I had big gripes about the requirement in some European countries for "educators" to have what amounts to 5 year graduate degrees in the discipline they want to teach. E.g. if you want to teach grade school physics, you need an M.Sc. in physics. I thought it an overkill. Now I know better, and ideally I'd like to see these people have at least some research experience in their discipline as well.
I'm looking at engineers who have deliverables produced completely on a computer where the entire process is not scripted and every time they change something major they have to go through the process of clicking for hours, and that assumes they don't fuck up and forget something. Say - running finite element analyses, generating the output files, merging them with the report and producing the final PDF as a deliverable. Fucking pathetic. The gains would be enormous if they learned how to script it all up and then stuck to that process. I know because I started applying that process to grad-level projects in signal analysis, structural and other FEM analysis, and so on. It was very easy to make changes and see what falls out - experimenting is cheap if instead of clicking for hours you can change a couple of constants in a script and re-run the entire simulation and get the figures integrated into your report and have a PDF at the end. You can even generate some text if you wish so, or at least formalize the assertions the text is making to make sure that the text agrees with the numbers and other results it's narrating.
Same goes with e.g. the task of ordering shit on many a website where you either can't upload the line items or the formats don't mesh (usually they won't). So if there's no upload, you make a little greasemonkey script to automate filling in the line items. Or if an upload is supported, you might need a second lookup to translate your internal product numbers to manufacturer or vendor product numbers, and so on. All of this can be scripted, making the purchase person much more productive.
I'm sure there's plenty of other office jobs where you would need similar ad-hoc system integration.
I don't see what's the benefit of reflection other than in leveraging code-generating tools. Of course code generation based on introspection/reflection is great and enables great things, and does make you more productive, but it's not exactly the thing that makes code "fit together". You make the code fit together, and if the fitting/adaptations are stereotypical, you can factor them out and automate them. Thus reflection is super-useful when you're writing what amounts to LISP macros, but on a CLR platform. That's one of LINQ enablers, the other being integrated expression trees so that you don't have to emit text to generate code, and don't have to parse to input code. Alas, any decent IDE for C++ will maintain a full model of the code and provide full reflection capabilities to the developer. You can leverage that for compile-time code generation, if it's a bit kludgy in practice if you can only use it from within the IDE. There are also tools out there that give good C++ expression tree support for code transformation/generation, but the ones that are as easy to use as DLR expression trees are rather expensive and niche - so yeah, DLR (CLR+goodies) is a better platform here.
It almost looks to me like you brought up Common Core as some sort of a strawman. It's not really related muchl to what you're saying. Yes, your observations happen to be concurrent with the implementation of Common Core, but really have nothing to do with Common Core per se. Perhaps there'd be a better wording for the grandparent, or I should pay more attention.:)
There are quite decent ways of testing all aspects of educational process if you're not dumb about the physiology of the brain. All too many people who deal with education have very little knowledge of neurophysiology and psychophysiology and are completely unequipped to test whether their techniques work, and to design their teaching methods to leverage the physiology of the brain.
Although my list of peeves would probably fill several chapters, I'll focus on just one, to give an example. Letter/Number Blocks should be fucking nuked from orbit. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the spatial universalism that applies to objects doesn't fucking apply to letters and numbers. They are symbols, not objects, so if you give your kid letters or digits printed on the sides of cubes, they'll naturally learn the wrong thing: that an A is an A no matter which way it points. It is surprisingly hard to unlearn that if it's too deeply ingrained, and is a real obstacle in development of reading skills. Kids don't write mirrored/rotated letters due to God's will, but because they specifically apply the inapplicable object universalism from the 3D world they live in. And so, the label of "dyslexia" is so broad it's almost useless, this is not one disorder, but about a dozen very specific problems that must be diagnosed and counteracted individually; the all-encompassing label doesn't help with that. And so on...
I don't think you really understand what Common Core is. It is a set of expectations and concepts - it is really a curriculum defined at a fairly abstract level, about as abstracted out from the particular methods of teaching and selection of taught techniques as possible. Anyone blaming bad education on Common Core isn't really paying much attention themselves. Equating Common Core with any particular implementation of it, especially as offered by the almost universally loathed big academic publishers, is making oneself look kinda dumb. Common Core isn't a problem. The quality of materials put out by Pearson and their ilk is, as is the quality of the standardized tests.
I'd argue that if you're leaving high-school without knowing how to automate something basic on a website through greasemonkey, or in an office app through its macro system, you're behind where you should be. There's enough apps both off- and online to automate the calculation of a volume of a platonic solid, and these days everyone carries their programmable pocket calculator with them anyway, except that they call it a "smartphone".
Of course having some number sense and understanding of algebra helps, but teaching of arithmetic tricks is kinda pointless without concurrent teaching of what properties of numbers and/or algebra make these tricks work. Divisibility tests might have fallen out of a blue sky initially, but we now understand why they work. You might forget the test, but if you know what made it work, you can always re-derive it from scratch if you so with. Or just use the damn calculator. I used to like mental math and such tricks when I was a kid, but I completely lost interest in it.
For most of us, there are much bigger mental tasks I can occupy myself with. Wasting time on doing mental arithmetic is just that at some point in life. Sure I do it if I have to, but only then, and it's usually faster to do it on the phone anyway.
Given that you can use the same computer, and the same environment to make the computer follow your instructions, vs. merely follow the instructions of others, I'd say that knowing how to code, even if at a very basic level, is a must for everyone. By not leveraging the machine you're placing yourself at a disadvantage, as you can only use the code others wrote and that will almost never be exactly what you need. In most areas of life where you're using computer in an office-style job, you'd benefit from being able to write your own macros, or run a greasemonkey script to automate a webpage. Not knowing how to do that makes you functionally illiterate, of sorts. I still lament at how many engineers don't really grasp the basics of coding... just because you're a mechanical or civil engineer doesn't absolve you of responsibility to keep your productivity up by leveraging code to help you out with drudgery.
The education in operating a computer must include education in how to get the computer to follow your own instructions, vs. merely following instructions of others. You don't need it if you're operating a closed externally-managed point-of-sale system or a car with its complex computer network, but as soon as you're in an office job you're clearly disadvantaged by not knowing coding basics as they apply to office tasks - and here really the macros, shell scripting and javascript basics are of a big advantage.
I agree. I initially learned how to code by writing "apps" that consisted of a few hundred of PRINT statements interspersed by PAUSEs. I doubt very much that this is somehow inherently more effective than, say, making the same animation using Scratch. Ms. Harel has a Ph.D. but is full of it. Making Elsa move forward is a good first step at gaining understanding. At that level, it's no worse than typing up a few PRINTs and finally RUNning it and being happy at making a computer do something according to your commands.
I think that this will grow slowly and organically, just like initial gasoline production and distribution system did. When the first tens of thousands of cars were getting out on U.S. roads, things weren't peachy either, and similar arguments were made. Charging is scalable just like gasoline fill-ups are, only the scaling constant (time/fill-up) is different. But other than that, there's no fundamental difference. It's not as if we're going from O(N) to NP.
Eventually, they will if they have to, but they might not have to. People will give more business to less-traveled stations - one imagines that the charging spot availability will be on a widget on your mobile device by then, and prices won't vary drastically in an area covered by a given electric utility, unless some other differentiating factors come into play such as what other services are bundled with a charge.
Hydrogen absolutely sucks for first stages, where you're fighting gravity losses. You don't want a hydrogen first stage, you'll need solid or kerolox boosters to get it off the ground. Hydrogen is wonderful once you're a bit higher - it works great for 2nd and higher stages.
I'd think that the charging stations could be way more interesting and offer much more business opportunity than gas stations. When you pump gas, you have to stay with the car, and there's really no reason for you to do anything else. The store might as well not exist. I'm not going inside a gas station building unless I''m on a long road trip. Charging takes longer, and you don't have to be in the car - I expect that most people won't. There's great opportunity there for remote work stations, so that you could get some work done before you manage to get to the office, you're way more of a captive audience, etc.
You have your head firmly on your shoulders, what on Earth are you doing here?:)
But seriously, as much as I like Apple devices, the remote management on OS X isn't all there, iOS without a keyboard is limiting, and an integrated Google ecosystem helps. These could have been some Windows RT devices, too, with an Azure-based domain, but IMHO MS's online management tools are clunkier than Google's.
Wait, you're complaining about default styles as if that somehow constrained you? Yes, it's a problem with the defaults, but if you really expect to be productive in LO.org, you should have your own styles, made from scratch.
I find it easiest when professional documentation/manuals/books are done in DocBook and then processed into whatever presentation you desire. Of course you won't write DocBook by hand, use LyX for that.
Ideas are just about as real as anything else is. Naming an idea isn't special. Infinity is a useful idea, giving it a name is OK. Really. According to you, the word "number" shouldn't exist. Numbers aren't real either, they are "just" ideas. And so on.
I think you've wandered into a semantic swamp. The "thingification" you speak of is otherwise known as putting a name to an idea. You somehow make it sound like a different way of calling out the idea would make a big difference. The meaning of infinity literally is: endless. Spelling it out as "we can't see an end to it" vs. simply calling it an "infinity"? You've lost me there. I'm all for conciseness.
Who cares if continuity exists anywhere in the physical world. It's a very versatile model of reality that so far happens to work and find widespread use. I do agree that a fundamentally different kind of perhaps discrete math would do a better job at going across all the scales of phenomena in the universe, and that the mental baggage of continuum maths might be holding back the progress of science. Yet one can't argue that it has brought us this far along the path of discovery, so it's not useless, and it doesn't practically matter that some abstract concept defined to work forever wouldn't do so in practice. It's not meant to, LOL.
If said lady had an affair with myself, a married guy, my wife would be most likely OK with that. So that's not unthinkable, if perhaps a tad uncommon.
I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about with regards to common core math. It is more-or-less what I was taught in grade school in communist Central Europe. It's quite a sensible selection of topics. Certainly didn't hurt me in getting to be an engineer who's not scared to apply math at work.
You are delusional. Not one person in a thousand needs that hands-on training; it's a waste of time and resources.
You don't need art either. Completely unnecessary to just living one's life. Right? Well, you see, the thing about comprehensive education is that you need a mix of subjects. Rebuilding, say, an L-head lawnmower engine can be used to give practical backing to basic physics but also the appreciation of design. Although engines are though of as completely utilitarian in design, in practice that's not completely true and there's a lot of leeway for what amounts to preference and aesthetics.
only open from 10-to-12 every other Tuesday and Thursday
I hope you're not serious. Yet, somehow, the collection of diverse countries known as Europe universally requires a national ID to vote. And somehow, magically, it's not a problem there. I'd tend to think it's an imaginary problem, mostly "exposed" by pseudo social justice warriors who haven't peeked out of their own country and know nothing.
No, IoT is fine, but the execution here was just dumb. I run embedded windows systems in hard realtime applications where even if, somehow, through an exploit of some sort they got owned, the most damage would be to a ram disk holding transient data. You could press the "data reset" button to reboot the system and it'd be back to the factory state, as it boots and operates from read-only media with a ram disk to hold changes to the filesystem.
Who the fuck uses a non-embedded version of Windows in a fucking invasive medical device *anyway*? It's almost absurd. I use embedded windows in several hard-realtime control systems with 250us cycle times (hard deadlines: you're late and and some expensive metal chunks crash into each other), and it works just fine... Someone dun goofed big time. These systems use built-in firewalls, are not updated willy-nilly, run only necessary services, and the software load is considered to be like firmware: no user and no IT department can mess with it. The OS and our software is running off read-only media anyway, and writable overlay is on a battery-backed, crash-surviving ram disk. This shouldn't be any different in a catheterization system. Once the procedure is done and the data synced with central server, the ram disk should be reset.
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My biggest gripe with how grade level "education" is done is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have career "educators" who "educate", instead of how it's done in almost all other aspects of life where practitioners of a given discipline do the teaching. Kids are taught maths from people who don't do any work in mathematics, are taught science by people who don't do any science, heck - are taught "sports" by people who didn't ever have a sports career... Yet you don't see "medical educators" teaching the doctors - it's the doctors who do it... Crazy, I agree. At least in the U.S., the adorable exception to this rule is music teaching: it's kinda hard to fake being able to play an instrument and understanding music theory, so at least most music/instrument teachers are musicians who can teach from experience and not from edict.
When I was younger, I had big gripes about the requirement in some European countries for "educators" to have what amounts to 5 year graduate degrees in the discipline they want to teach. E.g. if you want to teach grade school physics, you need an M.Sc. in physics. I thought it an overkill. Now I know better, and ideally I'd like to see these people have at least some research experience in their discipline as well.
I'm looking at engineers who have deliverables produced completely on a computer where the entire process is not scripted and every time they change something major they have to go through the process of clicking for hours, and that assumes they don't fuck up and forget something. Say - running finite element analyses, generating the output files, merging them with the report and producing the final PDF as a deliverable. Fucking pathetic. The gains would be enormous if they learned how to script it all up and then stuck to that process. I know because I started applying that process to grad-level projects in signal analysis, structural and other FEM analysis, and so on. It was very easy to make changes and see what falls out - experimenting is cheap if instead of clicking for hours you can change a couple of constants in a script and re-run the entire simulation and get the figures integrated into your report and have a PDF at the end. You can even generate some text if you wish so, or at least formalize the assertions the text is making to make sure that the text agrees with the numbers and other results it's narrating.
Same goes with e.g. the task of ordering shit on many a website where you either can't upload the line items or the formats don't mesh (usually they won't). So if there's no upload, you make a little greasemonkey script to automate filling in the line items. Or if an upload is supported, you might need a second lookup to translate your internal product numbers to manufacturer or vendor product numbers, and so on. All of this can be scripted, making the purchase person much more productive.
I'm sure there's plenty of other office jobs where you would need similar ad-hoc system integration.
I don't see what's the benefit of reflection other than in leveraging code-generating tools. Of course code generation based on introspection/reflection is great and enables great things, and does make you more productive, but it's not exactly the thing that makes code "fit together". You make the code fit together, and if the fitting/adaptations are stereotypical, you can factor them out and automate them. Thus reflection is super-useful when you're writing what amounts to LISP macros, but on a CLR platform. That's one of LINQ enablers, the other being integrated expression trees so that you don't have to emit text to generate code, and don't have to parse to input code. Alas, any decent IDE for C++ will maintain a full model of the code and provide full reflection capabilities to the developer. You can leverage that for compile-time code generation, if it's a bit kludgy in practice if you can only use it from within the IDE. There are also tools out there that give good C++ expression tree support for code transformation/generation, but the ones that are as easy to use as DLR expression trees are rather expensive and niche - so yeah, DLR (CLR+goodies) is a better platform here.
It almost looks to me like you brought up Common Core as some sort of a strawman. It's not really related muchl to what you're saying. Yes, your observations happen to be concurrent with the implementation of Common Core, but really have nothing to do with Common Core per se. Perhaps there'd be a better wording for the grandparent, or I should pay more attention. :)
There are quite decent ways of testing all aspects of educational process if you're not dumb about the physiology of the brain. All too many people who deal with education have very little knowledge of neurophysiology and psychophysiology and are completely unequipped to test whether their techniques work, and to design their teaching methods to leverage the physiology of the brain.
Although my list of peeves would probably fill several chapters, I'll focus on just one, to give an example. Letter/Number Blocks should be fucking nuked from orbit. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the spatial universalism that applies to objects doesn't fucking apply to letters and numbers. They are symbols, not objects, so if you give your kid letters or digits printed on the sides of cubes, they'll naturally learn the wrong thing: that an A is an A no matter which way it points. It is surprisingly hard to unlearn that if it's too deeply ingrained, and is a real obstacle in development of reading skills. Kids don't write mirrored/rotated letters due to God's will, but because they specifically apply the inapplicable object universalism from the 3D world they live in. And so, the label of "dyslexia" is so broad it's almost useless, this is not one disorder, but about a dozen very specific problems that must be diagnosed and counteracted individually; the all-encompassing label doesn't help with that. And so on...
I don't think you really understand what Common Core is. It is a set of expectations and concepts - it is really a curriculum defined at a fairly abstract level, about as abstracted out from the particular methods of teaching and selection of taught techniques as possible. Anyone blaming bad education on Common Core isn't really paying much attention themselves. Equating Common Core with any particular implementation of it, especially as offered by the almost universally loathed big academic publishers, is making oneself look kinda dumb. Common Core isn't a problem. The quality of materials put out by Pearson and their ilk is, as is the quality of the standardized tests.
I'd argue that if you're leaving high-school without knowing how to automate something basic on a website through greasemonkey, or in an office app through its macro system, you're behind where you should be. There's enough apps both off- and online to automate the calculation of a volume of a platonic solid, and these days everyone carries their programmable pocket calculator with them anyway, except that they call it a "smartphone".
Of course having some number sense and understanding of algebra helps, but teaching of arithmetic tricks is kinda pointless without concurrent teaching of what properties of numbers and/or algebra make these tricks work. Divisibility tests might have fallen out of a blue sky initially, but we now understand why they work. You might forget the test, but if you know what made it work, you can always re-derive it from scratch if you so with. Or just use the damn calculator. I used to like mental math and such tricks when I was a kid, but I completely lost interest in it.
For most of us, there are much bigger mental tasks I can occupy myself with. Wasting time on doing mental arithmetic is just that at some point in life. Sure I do it if I have to, but only then, and it's usually faster to do it on the phone anyway.
Given that you can use the same computer, and the same environment to make the computer follow your instructions, vs. merely follow the instructions of others, I'd say that knowing how to code, even if at a very basic level, is a must for everyone. By not leveraging the machine you're placing yourself at a disadvantage, as you can only use the code others wrote and that will almost never be exactly what you need. In most areas of life where you're using computer in an office-style job, you'd benefit from being able to write your own macros, or run a greasemonkey script to automate a webpage. Not knowing how to do that makes you functionally illiterate, of sorts. I still lament at how many engineers don't really grasp the basics of coding... just because you're a mechanical or civil engineer doesn't absolve you of responsibility to keep your productivity up by leveraging code to help you out with drudgery.
The education in operating a computer must include education in how to get the computer to follow your own instructions, vs. merely following instructions of others. You don't need it if you're operating a closed externally-managed point-of-sale system or a car with its complex computer network, but as soon as you're in an office job you're clearly disadvantaged by not knowing coding basics as they apply to office tasks - and here really the macros, shell scripting and javascript basics are of a big advantage.
I agree. I initially learned how to code by writing "apps" that consisted of a few hundred of PRINT statements interspersed by PAUSEs. I doubt very much that this is somehow inherently more effective than, say, making the same animation using Scratch. Ms. Harel has a Ph.D. but is full of it. Making Elsa move forward is a good first step at gaining understanding. At that level, it's no worse than typing up a few PRINTs and finally RUNning it and being happy at making a computer do something according to your commands.
I think that this will grow slowly and organically, just like initial gasoline production and distribution system did. When the first tens of thousands of cars were getting out on U.S. roads, things weren't peachy either, and similar arguments were made. Charging is scalable just like gasoline fill-ups are, only the scaling constant (time/fill-up) is different. But other than that, there's no fundamental difference. It's not as if we're going from O(N) to NP.
Eventually, they will if they have to, but they might not have to. People will give more business to less-traveled stations - one imagines that the charging spot availability will be on a widget on your mobile device by then, and prices won't vary drastically in an area covered by a given electric utility, unless some other differentiating factors come into play such as what other services are bundled with a charge.
Hydrogen absolutely sucks for first stages, where you're fighting gravity losses. You don't want a hydrogen first stage, you'll need solid or kerolox boosters to get it off the ground. Hydrogen is wonderful once you're a bit higher - it works great for 2nd and higher stages.
I'd think that the charging stations could be way more interesting and offer much more business opportunity than gas stations. When you pump gas, you have to stay with the car, and there's really no reason for you to do anything else. The store might as well not exist. I'm not going inside a gas station building unless I''m on a long road trip. Charging takes longer, and you don't have to be in the car - I expect that most people won't. There's great opportunity there for remote work stations, so that you could get some work done before you manage to get to the office, you're way more of a captive audience, etc.
You have your head firmly on your shoulders, what on Earth are you doing here? :)
But seriously, as much as I like Apple devices, the remote management on OS X isn't all there, iOS without a keyboard is limiting, and an integrated Google ecosystem helps. These could have been some Windows RT devices, too, with an Azure-based domain, but IMHO MS's online management tools are clunkier than Google's.
Wait, you're complaining about default styles as if that somehow constrained you? Yes, it's a problem with the defaults, but if you really expect to be productive in LO.org, you should have your own styles, made from scratch.
I find it easiest when professional documentation/manuals/books are done in DocBook and then processed into whatever presentation you desire. Of course you won't write DocBook by hand, use LyX for that.
Ideas are just about as real as anything else is. Naming an idea isn't special. Infinity is a useful idea, giving it a name is OK. Really. According to you, the word "number" shouldn't exist. Numbers aren't real either, they are "just" ideas. And so on.
I think you've wandered into a semantic swamp. The "thingification" you speak of is otherwise known as putting a name to an idea. You somehow make it sound like a different way of calling out the idea would make a big difference. The meaning of infinity literally is: endless. Spelling it out as "we can't see an end to it" vs. simply calling it an "infinity"? You've lost me there. I'm all for conciseness.
Who cares if continuity exists anywhere in the physical world. It's a very versatile model of reality that so far happens to work and find widespread use. I do agree that a fundamentally different kind of perhaps discrete math would do a better job at going across all the scales of phenomena in the universe, and that the mental baggage of continuum maths might be holding back the progress of science. Yet one can't argue that it has brought us this far along the path of discovery, so it's not useless, and it doesn't practically matter that some abstract concept defined to work forever wouldn't do so in practice. It's not meant to, LOL.
If said lady had an affair with myself, a married guy, my wife would be most likely OK with that. So that's not unthinkable, if perhaps a tad uncommon.
I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about with regards to common core math. It is more-or-less what I was taught in grade school in communist Central Europe. It's quite a sensible selection of topics. Certainly didn't hurt me in getting to be an engineer who's not scared to apply math at work.
You are delusional. Not one person in a thousand needs that hands-on training; it's a waste of time and resources.
You don't need art either. Completely unnecessary to just living one's life. Right? Well, you see, the thing about comprehensive education is that you need a mix of subjects. Rebuilding, say, an L-head lawnmower engine can be used to give practical backing to basic physics but also the appreciation of design. Although engines are though of as completely utilitarian in design, in practice that's not completely true and there's a lot of leeway for what amounts to preference and aesthetics.
only open from 10-to-12 every other Tuesday and Thursday
I hope you're not serious. Yet, somehow, the collection of diverse countries known as Europe universally requires a national ID to vote. And somehow, magically, it's not a problem there. I'd tend to think it's an imaginary problem, mostly "exposed" by pseudo social justice warriors who haven't peeked out of their own country and know nothing.
No, IoT is fine, but the execution here was just dumb. I run embedded windows systems in hard realtime applications where even if, somehow, through an exploit of some sort they got owned, the most damage would be to a ram disk holding transient data. You could press the "data reset" button to reboot the system and it'd be back to the factory state, as it boots and operates from read-only media with a ram disk to hold changes to the filesystem.
Who the fuck uses a non-embedded version of Windows in a fucking invasive medical device *anyway*? It's almost absurd. I use embedded windows in several hard-realtime control systems with 250us cycle times (hard deadlines: you're late and and some expensive metal chunks crash into each other), and it works just fine... Someone dun goofed big time. These systems use built-in firewalls, are not updated willy-nilly, run only necessary services, and the software load is considered to be like firmware: no user and no IT department can mess with it. The OS and our software is running off read-only media anyway, and writable overlay is on a battery-backed, crash-surviving ram disk. This shouldn't be any different in a catheterization system. Once the procedure is done and the data synced with central server, the ram disk should be reset.
OK, I'll bite. How exactly is it harmful? Clarify whether what you say applies to the production or the consumer side of things.