Mathematical proofs are original (and creative) work. Sure, they follow rules and are verifiable by other mathematicians, but Wikipedia does not allow people to publish original research.
If the proof is published in a referenced work, then I can see the justification for publishing an excerpt. However, if Wikipedia is to maintain its current policy toward publication of original research, then it must not permit the inclusion of proofs that are not referenced from another publication.
For some people, a smaller battery capacity would be made up for by the potential of fully recharging it in under a minute.
There's already a power screwdriver that does this...I don't recall the brand. It may have less capacity than a Li-ion or NiMH driver, but you can recharge from empty to full in 20 seconds.
I think the problem is mainly that people who study the "string hypothesis" are theoreticians and applied mathematicians. They generally refer to themselves (and are referred to by others) as "theorists", so naturally when they focused on strings they acquired the moniker "string theorists".
Well, "obviously" a string theorist must study "string theory", right? And then that looked sexier on grant and job applications, and yet another bastardization of the word "theory" was born.
I suppose it's one example of a mechanism by which word meanings get screwed up.
By 2015, which independant company do you suppose will be ready to buy the ISS (or buy out NASA's share)?
Perhaps one of the budding private spacefaring entities will step in at that point. Maybe an announcement like this is a way to quietly urge them in that direction...
I believe the thought is that the previous attempts to provide infrastructure, hospitals and contraception have done little to impact the overall situation in Africa.
This attempt attempts to provide access to education and communication, with the thought that a better educated populace that has access to communication and technology would be able to improve their own quality of life.
Kind of like the "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" adage. Plus, giving a community contraception and hospitals are really consumables. Education, once given, can't be taken away.
I think you significantly misinterpret the poster's intention.
There is a great push to integrate cross-curricular activities to strengthen the connections between the various academic subjects.
The purpose is to strengthen the teaching of each of the subjects, not to weaken the teaching of one in favor of another.
You also seem to be confusing the teaching of literature with the teaching of composition. Composition cannot stand alone--students must write about SOMETHING. If, in choosing the topics about which the students write, a teacher chooses topics to promote academic interest in another core area, where is the harm?
When teaching 9th grade physics, I look for as many opportunities to include reading and writing in the curriculum as possible. Biographies and history are important to read, and I find that having students write research papers (of the short, reasonable 9th grade kind) is good exercise.
It is laudable that you want to include such cross-curricular activities in your language arts classes. Perhaps you can collaborate with the science faculty to do a joint activity--such as an experiment or research project with a magazine/journal-like writeup?
What makes you think that any run-of-the-mill system administrators have anything significant to do with academic supercomputing research?
The closest you're going to get to this kind of computer is running a network drop. The professor (and student) built the computer, I seriously doubt that he's going to call you because X won't load at his preferred resolution.
Re:When Professionals in the Hard Sciences...
on
Failing Our Geniuses
·
· Score: 1
Occasionally you do. I'm one of the ones who found teaching was something for which I have a knack, and I found that out while in grad school for an MS in physics.
As a consequence I decided to go through one of the alternative license programs and teach high school physics. I may decide to jump back into the higher ed arena again in the future, and in fact I am continually researching ph.d. programs in physics and physics education.
Financially, it's not all that much different from the starting salary in a variety of scientific positions I considered as well. Particularly if you factor in that you have only a ~9.5 month contract.
The older generation (boomers) had parents who sacrificed, sometimes severely, to provide for their childrens' educations. State schools were actually state funded, because having a well-educated populace is a tremendous social and economic benefit to the state.
That same older generation (boomers) now works to provide entitlements to itself, sacrificing funding for education and other programs that benefit younger generations. That same generation had fewer children than their parents, reducing the number of new workers coming into the population as they aged. Now that generation is squeezing younger generations to try and maintain the lifestyle that boomers became accustomed to over the past forty years, rather than sacrificing as their parents did to help younger generations achieve high goals.
So, if the younger generations are developing an entitlement mentality, one need only look at the boomer generation to determine where that entitlement mentality is coming from.
On the other hand, many colleges either provide Microsoft Office for a very low media fee, or for a very low student discount price.
So perhaps Wal Mart is figuring that students will just buy the cheap PC and then get the $12 version of MS Office from school. They probably include OOo as the default just to have something to provide. "Use this until you get MS Office from school..."
I was bored and actually READ the licensing information (well, most of it) when I first booted my new Toshiba laptop that came with Vista Home Premium.
A section in that document specifically stated that THIS license may also be used to run a previous version of Windows, and I think it specifically stated Windows XP and Windows 2000.
I remember thinking "Well, that's nice to know," but so far have not run into any major Vista problems to worry about.
Unfortunately, many universities have treated their physics departments' as nothing more than "support departments" supporting OTHER departments with large numbers of majors who just need to take Physics 1, 2, and Modern, and maybe an advanced lab.
That's "enough" to produce pre-med students, chemistry majors, and biology majors. And if the lab equipment is 20 years old (or, more common than we'd like to think, 50-80 years old), what does it matter? It's just a class for other people to "get out of the way" on the way to a degree in chem/bio/engineering. This is not an attitude I share, but it is one I have seen.
Unfortunately, that attitude is too common, and does severe damage to our physics infrastructure--including people. If one goes to Podunk Backwoods University and majors in biology, one is usually rather well-prepared for graduate school and can expect to do well with adequate effort. You'll have had experiences in undergrad that include research with professors, modern topics, and maybe even some publication. A physics major at PBU probably won't have had nearly the level of research experience and classes in modern topics as the bio major will have had in his/her area, and may then be ill-prepared for any decent graduate school.
This leads to physics grad schools mainly getting grad students from other universities with major physics grad programs and from foreign universities, and plenty of would-be physics majors changing to a major with more support.
I don't know if this is the same way in other countries; I rather hope not.
It's been way more reliable for me than my neighbors' cable internet. Sure, their highest burst download speeds are better than my paltry 3 meg connection, but I have that 3 meg connection with very little variation day and night. Their cable connection slows down noticeably after school and in the evenings--when most of us are using the net. Our DSL does not slow in any detectable way.
Cable still has a stronghold here (semi-rural Kansas) due to the number of people out of reach of the DSL service area, but still within cable service.
I just don't see DSL as dead, or even threatened. Not around here, anyway.
Give it a rest. The various state Universities in Kansas had nothing to do with the state School Board's shenanigans. Even most of the private colleges and universities were of the same opinion (some of the smaller heavily religious institutions might not have been).
We were as aghast at the issue as anyone else, no one I know of at the Universities supported the School Board's position, and we're glad that the offending (and offensive) board members have been ousted.
LaTeX is still used extensively in mathematics and physics journals.
The only physics journal I can think of that doesn't accept (and even prefer) LaTeX documents is The Physics Teacher, probably because many physics teachers aren't degreed physicists and wouldn't have any idea what LaTeX was.
This is really fantastic! I've done some academic work in geospatial analysis, and finding good data is always the biggest challenge--especially on a tight budget.
It won't always be perfectly aligned with the project objectives, but to have it easily available and pre-processed (ortho-rectified, with metadata) will help with many projects.
In the United States, World War II was looming in July 1941. Many countries were involved, Germany was on the move, the Pacific was looking to heat up, and here in the U.S. there was much debate between isolationists and non-isolationists about our potential involvement.
We weren't directly involved yet, so for us it did still LOOM in 1941. I expect someone in Russia would describe it much differently, with different dates. Similarly, Russians call it something like the "Great Patriotic War" rather than "World War II".
It's the old "three blind men describe an elephant" problem.
I really, really like Maxima. I realize it's not fully a Mathematica clone, but it is so very useful. I am looking to implement its use in my upper level physics classroom next year, along with either FreeMat or Octave. (I was stuck on Matlab and Maple for grad school work, so it's what I know.)
I also love MuPad Light, but unfortunately the company took it completely commercial, eliminated the free student/educator/personal license, and hosed all of their original developers. Luckily, I archived the install file, and I kept my key. I've made it a project to collect and evaluate as much f/os math and science software as I can find, as I never know what might be useful for a student on a project. (Or for me...)
I agree. I, also, am an alum from before her reign.
I hate to be pedantic, but "alum" is an aluminum potassium sulfate (or a group of several similar aluminum based compounds).
Alumnus is the singular form for a male graduate or attendee. "I am an alumnus of XYZ University."
Alumna is the female singular form. "She is an alumna of XYZ university."
Alumni is the male plural, also used as mixed-group plural. "We are having a gathering of alumni during homecoming week."
Alumnae is the female plural, still used when referring to a group of exclusively female graduates or attendees. "There will be a gathering of Bryn Mawr alumnae after the ceremony."
I see the incorrect use of "alum" as a catch-all substitute, even in supposedly prestigious alumni magazines. It causes me to cringe every time. However, it is amusing to think of the "alums of Harvard," a field full of amorphous blobs of a translucent white substance wearing mortar boards.
Slashdot Mirror
Mathematical proofs are original (and creative) work. Sure, they follow rules and are verifiable by other mathematicians, but Wikipedia does not allow people to publish original research.
If the proof is published in a referenced work, then I can see the justification for publishing an excerpt. However, if Wikipedia is to maintain its current policy toward publication of original research, then it must not permit the inclusion of proofs that are not referenced from another publication.
For some people, a smaller battery capacity would be made up for by the potential of fully recharging it in under a minute.
There's already a power screwdriver that does this...I don't recall the brand. It may have less capacity than a Li-ion or NiMH driver, but you can recharge from empty to full in 20 seconds.
I think the problem is mainly that people who study the "string hypothesis" are theoreticians and applied mathematicians. They generally refer to themselves (and are referred to by others) as "theorists", so naturally when they focused on strings they acquired the moniker "string theorists".
Well, "obviously" a string theorist must study "string theory", right? And then that looked sexier on grant and job applications, and yet another bastardization of the word "theory" was born.
I suppose it's one example of a mechanism by which word meanings get screwed up.
I HAD/HAVE THAT. I now must root through my parent's basement.
By 2015, which independant company do you suppose will be ready to buy the ISS (or buy out NASA's share)?
Perhaps one of the budding private spacefaring entities will step in at that point. Maybe an announcement like this is a way to quietly urge them in that direction...
With a master's and a couple of years teaching experience, I'm also planning to apply.
I always thought I'd wait until I had a Ph.D....but this looks like as good a chance as any!
I believe the thought is that the previous attempts to provide infrastructure, hospitals and contraception have done little to impact the overall situation in Africa.
This attempt attempts to provide access to education and communication, with the thought that a better educated populace that has access to communication and technology would be able to improve their own quality of life.
Kind of like the "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" adage. Plus, giving a community contraception and hospitals are really consumables. Education, once given, can't be taken away.
I think you significantly misinterpret the poster's intention.
There is a great push to integrate cross-curricular activities to strengthen the connections between the various academic subjects.
The purpose is to strengthen the teaching of each of the subjects, not to weaken the teaching of one in favor of another.
You also seem to be confusing the teaching of literature with the teaching of composition. Composition cannot stand alone--students must write about SOMETHING. If, in choosing the topics about which the students write, a teacher chooses topics to promote academic interest in another core area, where is the harm?
When teaching 9th grade physics, I look for as many opportunities to include reading and writing in the curriculum as possible. Biographies and history are important to read, and I find that having students write research papers (of the short, reasonable 9th grade kind) is good exercise.
It is laudable that you want to include such cross-curricular activities in your language arts classes. Perhaps you can collaborate with the science faculty to do a joint activity--such as an experiment or research project with a magazine/journal-like writeup?
The streets aren't made darker by using street lamps that don't waste light to the sides or sky.
My car has headlights, and I manage to drive on unlit streets just fine.
Besides, this isn't about ELIMINATING exterior lighting, it is about designing lighting solutions to minimize wasted light that pollutes the sky.
Wasted light is wasted energy. There is no drawback to this idea.
What makes you think that any run-of-the-mill system administrators have anything significant to do with academic supercomputing research?
The closest you're going to get to this kind of computer is running a network drop. The professor (and student) built the computer, I seriously doubt that he's going to call you because X won't load at his preferred resolution.
Occasionally you do. I'm one of the ones who found teaching was something for which I have a knack, and I found that out while in grad school for an MS in physics.
As a consequence I decided to go through one of the alternative license programs and teach high school physics. I may decide to jump back into the higher ed arena again in the future, and in fact I am continually researching ph.d. programs in physics and physics education.
Financially, it's not all that much different from the starting salary in a variety of scientific positions I considered as well. Particularly if you factor in that you have only a ~9.5 month contract.
The older generation (boomers) had parents who sacrificed, sometimes severely, to provide for their childrens' educations. State schools were actually state funded, because having a well-educated populace is a tremendous social and economic benefit to the state.
That same older generation (boomers) now works to provide entitlements to itself, sacrificing funding for education and other programs that benefit younger generations. That same generation had fewer children than their parents, reducing the number of new workers coming into the population as they aged. Now that generation is squeezing younger generations to try and maintain the lifestyle that boomers became accustomed to over the past forty years, rather than sacrificing as their parents did to help younger generations achieve high goals.
So, if the younger generations are developing an entitlement mentality, one need only look at the boomer generation to determine where that entitlement mentality is coming from.
On the other hand, many colleges either provide Microsoft Office for a very low media fee, or for a very low student discount price.
So perhaps Wal Mart is figuring that students will just buy the cheap PC and then get the $12 version of MS Office from school. They probably include OOo as the default just to have something to provide. "Use this until you get MS Office from school..."
Just guessing.
I was bored and actually READ the licensing information (well, most of it) when I first booted my new Toshiba laptop that came with Vista Home Premium.
A section in that document specifically stated that THIS license may also be used to run a previous version of Windows, and I think it specifically stated Windows XP and Windows 2000.
I remember thinking "Well, that's nice to know," but so far have not run into any major Vista problems to worry about.
Unfortunately, many universities have treated their physics departments' as nothing more than "support departments" supporting OTHER departments with large numbers of majors who just need to take Physics 1, 2, and Modern, and maybe an advanced lab.
That's "enough" to produce pre-med students, chemistry majors, and biology majors. And if the lab equipment is 20 years old (or, more common than we'd like to think, 50-80 years old), what does it matter? It's just a class for other people to "get out of the way" on the way to a degree in chem/bio/engineering. This is not an attitude I share, but it is one I have seen.
Unfortunately, that attitude is too common, and does severe damage to our physics infrastructure--including people. If one goes to Podunk Backwoods University and majors in biology, one is usually rather well-prepared for graduate school and can expect to do well with adequate effort. You'll have had experiences in undergrad that include research with professors, modern topics, and maybe even some publication. A physics major at PBU probably won't have had nearly the level of research experience and classes in modern topics as the bio major will have had in his/her area, and may then be ill-prepared for any decent graduate school.
This leads to physics grad schools mainly getting grad students from other universities with major physics grad programs and from foreign universities, and plenty of would-be physics majors changing to a major with more support.
I don't know if this is the same way in other countries; I rather hope not.
People have given up on DSL?
It's been way more reliable for me than my neighbors' cable internet. Sure, their highest burst download speeds are better than my paltry 3 meg connection, but I have that 3 meg connection with very little variation day and night. Their cable connection slows down noticeably after school and in the evenings--when most of us are using the net. Our DSL does not slow in any detectable way.
Cable still has a stronghold here (semi-rural Kansas) due to the number of people out of reach of the DSL service area, but still within cable service.
I just don't see DSL as dead, or even threatened. Not around here, anyway.
Give it a rest. The various state Universities in Kansas had nothing to do with the state School Board's shenanigans. Even most of the private colleges and universities were of the same opinion (some of the smaller heavily religious institutions might not have been).
We were as aghast at the issue as anyone else, no one I know of at the Universities supported the School Board's position, and we're glad that the offending (and offensive) board members have been ousted.
LaTeX is still used extensively in mathematics and physics journals.
The only physics journal I can think of that doesn't accept (and even prefer) LaTeX documents is The Physics Teacher, probably because many physics teachers aren't degreed physicists and wouldn't have any idea what LaTeX was.
This is really fantastic! I've done some academic work in geospatial analysis, and finding good data is always the biggest challenge--especially on a tight budget.
It won't always be perfectly aligned with the project objectives, but to have it easily available and pre-processed (ortho-rectified, with metadata) will help with many projects.
In the United States, World War II was looming in July 1941. Many countries were involved, Germany was on the move, the Pacific was looking to heat up, and here in the U.S. there was much debate between isolationists and non-isolationists about our potential involvement.
We weren't directly involved yet, so for us it did still LOOM in 1941. I expect someone in Russia would describe it much differently, with different dates. Similarly, Russians call it something like the "Great Patriotic War" rather than "World War II".
It's the old "three blind men describe an elephant" problem.
If you're referring to nine year old intelligence images, you might as well give them maps of Kansas and label them "Afghanistan".
Nine year old data, unless it is part of a "then and now" data set or some specific study about historical trends, is useless.
I really, really like Maxima. I realize it's not fully a Mathematica clone, but it is so very useful. I am looking to implement its use in my upper level physics classroom next year, along with either FreeMat or Octave. (I was stuck on Matlab and Maple for grad school work, so it's what I know.)
I also love MuPad Light, but unfortunately the company took it completely commercial, eliminated the free student/educator/personal license, and hosed all of their original developers. Luckily, I archived the install file, and I kept my key. I've made it a project to collect and evaluate as much f/os math and science software as I can find, as I never know what might be useful for a student on a project. (Or for me...)
I agree. I, also, am an alum from before her reign.
I hate to be pedantic, but "alum" is an aluminum potassium sulfate (or a group of several similar aluminum based compounds).
Alumnus is the singular form for a male graduate or attendee. "I am an alumnus of XYZ University."
Alumna is the female singular form. "She is an alumna of XYZ university."
Alumni is the male plural, also used as mixed-group plural. "We are having a gathering of alumni during homecoming week."
Alumnae is the female plural, still used when referring to a group of exclusively female graduates or attendees. "There will be a gathering of Bryn Mawr alumnae after the ceremony."
I see the incorrect use of "alum" as a catch-all substitute, even in supposedly prestigious alumni magazines. It causes me to cringe every time. However, it is amusing to think of the "alums of Harvard," a field full of amorphous blobs of a translucent white substance wearing mortar boards.