When it comes to college level stuff, mathematics has more free books available online than any other discipline.
Yet, most universities use either James Stewart or one other book for calculus.
Why? I really don't know. I asked a math grad student friend of mine, and he said it ultimately boiled down to politics: Calculus level textbooks are decided by a committee, and the professor teaching it only has some say - and it's hard to convince a committee. As hundreds of students will take calculus every semester, they need the warm and fuzzy feeling an established textbook gives them.
To be fair, the mathematics departments are also perhaps the most likely to use free/cheap textbooks (compared to sciences and engineering). This usually happens for upper division courses, though.
If you're spending half the lecture writing something on the board that could very well be flashed up there in an instant using PowerPoint or similar, you're wasting the students time.
Sure. And if you can put it on a Powerpoint, then you're wasting time lecturing. Just type up class notes and tell the students to read them. Why waste 18 hours a week in classes? Just schedule office hours. [/Sarcasm]
If you've ever taught upper level mathematics, you'd understand the utility of writing on the board. It's so that students can have time to digest what you said. There are other reasons to write on the board, as well.
Some professors don't do anything to make it interactive (eg: ask questions), and aren't very receptive or useful to questions being asked, causing those classes to essentially become spectator sports.
I never claimed that there aren't bad professors. My point is that students falling asleep in the class is as often a "student" problem as it is a "professor" problem.
Whether technology can be useful depends entirely on the course and what it's trying to teach. I've taken courses that were taught very well with Powerpoint. Yet those same courses could be taught as well using traditional means. Some courses would really suck with Powerpoint, while yet others could benefit.
Wikis? Blogs? Again: Maybe. Depends on the course.
One thing I always hate about these discussions is the issue of students getting bored/falling asleep is always brought up. There are two sides to the coin: Yes, the professor should make all attempts to make the class interesting. And yes, the student should be flexible enough to learn from different styles. If he/she is falling asleep, it's not a given that the professor is to blame: Education is not a spectator sport.
More importantly, whether they fall asleep or not has virtually nothing to do with technology.
Finally: The article fails to mention the most important point: In today's (US) universities, professors have no incentive to become better educators, and are more interested in getting their next grant.
So long as the liberal arts fail to adapt to the scientific world-view, including accepting the importance of mathematical reasoning alongside poetry etc
And what liberal arts college encourages students to reject the scientific world view, might I ask?
You (and I suspect others) are confusing liberal arts majors with liberal arts colleges. The article didn't advocate going to a university and majoring in something liberal arts. They're advocating going to a liberal arts college.
The most successful liberal arts major you'll ever meet was most likely one of your liberal arts professors.
Complete BS.
1. Many successful people in the technical world (physics, engineering, etc) went to a liberal arts college. Few people know this, but almost all good liberal arts colleges have collaborations with other universities in case you want an engineering degree. You get your liberal arts degree, and spend 2 years getting your engineering degree at the other university (often a good one, like Columbia or Cornell). The physics Nobel Laureate in my last school started off with an undergrad degree in literature.
2. When I was at grad school, I met a number of fellow grad students who graduated from liberal arts colleges. With one exception, they all had a better education and better skills than their peers at the grad school. I'd have no qualms about offering them technical jobs provided they have some technical background (they all did). It'll remain a hypothetical since they all got far better jobs than I can ever offer them. They were top notch folks. And my other fellow grad students from Berkeley, Princeton, and the like? Well, a few of them were good...
Name one profession that is _not_ filled with petty politics, sucking up to superiors, back stabbing and arguing over parking spots?
The difference is only academics write a thick book about it.
I spent over a decade at university, and am now at a large industry firm (technical).
Without a doubt, the politics at the upper level (grad and above) at university is much higher. Profs don't work well at all with one another, compared with my company. Perks like parking, etc are much more valued by university professors. In fact, life in industry thus far has been far more egalitarian, fair, and congenial than life in academia was.
Having said all that - I do miss university life;-)
And stats is pretty useless, especially in light of the fact it exists mostly to provide the cover of math to people who wish numbers weren't being used against them.
Ignorance abounds. Statistics is used and needed far more than calculus is. You clearly didn't go far in your studies of statistics, or perhaps never learned it.
He's not rejecting the money per se. He's rejecting the award - not getting the money goes along with it.
I think you'd agree it would be silly for him to refuse the award and say, "I want the money".
What would obligate him to act is not the money, but the award. So he's rejecting the award.
Besides, I fail to see the logic. As an ordinary person, he's not obligated to correct the wrongs he sees in the mathematical community. Merely offering him an award doesn't obligate him. If he accepts, it does. Just like my offering you a position as head of the UN doesn't obligate you to enter global politics if you choose to refuse. You can't obligate someone merely by offering. The other party has to voluntarily accept.
It's strange without context. With context, it's not strange. This is not unusual behavior for principled people being asked to act against their principles.
He's rejecting it on principled grounds. Regardless of what you think about those principles, he simply can't do this just for short term charity.
When he rejected the Field's medal, he simply said to the effect of, "If I take the money, I'd be obligated to correct the wrongs I see, otherwise I'd be a hypocrite. I don't want to be the one making that crusade, so I have to reject the money." (Remember the scene in Thank You For Not Smoking?) It's a simple, logical response. He may be a recluse and all, but there's nothing strange about his refusal to take the money.
I'm going to be flamed for this, but the numbers for graduates from my university (UIUC) aren't that far off.
For 2008-2009:
Bachelor's: $26,000-100,000 with a mean of $72,286 (NACE average: $58,419). MS: $30,000-96,000 with a mean of $75,125 (looks like getting an MS is not that helpful!) NACE average: $70,625 PhD: $65,000-104,000 with a mean of $90,466 (NACE average: $83,000)
Now, the university is ranked about 5th in the country for CS.
It seems that employers really value the BS and PhD degrees from there, but not so much the MS.
All the salaries except the NACE ones are self reported - the university isn't doing any inflation or guesstimates. It could be that people with low salaries don't report, but the numbers for MS and PhD coincide with what I heard personally from graduates.
And for everyone whining about H-1, etc - the salaries obtained by foreign students here were pretty much the same as those offered to Americans. They all were, though, fairly smart folks.
I don't know, but if I make the effort to learn a foreign language and I end up doing better than a native speaker, I have every right to put their laziness in their faces.
Fun fact: Exercising your rights does not exclude you from being a jerk because you exercised them.
At best, they're still learning and will fix "there lose effect". At worst, they'll pay the price for their stupidity. Repeatedly.
Stupidity: The act of equating poor English with stupidity.
You mean like the numerous Americans and English who mock immigrants who don't speak perfect English even though the immigrant knows two or three languages and the native English speaker can only (if lucky) manage one?
Wow. Take one exaggerated claim and add another one to it. What you state is really, really rare IME. Most of the people I've come across who have poked fun at other people's English are foreigners/immigrants who live in the US. I rarely hear a US born individual disparage other people's foibles in the English language.
Once you are familiar with the GTD method, you may start looking for some GTD specific tool
A warning especially for the Slashdot crowd: GTD will make you itch and itch for optimizing your GTD workflow. Resist the temptation, no matter how strong the itch. Too many technical oriented folks keep trying to improve their software GTD tools (lots of scripts, gluing stuff together, writing your own GTD app for scratch, etc), and the end result is they get little done, because they keep either avoiding GTD until they build the optimal solution (almost never), or they waste too much time constructing that solution rather than, you know, getting things done.
Just start with some GTD tool out there, start "getting stuff done", and after you get used to it, slowly work through the process of improving it. I use Tracks, which runs on Ruby on Rails and your browser + AJAX is the interface. I'm now thinking of switching to an Org mode solution. Tracks is even missing stuff that is "important" in GTD (no someday/maybe, no agendas, no way to have "waiting for", etc). But it's good enough to get started.
Lots of software for GTD out there now. Don't try to evaluate all (or even most). My only advice when picking one is that you pick one that makes it easy for you to transfer all your data from that tool to another one you may choose to switch to later on. Although even that may not be a biggie: When switching to Org mode on a test basis, it wasn't too much work just to copy all the stuff manually.
Another reason to do the above is that almost no one's GTD workflow mirrors the one in the book perfectly. You'll find that deviating a bit from it in certain ways will make you work better. You won't know what your ideal workflow is until you've been trying GTD for a while (and begin to notice headaches created by whatever tools you're using). So if you insist on starting off by building your own tool, you'll soon realize that your tool has irritating flaws, and you'll have to recode a lot of things.
Oh, and get that filing cabinet. It's unbelievably handy even if you don't follow GTD. If you want to save money, you may find a good enough one in a garage sale. I got mine from a store run by Habitat for Humanity.
I would claim that the ratio of a circle to its diameter is independent of being observed, or indeed there being an observer.
What's a circle? What's a diameter? What's a ratio? Who defines these?
And while we're at it, you do realize that the universe is non-Euclidean? So how do we view the results from Euclidean geometry, given that reality is not Euclidean?
Radioactive decay follows an exponential decay curve. It will have done so long before anyone could add, let alone handle irrational numbers like e.
That some mathematics models the real world does not mean most of mathematics is not invented. It need not be a binary scenario. What would you say of mathematical constructs that have no analogs in nature (but that could be depicted if desired)?
Your arguments are along the lines of "The bicycle was not invented, because the laws of the universe would always have allowed a bicycle to work and exist."
You don't hang around mathematicians, do you? Go play with a number theorist and you'll realize how wrong you are.
It's certainly true that some mathematicians are motivated by modeling the world. But many, and perhaps most, aren't. They'll freely construct mathematical objects that have little basis in the physical world.
Slashdot Mirror
When it comes to college level stuff, mathematics has more free books available online than any other discipline.
Yet, most universities use either James Stewart or one other book for calculus.
Why? I really don't know. I asked a math grad student friend of mine, and he said it ultimately boiled down to politics: Calculus level textbooks are decided by a committee, and the professor teaching it only has some say - and it's hard to convince a committee. As hundreds of students will take calculus every semester, they need the warm and fuzzy feeling an established textbook gives them.
To be fair, the mathematics departments are also perhaps the most likely to use free/cheap textbooks (compared to sciences and engineering). This usually happens for upper division courses, though.
If you're spending half the lecture writing something on the board that could very well be flashed up there in an instant using PowerPoint or similar, you're wasting the students time.
Sure. And if you can put it on a Powerpoint, then you're wasting time lecturing. Just type up class notes and tell the students to read them. Why waste 18 hours a week in classes? Just schedule office hours.
[/Sarcasm]
If you've ever taught upper level mathematics, you'd understand the utility of writing on the board. It's so that students can have time to digest what you said. There are other reasons to write on the board, as well.
Some professors don't do anything to make it interactive (eg: ask questions), and aren't very receptive or useful to questions being asked, causing those classes to essentially become spectator sports.
I never claimed that there aren't bad professors. My point is that students falling asleep in the class is as often a "student" problem as it is a "professor" problem.
Whether technology can be useful depends entirely on the course and what it's trying to teach. I've taken courses that were taught very well with Powerpoint. Yet those same courses could be taught as well using traditional means. Some courses would really suck with Powerpoint, while yet others could benefit.
Wikis? Blogs? Again: Maybe. Depends on the course.
One thing I always hate about these discussions is the issue of students getting bored/falling asleep is always brought up. There are two sides to the coin: Yes, the professor should make all attempts to make the class interesting. And yes, the student should be flexible enough to learn from different styles. If he/she is falling asleep, it's not a given that the professor is to blame: Education is not a spectator sport.
More importantly, whether they fall asleep or not has virtually nothing to do with technology.
Finally: The article fails to mention the most important point: In today's (US) universities, professors have no incentive to become better educators, and are more interested in getting their next grant.
So long as the liberal arts fail to adapt to the scientific world-view, including accepting the importance of mathematical reasoning alongside poetry etc
And what liberal arts college encourages students to reject the scientific world view, might I ask?
You (and I suspect others) are confusing liberal arts majors with liberal arts colleges. The article didn't advocate going to a university and majoring in something liberal arts. They're advocating going to a liberal arts college.
The most successful liberal arts major you'll ever meet was most likely one of your liberal arts professors.
Complete BS.
1. Many successful people in the technical world (physics, engineering, etc) went to a liberal arts college. Few people know this, but almost all good liberal arts colleges have collaborations with other universities in case you want an engineering degree. You get your liberal arts degree, and spend 2 years getting your engineering degree at the other university (often a good one, like Columbia or Cornell). The physics Nobel Laureate in my last school started off with an undergrad degree in literature.
2. When I was at grad school, I met a number of fellow grad students who graduated from liberal arts colleges. With one exception, they all had a better education and better skills than their peers at the grad school. I'd have no qualms about offering them technical jobs provided they have some technical background (they all did). It'll remain a hypothetical since they all got far better jobs than I can ever offer them. They were top notch folks. And my other fellow grad students from Berkeley, Princeton, and the like? Well, a few of them were good...
Name one profession that is _not_ filled with petty politics, sucking up to superiors, back stabbing and arguing over parking spots?
The difference is only academics write a thick book about it.
I spent over a decade at university, and am now at a large industry firm (technical).
Without a doubt, the politics at the upper level (grad and above) at university is much higher. Profs don't work well at all with one another, compared with my company. Perks like parking, etc are much more valued by university professors. In fact, life in industry thus far has been far more egalitarian, fair, and congenial than life in academia was.
Having said all that - I do miss university life ;-)
It's not our religion.
You're saying it's so far beneath you to be your religion? Elitist bastard!
And stats is pretty useless, especially in light of the fact it exists mostly to provide the cover of math to people who wish numbers weren't being used against them.
Ignorance abounds. Statistics is used and needed far more than calculus is. You clearly didn't go far in your studies of statistics, or perhaps never learned it.
He's not rejecting the money per se. He's rejecting the award - not getting the money goes along with it.
I think you'd agree it would be silly for him to refuse the award and say, "I want the money".
What would obligate him to act is not the money, but the award. So he's rejecting the award.
Besides, I fail to see the logic. As an ordinary person, he's not obligated to correct the wrongs he sees in the mathematical community. Merely offering him an award doesn't obligate him. If he accepts, it does. Just like my offering you a position as head of the UN doesn't obligate you to enter global politics if you choose to refuse. You can't obligate someone merely by offering. The other party has to voluntarily accept.
It's strange without context. With context, it's not strange. This is not unusual behavior for principled people being asked to act against their principles.
He's rejecting it on principled grounds. Regardless of what you think about those principles, he simply can't do this just for short term charity.
When he rejected the Field's medal, he simply said to the effect of, "If I take the money, I'd be obligated to correct the wrongs I see, otherwise I'd be a hypocrite. I don't want to be the one making that crusade, so I have to reject the money." (Remember the scene in Thank You For Not Smoking?) It's a simple, logical response. He may be a recluse and all, but there's nothing strange about his refusal to take the money.
Despite the referral link, I can confirm that Webfaction is first rate. Especially if you want to do Django.
I believe Civ IV solved this, didn't it?
In any case, depending on the tank, it is still theoretically possible...
Don't forget Creative Computing!
Fuck you.
This statement is grammatically invalid. I refer you to the portion of the article that discusses sentence fragments.
I'm going to be flamed for this, but the numbers for graduates from my university (UIUC) aren't that far off.
For 2008-2009:
Bachelor's: $26,000-100,000 with a mean of $72,286 (NACE average: $58,419).
MS: $30,000-96,000 with a mean of $75,125 (looks like getting an MS is not that helpful!) NACE average: $70,625
PhD: $65,000-104,000 with a mean of $90,466 (NACE average: $83,000)
Now, the university is ranked about 5th in the country for CS.
It seems that employers really value the BS and PhD degrees from there, but not so much the MS.
All the salaries except the NACE ones are self reported - the university isn't doing any inflation or guesstimates. It could be that people with low salaries don't report, but the numbers for MS and PhD coincide with what I heard personally from graduates.
And for everyone whining about H-1, etc - the salaries obtained by foreign students here were pretty much the same as those offered to Americans. They all were, though, fairly smart folks.
I don't know, but if I make the effort to learn a foreign language and I end up doing better than a native speaker, I have every right to put their laziness in their faces.
Fun fact: Exercising your rights does not exclude you from being a jerk because you exercised them.
At best, they're still learning and will fix "there lose effect". At worst, they'll pay the price for their stupidity. Repeatedly.
Stupidity: The act of equating poor English with stupidity.
You mean like the numerous Americans and English who mock immigrants who don't speak perfect English even though the immigrant knows two or three languages and the native English speaker can only (if lucky) manage one?
Wow. Take one exaggerated claim and add another one to it. What you state is really, really rare IME. Most of the people I've come across who have poked fun at other people's English are foreigners/immigrants who live in the US. I rarely hear a US born individual disparage other people's foibles in the English language.
Once you are familiar with the GTD method, you may start looking for some GTD specific tool
A warning especially for the Slashdot crowd: GTD will make you itch and itch for optimizing your GTD workflow. Resist the temptation, no matter how strong the itch. Too many technical oriented folks keep trying to improve their software GTD tools (lots of scripts, gluing stuff together, writing your own GTD app for scratch, etc), and the end result is they get little done, because they keep either avoiding GTD until they build the optimal solution (almost never), or they waste too much time constructing that solution rather than, you know, getting things done.
Just start with some GTD tool out there, start "getting stuff done", and after you get used to it, slowly work through the process of improving it. I use Tracks, which runs on Ruby on Rails and your browser + AJAX is the interface. I'm now thinking of switching to an Org mode solution. Tracks is even missing stuff that is "important" in GTD (no someday/maybe, no agendas, no way to have "waiting for", etc). But it's good enough to get started.
Lots of software for GTD out there now. Don't try to evaluate all (or even most). My only advice when picking one is that you pick one that makes it easy for you to transfer all your data from that tool to another one you may choose to switch to later on. Although even that may not be a biggie: When switching to Org mode on a test basis, it wasn't too much work just to copy all the stuff manually.
Another reason to do the above is that almost no one's GTD workflow mirrors the one in the book perfectly. You'll find that deviating a bit from it in certain ways will make you work better. You won't know what your ideal workflow is until you've been trying GTD for a while (and begin to notice headaches created by whatever tools you're using). So if you insist on starting off by building your own tool, you'll soon realize that your tool has irritating flaws, and you'll have to recode a lot of things.
Oh, and get that filing cabinet. It's unbelievably handy even if you don't follow GTD. If you want to save money, you may find a good enough one in a garage sale. I got mine from a store run by Habitat for Humanity.
Do you have any proof these constructs don't exist?
Can you prove that there aren't unicorn like creatures in one of the craters of the moon?
Your point?
I would claim that the ratio of a circle to its diameter is independent of being observed, or indeed there being an observer.
What's a circle? What's a diameter? What's a ratio? Who defines these?
And while we're at it, you do realize that the universe is non-Euclidean? So how do we view the results from Euclidean geometry, given that reality is not Euclidean?
Radioactive decay follows an exponential decay curve. It will have done so long before anyone could add, let alone handle irrational numbers like e.
That some mathematics models the real world does not mean most of mathematics is not invented. It need not be a binary scenario. What would you say of mathematical constructs that have no analogs in nature (but that could be depicted if desired)?
Your arguments are along the lines of "The bicycle was not invented, because the laws of the universe would always have allowed a bicycle to work and exist."
We chose our axioms to resemble what we observe.
You don't hang around mathematicians, do you? Go play with a number theorist and you'll realize how wrong you are.
It's certainly true that some mathematicians are motivated by modeling the world. But many, and perhaps most, aren't. They'll freely construct mathematical objects that have little basis in the physical world.
Asimov's robot stories were pretty groundbreaking when they were written, but are now thoroughly dated. The dude didn't know jack about AI.
So you're saying that when one writes an SF story, he should write it so that it conforms to technology merely decades in the future?
It's called a "free market," you should look it up.
As is paying the author not to write it. You should look it up.