Oh, please. The only way to figure it out for themselves is to purchase one of everything and test it. Not too many people have the time and financial resources to do that. So, they have to take someone's word for it. Now, is the source of their information honest and reliable? Or is it biased? Not every source of information is forthcoming with their motives or ties to corporate interests.
You know, I will blame the marketing and slick advertising. It was designed to play to people's weaknesses, much as propaganda shapes public opinion. Face it: almost all media is owned by a handful of corporations that want us to buy their crap. The only recourse is education --- an increasingly watered down, one-sided education provided by the public schools. And the corporate drivel has infiltrated there too. So, no, the consumers aren't at fault, they are behaving the way they were programmed to --- by market forces and a weak, greedy government.
Yet, a sniper goes in at the last possible moment and tries to guess the maximum acceptable bids of the current participants and bids the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM NECESSARY TO WIN
False --- the sniper plays by the same rules as everyone else. I put in the maximum I'm willing to pay. I just do it within 10 seconds of the auction closing. Bidding any lower would be foolish since I'm not going to get a second chance on that auction.
Neither ever reveals their true maximum bid.
False --- snipers don't always win auctions. If they lose, their bid is revealed. The winners never reveal their true maximum bid: it could have been ten times the closing amount and no one else would ever know it. For that matter, people who enter bidding wars don't reveal their maximum bid (at least for a certain period of time).
Sounds like another case of sour grapes to me. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or go home.
How is sniping being an asshole? I'm under no obligation to fork over as much money as a seller is willing to take. Nor am I under any obligation to get into a bidding war with some fanatic to whom winning the auction (at any price) is more important than obtaining the item.
Sure ebay isn't a brick'n'mortar auction house, and it has a different set of rules. So what? In the real world, people don't always pay the asking price --- they are free to haggle in an attempt to bring the price down. Is that also being an asshole? That's the way the market works --- the seller wants to maximize the selling price, and the buyer wants to minimize it. You understand the framework. My advice: If you are a buyer intent on winning, put in a high bid, or snipe it yourself. If you are a seller, set a reserve price. If you don't like the game, don't play.
Heh heh. Insane indeed. Once I was looking for an OOP DVD. I had my eye on a copy, when the bidding got ridiculous. Person A sold it to person B for something like $140 US. So, I looked at the next copy coming up. That one also turned into a bidding war between person A and person B from the previous auction!!!! I don't remember which one of them won it, but it went for around $100. Tell me there wasn't something fishy going on there.
Personally, I avoid eBay like a plague. it's got sucker written all over it.
Well, that may be. But they stay in business for a reason. If I have something to sell, I can reach a larger market than I can locally. And when I'm looking for some uber rare item that it would take years and thousands of dollars in gasoline to find by scouring every used record store, book store, person's home, etc., ebay comes in very handy.
I've only been burned a couple of times (out of several hundred transactions) and then only for low value items.
My own personal strategies for a succesful transaction include:
1) Never bid on camcorders, computers, automobiles, or any other high dollar item.
2) Always do an extensive check of the seller's feedback.
3) Don't bid early or get involved in bidding wars. Snipe instead.
Another reason is that students tend to automatically trust any result that comes from a calculator without considering the process used to arrive at that answer. (3/4)*cos(45)=0.393991492 probably won't look wrong if you don't realize your calculator is using radians. Remembering instead that cos(45) is sqrt(2)/2 will save you from making a mistake and help you avoid decimals in your solution.
On the flip side of that coin, students may never come to learn what sqrt(14) is. When I was in high school, there were 4-place square root, cube root, and log tables in the back of the book. Now, when I teach college algebra, there are no tables in the back of the book, calculators are not allowed, and the department chair forbids me wasting my time teaching students how to extract roots manually. Nevertheless, they are expected to manipulate expressions involving square roots. How fucking retarded is that?
In my own experience in higher math, physics, and engineering classes, calculators were typically either banned or mostly unnecessary anyway. Professors mostly chose figures that would cancel out or were simple enough to calculate in your head. Indeed, having decimals or terms that didn't cancel was usually a good way to tell you're on the wrong track.
Preparing students for the real world where every answer to a math problem is an integer or square root of an integer, eh?
Wow, that brings back memories. I used a TI-something-or-other until I took P-Chem. Then I purchased an HP-48SX for... you guessed it... unit conversions. I even rolled my own with molarity, molality, etc. That little box saved me so much time on the exams (convert frequency of light to wavelength in meters, Joules, ergs, kilocalories, ad nauseum). Really good investment.
The TI-89 can do anything taught in a math course well into a 300 level course, possibly four hundred.
And a trained human can do anything taught in any math course. To effectively use the TI-89, you have to (a) understand the problem, (b) know how to translate it into a form manageable by the calculator, and (c) enter the problem in such a manner that a meaningful result is produced.
Punching the equation into the calculator and getting an answer *even if it is only a small part of the actual problem* reduces drastically your ability to spot an error in any given step in a larger calculation.
Absolutely. But guess what? Nearly ANY institution that relies on computers does exactly this, every day. Do you really believe that there are paper audits of every computation involving every bit of datum used by NASA, Microsoft, AT&T, the NSA, etc., and that those audits are actually examined for errors?
So, restated: knowing how to work a problem is not enough. If you are teaching your students that it is, I believe that you are doing them a major disservice. Being so familiar with the problem that one can spot a mistake right in the middle of it, while focused on actually solving the problem, with nothing more than a pencil and basic scientific calculator at hand.. that is knowing enough.
A couple of points here:
1) Familiarity with a problem is a luxury that sharp undergraduates may enjoy. But, in the real world, there isn't a great demand for people to solve mathematical problems that have already been solved --- those problems can be repeatedly solved by computers.
2) You tacitly assume that students/graduates know how to use a calculator to solve the problem. In my experience, this is rarely the case. I won't elaborate on this except to say that until you've taken a course in numerical analysis, you really don't know how use a calculator.
For anyone who is planning to be a physical scientist or an engineer, a powerful calculator is a handicap and will hurt you in the long run. The ease of solving problems in low level math courses will come to haunt you when you take a course that includes something like Laplace transforms or complex analysis.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know how calculators are intended to be used. As I have told many a math student in my classes, calculators are no substitute for understanding how to work a problem. They are labor saving devices... period. As far as being haunted in higher level courses, try numerical analysis sometime. As a student in that class, I had to write programs to solve differential equations, do numerical differentiation/integration, calculate eigenvalues/eigenvectors, and so on.
Furthermore, the dearth of American born and educated mathematicians, scientists, and engineers is ALSO a myth. We've got plenty of talent here. But, as with agriculture (and everything else) the employers want their employees to work for next to nothing.
First episode was great. Then, right as part 2 was to be released in the states on the DC, BAMM!!! It was delayed, and eventually released on the X-Box. The save file from part 1 was supposed to be used in part 2; but, alas, it was not to be. The franchise is now pretty much dead, although rumors persist that Shenmue 3 will be developed on yet another system.
Central Scrutinizer: This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER . . . You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker. And you're gonna have to pay for it! So give up, you haven't got a chance.
Several years ago I read something somewhere that started off --- in the manner of a PBS documentary: (major paraphrasing) Imagine there was a drug discovered in the wild. It was given to people and their symptoms were an increase in blood pressure, hyperactivity, shakes, (extensive list of effects, leading the reader to consider that outlawing the substance might be a good idea, considering that several substances were outlawed already).
Then, at the end: Surprise --- it's caffeine!
I don't remember the source. Does anyone have the source for this?
In 1977, when I was in fifth grade, I was into Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone, Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and Baum's Wizard of Oz series. I don't think any of those will ever be considered classic literature. Nevertheless, I kept turning the pages. In my junior year I discovered Lovecraft, to the horror of my English Lit teacher. I like the Potter books too. Tis a damned shame the title isn't Harry Potter and the Goat with a Thousand Young.
Do you really need to condition that upon the truth of anything I said? Psychiatry is pretty far removed from hard science. If you see me place a rock in my pocket, does it follow that the rock is in my pocket? You can claim so. But perhaps there is a hole in my pocket. Point being... if you cannot measure an effect, how do you know there is an effect at all?
The problem in America right now is that just as in any democracy, a bit more than half of the country agrees with the current government
I don't know if I'd go that far. Yes, many are taken in by the Machiavelli/Goebbel PR spin machine. But, I fear, many more just aren't bothered to give a shit. You see, our "leaders" have learned that when the people are starving don't say "Let them eat cake". Instead, join forces with corporations and placate them with McDonalds hamburgers and DVD's to take their minds off the fact that they will never have a slice of the pie.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't expect lawyers to understand an electronic data sheet, so why should a lawyer expect me to read legalese to understand what I'm agreeing to.
They don't --- they expect you to click away your rights or hire a lawyer. What are most people going to choose?
On the flip side, it also examines how the public often mis-perceives corporations as evil
It also demonstrated that corporations behave like and have all the characteristics of psychopaths. Are psychopaths evil?
Oh, please. The only way to figure it out for themselves is to purchase one of everything and test it. Not too many people have the time and financial resources to do that. So, they have to take someone's word for it. Now, is the source of their information honest and reliable? Or is it biased? Not every source of information is forthcoming with their motives or ties to corporate interests.
You know, I will blame the marketing and slick advertising. It was designed to play to people's weaknesses, much as propaganda shapes public opinion. Face it: almost all media is owned by a handful of corporations that want us to buy their crap. The only recourse is education --- an increasingly watered down, one-sided education provided by the public schools. And the corporate drivel has infiltrated there too. So, no, the consumers aren't at fault, they are behaving the way they were programmed to --- by market forces and a weak, greedy government.
Yet, a sniper goes in at the last possible moment and tries to guess the maximum acceptable bids of the current participants and bids the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM NECESSARY TO WIN
False --- the sniper plays by the same rules as everyone else. I put in the maximum I'm willing to pay. I just do it within 10 seconds of the auction closing. Bidding any lower would be foolish since I'm not going to get a second chance on that auction.
Neither ever reveals their true maximum bid.
False --- snipers don't always win auctions. If they lose, their bid is revealed. The winners never reveal their true maximum bid: it could have been ten times the closing amount and no one else would ever know it. For that matter, people who enter bidding wars don't reveal their maximum bid (at least for a certain period of time).
Sounds like another case of sour grapes to me. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or go home.
How is sniping being an asshole? I'm under no obligation to fork over as much money as a seller is willing to take. Nor am I under any obligation to get into a bidding war with some fanatic to whom winning the auction (at any price) is more important than obtaining the item.
Sure ebay isn't a brick'n'mortar auction house, and it has a different set of rules. So what? In the real world, people don't always pay the asking price --- they are free to haggle in an attempt to bring the price down. Is that also being an asshole? That's the way the market works --- the seller wants to maximize the selling price, and the buyer wants to minimize it. You understand the framework. My advice: If you are a buyer intent on winning, put in a high bid, or snipe it yourself. If you are a seller, set a reserve price. If you don't like the game, don't play.
Heh heh. Insane indeed. Once I was looking for an OOP DVD. I had my eye on a copy, when the bidding got ridiculous. Person A sold it to person B for something like $140 US. So, I looked at the next copy coming up. That one also turned into a bidding war between person A and person B from the previous auction!!!! I don't remember which one of them won it, but it went for around $100. Tell me there wasn't something fishy going on there.
Besides, does anyone do anything other than sniping these days?
Yup. On most items I bid on, I see mainly early bidders and bidding wars. Newbies and auction addicts.
Personally, I avoid eBay like a plague. it's got sucker written all over it.
Well, that may be. But they stay in business for a reason. If I have something to sell, I can reach a larger market than I can locally. And when I'm looking for some uber rare item that it would take years and thousands of dollars in gasoline to find by scouring every used record store, book store, person's home, etc., ebay comes in very handy.
I've only been burned a couple of times (out of several hundred transactions) and then only for low value items.
My own personal strategies for a succesful transaction include:
1) Never bid on camcorders, computers, automobiles, or any other high dollar item.
2) Always do an extensive check of the seller's feedback.
3) Don't bid early or get involved in bidding wars. Snipe instead.
But once you learn how to ask the calculator, you stop doing that math. Then you start forgetting exactly how to do that math.
Bullshit. Ask Don Knuth if he's forgotten how to do his math.
Another reason is that students tend to automatically trust any result that comes from a calculator without considering the process used to arrive at that answer. (3/4)*cos(45)=0.393991492 probably won't look wrong if you don't realize your calculator is using radians. Remembering instead that cos(45) is sqrt(2)/2 will save you from making a mistake and help you avoid decimals in your solution.
On the flip side of that coin, students may never come to learn what sqrt(14) is. When I was in high school, there were 4-place square root, cube root, and log tables in the back of the book. Now, when I teach college algebra, there are no tables in the back of the book, calculators are not allowed, and the department chair forbids me wasting my time teaching students how to extract roots manually. Nevertheless, they are expected to manipulate expressions involving square roots. How fucking retarded is that?
In my own experience in higher math, physics, and engineering classes, calculators were typically either banned or mostly unnecessary anyway. Professors mostly chose figures that would cancel out or were simple enough to calculate in your head. Indeed, having decimals or terms that didn't cancel was usually a good way to tell you're on the wrong track.
Preparing students for the real world where every answer to a math problem is an integer or square root of an integer, eh?
Wow, that brings back memories. I used a TI-something-or-other until I took P-Chem. Then I purchased an HP-48SX for ... you guessed it ... unit conversions. I even rolled my own with molarity, molality, etc. That little box saved me so much time on the exams (convert frequency of light to wavelength in meters, Joules, ergs, kilocalories, ad nauseum). Really good investment.
The TI-89 can do anything taught in a math course well into a 300 level course, possibly four hundred.
And a trained human can do anything taught in any math course. To effectively use the TI-89, you have to (a) understand the problem, (b) know how to translate it into a form manageable by the calculator, and (c) enter the problem in such a manner that a meaningful result is produced.
Punching the equation into the calculator and getting an answer *even if it is only a small part of the actual problem* reduces drastically your ability to spot an error in any given step in a larger calculation.
Absolutely. But guess what? Nearly ANY institution that relies on computers does exactly this, every day. Do you really believe that there are paper audits of every computation involving every bit of datum used by NASA, Microsoft, AT&T, the NSA, etc., and that those audits are actually examined for errors?
So, restated: knowing how to work a problem is not enough. If you are teaching your students that it is, I believe that you are doing them a major disservice. Being so familiar with the problem that one can spot a mistake right in the middle of it, while focused on actually solving the problem, with nothing more than a pencil and basic scientific calculator at hand.. that is knowing enough.
A couple of points here:
1) Familiarity with a problem is a luxury that sharp undergraduates may enjoy. But, in the real world, there isn't a great demand for people to solve mathematical problems that have already been solved --- those problems can be repeatedly solved by computers.
2) You tacitly assume that students/graduates know how to use a calculator to solve the problem. In my experience, this is rarely the case. I won't elaborate on this except to say that until you've taken a course in numerical analysis, you really don't know how use a calculator.
For anyone who is planning to be a physical scientist or an engineer, a powerful calculator is a handicap and will hurt you in the long run. The ease of solving problems in low level math courses will come to haunt you when you take a course that includes something like Laplace transforms or complex analysis.
... period. As far as being haunted in higher level courses, try numerical analysis sometime. As a student in that class, I had to write programs to solve differential equations, do numerical differentiation/integration, calculate eigenvalues/eigenvectors, and so on.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know how calculators are intended to be used. As I have told many a math student in my classes, calculators are no substitute for understanding how to work a problem. They are labor saving devices
Clinton was never impeached.
... he was. He was not, however, removed from office.
Uhh, yes
Furthermore, the dearth of American born and educated mathematicians, scientists, and engineers is ALSO a myth. We've got plenty of talent here. But, as with agriculture (and everything else) the employers want their employees to work for next to nothing.
Really? 2 lbs of Botulin toxin is enough to kill every human being on the planet.
First episode was great. Then, right as part 2 was to be released in the states on the DC, BAMM!!! It was delayed, and eventually released on the X-Box. The save file from part 1 was supposed to be used in part 2; but, alas, it was not to be. The franchise is now pretty much dead, although rumors persist that Shenmue 3 will be developed on yet another system.
Never . . . Again.
Sy Borg: Plooking to hard on me-e-e-e-e . . .
Central Scrutinizer: This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER . . . You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker. And you're gonna have to pay for it! So give up, you haven't got a chance.
Several years ago I read something somewhere that started off --- in the manner of a PBS documentary: (major paraphrasing) Imagine there was a drug discovered in the wild. It was given to people and their symptoms were an increase in blood pressure, hyperactivity, shakes, (extensive list of effects, leading the reader to consider that outlawing the substance might be a good idea, considering that several substances were outlawed already).
Then, at the end: Surprise --- it's caffeine!
I don't remember the source. Does anyone have the source for this?
Indeed, and much, much more. Privacy is Dead.
The goal isn't to put the bad company out of business, but to keep the good company in business.
In 1977, when I was in fifth grade, I was into Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone, Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and Baum's Wizard of Oz series. I don't think any of those will ever be considered classic literature. Nevertheless, I kept turning the pages. In my junior year I discovered Lovecraft, to the horror of my English Lit teacher. I like the Potter books too. Tis a damned shame the title isn't Harry Potter and the Goat with a Thousand Young.
most of psychiatry is bunkum.
Do you really need to condition that upon the truth of anything I said? Psychiatry is pretty far removed from hard science. If you see me place a rock in my pocket, does it follow that the rock is in my pocket? You can claim so. But perhaps there is a hole in my pocket. Point being... if you cannot measure an effect, how do you know there is an effect at all?
The problem in America right now is that just as in any democracy, a bit more than half of the country agrees with the current government
I don't know if I'd go that far. Yes, many are taken in by the Machiavelli/Goebbel PR spin machine. But, I fear, many more just aren't bothered to give a shit. You see, our "leaders" have learned that when the people are starving don't say "Let them eat cake". Instead, join forces with corporations and placate them with McDonalds hamburgers and DVD's to take their minds off the fact that they will never have a slice of the pie.