Last year I was responsible for a class on elementary statistics for physical therapy students.
The first thing you have to keep in mind is: your students will be asking themselves from the get go: "Why is this useful to me?". Many of them may have enrolled in "soft" sciences to get away from maths in the first place. You have to provide these answers to your students - if not directly, then indirectly, by providing plenty of examples on where the subject will be useful in their work - this is quite easy with statistics. Also, whenever possible, skip too elaborate proofs, and go instead for more intuitive or example based explanations of why these concepts work.
If you provide me with some sort of contact details, I can give you my lecture notes. Cheers!
Not exactly the same thing, but related, I have recently done the research to tell my Work's mailing list that a hoax someone had forwarded was a hoax. I was called "prepotent", because the person who spread the hoax was obviously a well meaning person, who sent the message because "he cares for us", and "it is not totally implausible, even if not true".
So people not only don't care about doing the research. They resent those who do.
Seriously. I have been following many reporters in Japan on Twitter, and some "serious" news outlet. The twitter feeds have been doing a much better job in posting up-to-date news and commentaries, and fighting the spread of rumors. I used not to take twitter seriously either, until it became my main source of info for this disaster.
Actually, the story was repeated as true in some media outlets in Brazil. The original blog's admins even went around posting "Thanks for believing in us!" in some of these.
Nothing like "monkeys like to watch TV". The experiment only measure the activity of the monkey's brain when it is watching the movie, but not when it is NOT watching the movie or when it is watching something else. Actually the paper is more about this new brain wave sensor that they are developing than about monkeys and TVs. Like a previous commenter said - if you have a monkey stuck into a chair, with a bunch of probes dug into its brain, in a dark room, it will get interested in a movie shown in front of him. Duh! (and, according to the article, at least 60% of the trials where thrown away because the monkey did not actually look at the movie).
Perhaps it's because universities have a limited number of spaces that they would prefer to give to successful students and truancy may correlate with success.
Not really. Japan currently has a problem of more spaces than students (aging population and all that). It is not as bad for universities as it is for elementary/high school, but it is a serious problem.
Or it may be that some classes require a team effort and truant students disrupt that (but for whatever reason, the team is reluctant to report it.... or it counts against them anyway).
This is more likely. I have TA'd for a course where the entire team's grade was determined by each member's assignments.
Anyway, I find this article highly irregular. My experience is that japanese universities will bend themselves backwards to prevent any undergrad student from not graduating. Also, all cellphones here have GPS, not only iPhones. I think it is more likely, from RTFA, that the university is putting on a course for the students to hack with the iPhones, and the writer of the article decided to capitalize on the minor point of "trying to check attendance with the GPS".
Indeed. Including a cloth map, a moonstone and an ankh in the packaging (Rest in Peace, Origin:~( ) will make more people buy the actual game instead of copying than any DRM ever will.
That depends what you mean by "incriminating location". Japan currently has a more or less democratic government, similar for example to the US, so at this moment this should not be a major problem. But in many other countries what they consider a "crime" you may actually consider a right thing to do. In such a case you would not want them to have your fingerprints. I don't know how things are in the US, but Japan has a very alarming history of: - mistreating of arrested suspects (forced confessions, arrests for undefined lengths, denying lawyer contact, etc) - an extremely high conviction rate (if you are brought to the bench, you will very likely be convicted. Judges are proud of their conviction rates. Suspects are oriented to write confessions/apologies in order to get lighter punishments - even if they are innocent, etc) - a police force not accountable to anyone
The above are true for japanese citizens, and doubly true for "damn foreigners who come to japan just to commit crimes".
So, it is not a case of "they might get you for an unjust crime", but rather - "if someone points a finger at you, you are fsck'd". Since they are only fingerprinting foreigners, if they get to a crime scene, where there are japanese fingerprints (not recorded) and foreign fingerprints (recorded), guess what is going to happen.
I wouldn't be surprised if Japan is doing this kind of as a big 'FU' to the States. Keep dreaming. It is the other way around. Japan is doing this partially due to pressure from our american overlords. All the "we are scared of terrorists too! See what they did in america/londom/madrid" FUD is around here in the informations about the new measure.
Nevermind most (and the biggest) terrorist attacks in Japan were commited by natives (Sarin Gas attack, etc).
I say this because I have seen ADD kids do just fine playing games for hours on, its because they want to do it. ADD is just an excuse for not teaching a child that there is a time and place for everything. I share your feeling, but I wonder if those "ADD kids" really do have anything at all to begin with.
A story I'm often told is this: When I was a kid, my mother took me to a doctor to see whether I was hyperactive (I believe what we call ADD today was the hyperactivity in the 80ies, right?). I was a pest. The first thing the doctor asked was if I ever sat down to watch TV. When my mother replied 'yes', he said: "Then your kid is not hyperactive. REAL hyperactive kids are not able to sit down even to watch TV."
There seems to be a trend of mistaking ADD and simple lack of discipline.
Nonsense. Any replicator subjected to differential survival pressure is capable of evolving, and there are simpler replicators than bacteria. Such as? Assembly instructions (corewars,avida)
[quote]So how is any of this exclusive of each other? Canada could be experience a quickly growing market and rampant piracy and it could be the top P2P country while enjoying strong sales.[/quote]
This is absolutely true, but if that is the case, it kinda flies in the face of common affirmations from the RIAA/MPAA like: "Waaah! Waaah! Unauthorized Copying and P2P hurts our sales! Won't anybody think about the artists?"
Reality is that there are a minority (very very small minority) of Muslims that want to destroy the US. The majority just want to be left alone to live as they will. Heh, the funny thing is: I bet there is a minority (very very small minority) of people in any country who would like to destroy the us while the majority want to be left alone.
At least in the country where I live, and the one where I was born, this is true. And both are far away from the middle east.
Probably the quoted statement is true even for the US itself:-/
I don't quite understand this post, what has Japan to do with this particular story? There are plenty of biased museums around the world, that is for sure.
Anyway, while I do find the exhibits in Yasukuni's "museum" sick, there is a glaring difference between it and the Smithsonian:
Yasukuni is a privately run, privately funded institution - The americans made sure to separate it from the government during the U.S. rule of Japan after the 2nd world war.
Call it biased - it is, and doesn't hide that - but the japanese taxpayer money does not go into it.
Any of those are better that laying there and hoping that you're not next. I agree with the GP post, it doesn't seem like anyone even tried to fight for their life. Actually, I know that at least one did: The old holocaust survivor guy who held the door to his class.
I wonder if the fact that he had passed through such terrifying circumstances "re-wired" his fight-flight instinct.
I wonder whether it would be acceptable for someone to proclaim "I can't read" and then talk about how they couldn't even read a book to their 4 year old child at night. I'm afraid it is... probably not as directly as you put it, but I've met quite a few people who say proudly that they can't stand books, and how could people spend so much time reading... sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
"Google-glass like computer eyepiece".
No, you're doing it wrong - it is the other way around :-/
Dear Anonymous Poster,
Last year I was responsible for a class on elementary statistics for physical therapy students.
The first thing you have to keep in mind is: your students will be asking themselves from the get go: "Why is this useful to me?". Many of them may have enrolled in "soft" sciences to get away from maths in the first place. You have to provide these answers to your students - if not directly, then indirectly, by providing plenty of examples on where the subject will be useful in their work - this is quite easy with statistics. Also, whenever possible, skip too elaborate proofs, and go instead for more intuitive or example based explanations of why these concepts work.
If you provide me with some sort of contact details, I can give you my lecture notes. Cheers!
It can be even worse.
Not exactly the same thing, but related, I have recently done the research to tell my Work's mailing list that a hoax someone had forwarded was a hoax. I was called "prepotent", because the person who spread the hoax was obviously a well meaning person, who sent the message because "he cares for us", and "it is not totally implausible, even if not true".
So people not only don't care about doing the research. They resent those who do.
If we only had developed statistical tests that calculate how likely it is that a given cluster appeared randomly based on previous data...
Still, all you need is one (or a couple) of alphas to make a good script, and a bunch of mindless drones to follow it.
Seriously. I have been following many reporters in Japan on Twitter, and some "serious" news outlet. The twitter feeds have been doing a much better job in posting up-to-date news and commentaries, and fighting the spread of rumors. I used not to take twitter seriously either, until it became my main source of info for this disaster.
It is all about who you follow.
Tsunami alert has been called off.
Actually, the story was repeated as true in some media outlets in Brazil. The original blog's admins even went around posting "Thanks for believing in us!" in some of these.
The linked article does not actually refers to the Scientific article (why not?), so I went and did some digging.
http://frontiersin.org/neuroscience/behavioralneuroscience/paper/10.3389/fnbeh.2010.00031/
Nothing like "monkeys like to watch TV". The experiment only measure the activity of the monkey's brain when it is watching the movie, but not when it is NOT watching the movie or when it is watching something else. Actually the paper is more about this new brain wave sensor that they are developing than about monkeys and TVs. Like a previous commenter said - if you have a monkey stuck into a chair, with a bunch of probes dug into its brain, in a dark room, it will get interested in a movie shown in front of him. Duh! (and, according to the article, at least 60% of the trials where thrown away because the monkey did not actually look at the movie).
Way to fail by not RTFA'ing.
http://attepicfail.tumblr.com/
Perhaps it's because universities have a limited number of spaces that they would prefer to give to successful students and truancy may correlate with success.
Not really. Japan currently has a problem of more spaces than students (aging population and all that). It is not as bad for universities as it is for elementary/high school, but it is a serious problem.
Or it may be that some classes require a team effort and truant students disrupt that (but for whatever reason, the team is reluctant to report it.... or it counts against them anyway).
This is more likely. I have TA'd for a course where the entire team's grade was determined by each member's assignments.
Anyway, I find this article highly irregular. My experience is that japanese universities will bend themselves backwards to prevent any undergrad student from not graduating. Also, all cellphones here
have GPS, not only iPhones. I think it is more likely, from RTFA, that the university is putting on a course for the students to hack with the iPhones, and the writer of the article decided to capitalize on the minor point of "trying to check attendance with the GPS".
Well, what did you expect? The story submitter was the guy who wrote the article himself. (Jeff Vogel owns spidweb games).
Lamarckian Evolution.
Neo-Darwinian Evolution.
Developmental Evolution.
(lamarckian evolution in a very limited scale during embrionary stages of an individual)
The term "Dwarvinian Evolution" is necessary to compare to other models for Evolutionary theory, even in Biology.
Indeed. Including a cloth map, a moonstone and an ankh in the packaging (Rest in Peace, Origin :~( ) will make more people buy the actual game instead of copying than any DRM ever will.
- mistreating of arrested suspects (forced confessions, arrests for undefined lengths, denying lawyer contact, etc)
- an extremely high conviction rate (if you are brought to the bench, you will very likely be convicted. Judges are proud of their conviction rates. Suspects are oriented to write confessions/apologies in order to get lighter punishments - even if they are innocent, etc)
- a police force not accountable to anyone
The above are true for japanese citizens, and doubly true for "damn foreigners who come to japan just to commit crimes".
So, it is not a case of "they might get you for an unjust crime", but rather - "if someone points a finger at you, you are fsck'd". Since they are only fingerprinting foreigners, if they get to a crime scene, where there are japanese fingerprints (not recorded) and foreign fingerprints (recorded), guess what is going to happen.
Nevermind most (and the biggest) terrorist attacks in Japan were commited by natives (Sarin Gas attack, etc).
Imagine a beowulf cluster of sticks!
1) Rub two sticks against each other
2) Set yourself on fire
3) ???
4) Profit!
A story I'm often told is this: When I was a kid, my mother took me to a doctor to see whether I was hyperactive (I believe what we call ADD today was the hyperactivity in the 80ies, right?). I was a pest. The first thing the doctor asked was if I ever sat down to watch TV. When my mother replied 'yes', he said: "Then your kid is not hyperactive. REAL hyperactive kids are not able to sit down even to watch TV."
There seems to be a trend of mistaking ADD and simple lack of discipline.
[quote]So how is any of this exclusive of each other? Canada could be experience a quickly growing market and rampant piracy and it could be the top P2P country while enjoying strong sales.[/quote]
This is absolutely true, but if that is the case, it kinda flies in the face of common affirmations from the RIAA/MPAA like: "Waaah! Waaah! Unauthorized Copying and P2P hurts our sales! Won't anybody think about the artists?"
The majority just want to be left alone to live as they will. Heh, the funny thing is: I bet there is a minority (very very small minority) of people in any country who would like to destroy the us while the majority want to be left alone.
At least in the country where I live, and the one where I was born, this is true. And both are far away from the middle east.
Probably the quoted statement is true even for the US itself
Oh, but you do charge to get in the USA.
100$ upfront for a visa interview. Even if it's a transit visa. Even if you end up not getting the visa afterall.
So you already have an entrance fee.
I don't quite understand this post, what has Japan to do with this particular story? There are plenty of biased museums around the world, that is for sure.
Anyway, while I do find the exhibits in Yasukuni's "museum" sick, there is a glaring difference between it and the Smithsonian:
Yasukuni is a privately run, privately funded institution - The americans made sure to separate it from the government during the U.S. rule of Japan after the 2nd world war.
Call it biased - it is, and doesn't hide that - but the japanese taxpayer money does not go into it.
I wonder if the fact that he had passed through such terrifying circumstances "re-wired" his fight-flight instinct.