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| Friday, October 2nd, 2009 | | 5:23 pm |
Visiting the Bay Area
I've been super-busy and haven't had time for virtually anything. However, I'll be visiting the Bay Area from this coming Tuesday through next Monday, so if you're around and want to get together, let me know. | | Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | | 4:42 pm |
The End of Reading Rainbow
I've written before --- in an entry that, embarrassingly enough, I cannot find --- about how a classroom might be different if students were pursuing reading because they loved reading, rather than because the reading was required for class. It's an interesting question: is it worth sacrificing the exposure to established great literature in order for the potential of having students more engaged in their work? Is it even feasible to teach in such a classroom, where not everyone is reading the same thing? Well, forget for a moment the question of what we read in class. Let's ask instead: should we even be focused on building a love of reading, or should we just think about making sure kids know how to read in the first place? A few days ago, I thought that a great blow had been struck when I discovered that Reading Rainbow is being canceled. Why? Because no one will fund it: not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, not the Department of Education. The Reading Rainbow partisans in the NPR story linked above say that this is because programs that teach kids how to read are being funded, but not programs that teach kids why to read. Essentially, they decry a change in the focus of education theory and practice. Mathematics is fighting a similar battle right now, and has been for decades. Although I agree on the value of knowing how to read, I tend to believe the why to be just as crucial, as evidenced by the projects I tend to lead in education. The Reading Rainbow folks go a step farther, saying that the biggest blow was struck by the No Child Left Behind law, because of its focus on testing the procedure of reading but no emphasis in building a desire for reading. It's an interesting thought. In some circles --- those most strapped for resources --- it has certainly had that effect. But why would it affect Reading Rainbow? Because organizations want to devote their resources to where they're most needed, so they match the needs of kids who need to learn how to read, and they follow the prevailing theory about what those kids need. About a day or two after I heard about Reading Rainbow, I then ran across an article about... teachers giving students choices about their reading in class. Although the report is not unambiguously positive, it points to a backlash in education, one where teachers give students great (almost complete) freedom in choosing their reading for class. It's a provoking read and I recommend it. Then again, it does not mention the socio-economic status of the students at the schools it brings up, so perhaps we are seeing a further segmentation where some kids are told why... but only if they're already good enough at how. So there it is: systematic funding for a program like Reading Rainbow ends, to be replaced by a small movement for pushing passion. As usual, the debate goes on. | | Friday, August 21st, 2009 | | 3:58 am |
Zombie Attacks, Foiled By Mathematicians
A delightful NPR story today (now yesterday) on mathematical models of zombie attacks (although hardly the only news story about this). It conveyed a sense of fun in doing mathematics that somehow isn't conveyed by... well, stories about mathematics that seems more "serious." Other amusing observations include that Mathcamp is apparently not the only place where people may have punctuation in their names. Of course, there's also the original article. So, I have to think. Mathcamp class? | | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | | 11:21 pm |
Reflections on a Mathcamp
This summer, I visited Mathcamp for two weeks. It was the first time in ten years that I haven't been there for the full five weeks; the first time in thirteen years that I have not been to an academic summer camp for its full duration. In my previous ten summers of Mathcamp, I missed a grand total of two days that I was eligible to attend (for a friend's wedding, clearly worth it!) and attended a day that I was not eligible to attend, thanks to a later flight. ( Thoughts on this entity to which I have devoted so much of my life. ) | | Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | | 5:44 pm |
The Most Rewarding Career?
The battle between choosing a career that pays well and choosing a career that is rewarding for what you do --- "do what you love" --- is so rehashed as to be trite. Because it has entered the pantheon of truisms, of expected conflicts, everyone thinks about it within an established context. It's the "should I pursue a career on Wall Street or should I pursue my passion for writing?" "Should I be a doctor, or should I go into acting like I've always wanted to?" "Should I be a lawyer, or a mathematician?" Look again at those debates. They're all in highly-respected careers that follow relatively well-established paths. If you are a "smart" person who can get a higher degree or achieve at a high level (even that phrase is biased), then you are expected to do so. You probably won't ever consider another path, and will consider yourself privileged to land a "good" job. Which brings me to the recent challenge to this mentality from the upcoming New York Times Magazine. Are we so certain that happiness comes from taking a job that most utilizes advanced training? The author claims no. Do we have a duty to pursue such jobs because we are capable? The author doesn't address the question. What he does do is open doors: he might as well be saying, "do not eliminate so many jobs from your horizons; they are removed for a false reason." Context matters; society may have established norms that are not helpful. I remember talking to a very good professor at the U of I who said that, if not for his career in mathematics, he'd be working with his hands---that's the type of person he is. He's someone who's confident in himself and fiercely willing to be different; are others following academic paths merely because they see it as a great achievement to be there, and not because it is what they want to do? Our world is very good at implanting subtle assumptions that grow to drive all our decisions. Overcoming that is a major accomplishment. I'm certain that I haven't gotten there yet, but seeing through it to what's best for us is such an important feat that I hope more people are able to do. | | Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | | 1:59 pm |
Credit Cards for Young People
The recent congressional legislation on credit cards (expected to be signed by President Obama, including a totally unrelated measure to allow concealed handguns in national parks) limits advertising that credit card companies can do towards young people. It would require, for anyone under 21, either a parent cosigner or demonstration of independent income; it would ban credit cards for anyone under the age of 18. The intent is obvious: don't get young people hooked on credit; let them wait to start using cards until they're more responsible. I wonder, however, if the true result will be inexperienced credit card users who do damage to their long-term financial prospects when they have the resources (and credit lines) to do so. I first got a checking account when I was 12 and a credit card when I was 16. I learned a lot from my experiences then. I did bounce a few checks, and quickly learned how much trouble it gets you in (and how much money it costs), such that I now keep a carefully balanced checkbook. I had the chance to accidentally miss a few payments when my spending (and thus the interest charged) was not too high, learning the consequences, how to deal with it, and how to avoid it happening again. I claim that credit cards can be a valuable learning tool for young people; now they'll have to first get cards while they're also dealing with numerous other transitions and stresses in their life. It may also adversely affect those who are not financially savvy, causing greater harm to those who grew up in families without credit cards or other common financial tools. Although I understand the need to police credit card debt, I think this bill is a mistake, one that will result in less informed consumers. Would we not be better off by requiring credit card companies to give very low limits to young cardholders, and requiring them to deliver educational materials to them? | | Friday, May 15th, 2009 | | 1:03 am |
Studying Happiness
The Atlantic has a fantastic article out about a longitudinal study tracing the path of 200-odd graduates from Harvard in the 1930s. They've been studying them through the present-day, doing surveys and interviews, physical examinations, and more. I've found that, over the years, I've gone through phases about what kinds of studies I consider important. Sometimes I believe passionately in the importance of a careful, controlled experiment, while at other times I become a fan of the holistic lens provided by in-depth case studies. I've come to the conclusion that both have their place, and the "Grant Study," as it's known, is an excellent example of why a holistic study can be important. Let me be clear: the Grant study is an incredibly imperfect beast. It has no control group; it doesn't even have a hypothesis that it's trying to study. It's a study of a bunch of white men from Harvard in the 1930s, for crying out loud. It's incredibly colored by the views and perceptions of the principal investigator, who interprets the interviews, designs the questions, and theorizes about what's going on. By any scientific metric, this study has no right to be providing anything useful, and yet, it is deeply insightful. After all, it's trying to answer the big questions. It's trying to say, "this is what makes us happy." It's trying to get an understanding of things so large that you could never design a control group, never state your hypothesis. That's the point. Happiness is such a huge beast that you can't study it all at once. What are you going to do, ask people to bubble in on a scale from 1 to 5 how happy they are? No, we're at a point where we need to get ideas, see lives from a distanced perspective, figure out what questions we should even be asking. The Grant Study is a fabulous look at what makes us happy; it captures some amazing stories of evolving human lives. I wish I could see the data if only because the stories themselves capture my passion. It seems to me to be the kind of thing that can point the way to future resources that will tell us about ourselves. Here's to doing more research of this kind. | | Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | | 11:29 pm |
J. Michael Straczynski Speaking at MIT
As you may know, I'm a fan of the fascinating but flawed TV series Babylon 5. Well, its creator J. Michael Straczynski is going to be speaking at MIT a week from Friday. Admission is $10. I plan to go, and would love to go with anyone else who's interested. | | Saturday, May 9th, 2009 | | 11:37 pm |
Astrophysics Report
A while back, I posted a request for coteachers for an astrophysics class that I was planning to teach this spring at HSSP. The class is now done, and it was a great success. Not perfect --- there are definitely changes that I would make --- but the students were able to recreate deep astrophysical results on their own, sorting through data and doing the science. It culminated in a series of deductions where they graphed the distance of galaxies vs. their recessional velocity (from redshift), and managed to get to the theory of the expansion of the universe. One of the things that this class was intended to do was to transmit how science is really done, and I think it was shockingly successful. I think the students really got an idea for how you piece together ideas, for how theories become confirmed by experimental data. I really think that we were able to demonstrate how scientific theories develop. Rather than throwing a bunch of facts at them, I think they see astronomy and astrophysics as an organic whole, where you bootstrap out from early theories and observations to grander ones. Basically, I am supremely happy with this class. Yes, there's lots more that we could have done, but it seems to have come out really wonderfully. | | Friday, May 8th, 2009 | | 3:01 am |
Star Trek
I haven't written anything here in months, nor have I read anyone else's LJ. I should --- I really should --- be writing here about Learning Unlimited and the great successes we're having there. But somehow, it was clear to me after coming home today from seeing Star Trek at an IMAX theater that I need to write about this movie. (The short, non-spoilerful version is that yes, this movie is well worth seeing even if you're not a Trekkie.) So ( read on if you want my spoiler-filled comments. ) | | Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | | 1:03 pm |
Greener
I've been reading the blog of Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary, because I quite like his insights into the show from the music and his stories of coming up with it. However, one of the most recent entries showcases an intriguing misperception of science and scientists, a kind of "grass is greener on the other side" idea that comes from the difficulty in realizing universal challenges in creative endeavours. Bear writes (do NOT look at this unless you're caught up; it's a huge spoiler-fest) of a time when he was experiencing a strong block on completing a score for a particular episode, and how it tied into his work on the most recent episode: We spoke not only of dealing with writer’s block and creative frustration, but of the intense pressure that I have always felt to create something artistically worthwhile. An athlete or scientist can set a tangible and achievable goal: to run a 4-minute mile, or cure a disease. For the writer or artist, there are no such milestones. Every achievement only puts you further away from the next one you see in front of you. This is the frakked up philosophy that haunted me when I was a teenager, first setting out to write music.While I cannot speak about an athlete's growth, for a scientist, nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that you can set a goal of "curing a disease." Doing science is a matter of the tiniest steps. You research for months, maybe years, unsure if your results will bear fruit, and then you get a publication that perhaps a few people will read. (Much like music, where you finish a piece and then it goes on to perhaps not very many others.) "Curing a disease" is far too rare a thing, and does not capture the day-to-day uncertainty about your progress, nor the dedication to the goal that makes you persist. You never know what the next step is; you never know what the right answer is; you persist, and you try things, until you get lucky or you give up. In contrast, I bet that a scientist would talk about how a musician gets so much instant gratification --- they can play in front of an audience and hear their reaction, doing concert after concert, gaining energy from those experiences. A scientist might even (if they were shortsighted) claim that for a musician, they never have to worry that their hypothesis will be wrong and that their research will turn out to be useless. I don't take Bear's writing as offensive, but rather a reminder that more is similar between such work than different. It's a reminder that everyone's struggles and inner turmoils are, really, not so far apart. | | Friday, February 27th, 2009 | | 6:18 pm |
XKCD, right again
It really happens!I came across this handout on "Common Mistakes in Algebra." All well and good, except for #14, which is not wrong! Or, if it is, it's wrong for a very different reason than the solution gives. #14 claims that it is false to say that sqrt(-x) * sqrt(-y) = sqrt(xy). If both x and y are negative, then this is totally correct. If one or more is not negative, then you are taking a square root of a negative number, so you really have no choice but to think about multiple square roots. Then this must be read as "the product of any square root of -x with any square root of -y gives a square root of xy," which is true! (One could quibble with the use of an equals sign here, but if you give it the generous reading then this is entirely correct.) The solution key says that this is wrong, because sqrt(-x) = i * sqrt(x), and sqrt(-y) = i * sqrt(y), and so multiplying those together you get -sqrt(xy). But the negative of a square root is still a square root! And sqrt(-x) = i * sqrt(x) in a consistent fashion only if you let your square root take on multiple values! So I wrote to the author of the worksheet to point out this (admittedly subtle) fact which she got from a published textbook. I spent quite some time crafting a nice e-mail and explaining the mathematics in detail so that this would be, as much as possible, a learning experience. The e-mail bounced from her now-defunct e-mail address. *sigh* That is, I suppose, how it goes when you try to correct the Internet. The result lives on, and keeps its high page rank on Google, too. (Incidentally, I'm sure that those of you who browse carefully will notice that yes, this is a teacher at the college level of other mathematics teachers, and this is someone who was studying to get a PhD in mathematics education. If you feel like launching into a rant about teacher educators, then I suggest you actually do something productive with yourself to help improve mathematics education instead. If you feel like launching into a rant about textbook publishers who don't get mathematically competent editors, then by all means, proceed. :)) | | Thursday, February 26th, 2009 | | 12:57 pm |
Argument for No Child Left Behind
On NPR's Morning Edition today, there was a story about the No Child Left Behind law in which they went to a high school debate competition in Washington, DC where the topic was NCLB itself. The arguments presented were mostly boilerplate, and they tended to feature mostly arguments against the law: that states allow their standards to fall to create rising test-scores, the oft-repeated "underfunded mandate" argument, and the merits of requiring every student to take a standardized exam not representative of their learning styles. At the end of the piece, however, they interviewed a student who was describing his personal experience under NCLB. His argument: without NCLB, he felt, his teachers would have given up on him years ago; instead, he is a success in school. It's a strong reminder of many of the law's good points. I believe that a great deal of what happens in schools is based around the incentives given to teachers, and it's easy to focus in on incentives towards negative behaviors encouraged by NCLB: a focus on testing and away from critical thinking (unless tests are designed quite well, which they rarely are); a focus on tested subjects to the exclusion of "optional" material that helps students grow intellectually; a focus on students that are just below passing because the only cut-off is if students pass or not, rather than how well they do. Yet NCLB gives other incentives too; by requiring a large number of students to succeed, it gives incentives for focusing on providing help to more students. By paying attention to the results of minority groups, it gives incentives for helping students to pass regardless of background. When some students might be dismissed as unable to succeed because of their environment (see, e.g., the portrayal in the movie Stand and Deliver), NCLB rejects that and doesn't allow it as an explanation of low performance. A lot of people are going to be watching what the Obama administration does with education and NCLB renewal in particular. I'm going to be very curious how they attack this beast. | | Thursday, February 19th, 2009 | | 6:19 pm |
Help us choose a name!
In a previous entry, I described the nonprofit organization that I'm trying to start. While so many aspects of this organization have come together beautifully, finding a name has been surprisingly hard! We have a few ideas and we'd like to get information on what kinds of names are most appealing to others. If you could take a very short (5-10 minutes at most) survey on the ideas we've had so far, we'd be very grateful. The survey is here. We want to get a very wide spectrum of responses, so I'd be grateful if you pass the survey on to anyone else, especially those who might be either "not grad students" or "not mathy people:" http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jrAGuSOcJGhCM1DdzxOJeA_3d_3dI would love to get ideas and brainstorming feedback for the name; feel free to discuss in the comments. Thank you! | | Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | | 9:38 pm |
Seeking Coteachers for an Awesome Astrophysics Class
I'm currently in the planning stages for a fantastic HSSP class on astronomy and astrophysics. (HSSP is an eight-week version of Splash, where students can take courses in a huge variety of topics that go into more depth than a few-hour-long seminar.) I'm currently coteaching it with dfarhi (aka Meta to the Mathcamp folks), but we're not sure if we want to do it because preparing it will take some time. The idea is that the students will themselves come up with the kind of data that they'd like to collect, and we'll provide them with the resulting data for various stellar objects. So initially they'll think of parallax (perhaps with some poking) and from that they can figure out some distances to close stars, but then it's up to them to find patterns in the data and think of other methods. The idea is that, on their own, they should come up with the H-R diagram, the idea of standard candles, and so forth, expanding out further and further the radius about which they can get information. (We'll at some point talk about light and give them spectra, but it's up to them to figure out that they're redshifted!) Meanwhile, we'll take some time each class to talk about the phenomena they're witnessing, telling them about related phenomena and expanding their understanding of the physics behind what they're discovering. It's an amazing way to get introduced to astronomy, because it all makes sense together and you are making the discoveries yourself. It's also crazy and insane, and will take a lot of time to prepare. Thus: we are looking for another coteacher! It's a chance to be part of an awesome class and really help out a lot of kids. It would involve helping us to gather the data on the stars and prepare cards with the information for students, as well as planning the class and (optionally, but encouraged) giving about a third of the lectures. If you want to help make this happen, or you know someone else who's into astronomy and would want to help make this happen, let us know. We're not sure if we want to do it if it's just the two of us, because we're worried about the work, but with a third it shouldn't be bad at all. The classes themselves take place Saturdays on the MIT campus, time negotiable. It's gonna be great. :) | | Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | | 8:58 pm |
On Being a Mathcamp JC, 4X Video Games, and Finding Your Path in Life
In a typical strategy video game, you'll spend some time exploring, building up resources, and researching. If not for the attacks of your enemy, then the best strategy would be to pump all of your resources into collecting more resources or technological advances, because they build on one-another exponentially; having more resources means that you can pursue additional resources more aggressively, and having better technology allows you to expand faster and get more technology faster. In practice, though, this doesn't work out so well: if you neglect your military units, the output that actually *does* something and advances your goal of victory, then a good opponent will come in and take you over almost immediately. This simplistic setting provides an interesting metaphor for how we live our lives, although, at least generally, without the Zerg Rush. In early life, we're focused on building our capacity for later achievement. We go to school, we strive to learn as much as possible about our surroundings, we figure out how to integrate with our peers. It's wisely said that learning is something you do life-long, but if we're brutally honest with ourselves, we do less learning as we grow older. We stop accumulating diplomas and start doing a job that produces a direct outcome --- financial support for us and our family. We start to derive more pleasure out of what is rather than what will be, as we start to recognize that the amount of time left to us is relatively finite. Our bodies and minds are, I think, built for this; getting good at a sport (and getting the necessary muscle memory) is harder as we grow older; our ability to learn languages or adapt to technology decreases over time; we tend to stop having life-altering realizations and settle down into stable lives --- and those who do not, broadly speaking, suffer for it. The key, then, is understanding when to break from the sorts of activities that help you build towards your future --- such as going to school or doing internships --- and when you should move into the activities that are directly rewarding to you. By "directly rewarding," I mean lots of things: it might be achieving personal pleasure, it might be earning money to support yourself, it might be finding meaningful volunteer opportunities so that you can see your impact on the world. I've made my own choice about this recently, by leaving grad school to found a nonprofit. Ask me later how that worked out for me. Over the centuries, the time at which we shift from the first phase (building up for later achievement) to the second phase (actually achieving things) has grown later and later. That's not surprising: as we live longer (as we expect some reprieve from the Zerg Rush), we should expect that it's in our benefit spending more time building up our resources before we fully make use of them. The interesting thing about Mathcamp JCing is that it's a unique opportunity to begin contributing to life earlier than you normally might. When someone goes to college, it's an investment in the future. Mathcamp JCing is too, on many levels --- from JCing, you learn a lot about yourself, about how you grew up, and how to work in professional groups and make large-scale events happen --- but the real benefit of being a Mathcamp JC is that you get to make an incredibly meaningful contribution to the world, one that you can feel on a visceral level. Military units in a 4X game are an end unto themselves; so is JCing, and it's one of the very few such things that one ever encounters in college. There are lots of opportunities to prepare for your future in college, from REUs to internships, but being able to feel a significant contribution is a rare thing, and something like being a JC (or, say, spending a summer building houses in Guatamala or teaching in Uganda) is one of those things that, after a certain point, you can't do. Yes, that's right: being a Mathcamp JC is doing a Zerg Rush on life. This whole discussion --- although spurred by thoughts about JCing --- is actually not meant to persuade anyone to be a JC or not be a JC, nor is it meant to inspire more applications or pining for camp. Rather, it's meant to bring up the value of making a substantial contribution to the world, be it through being a Mathcamp JC, or running a Splash (errr... go do that!), or doing any number of things that get you out there right away. Because unlike in Starcraft, when you get out there and you really make a difference, you're building *yourself* for the future; not through money, or happiness, or any of that, but through an understanding of yourself, the world, your character, and what you feel is important. | | 8:44 pm |
My Battlestar Galactica Theory
With the end of the series nearing --- and my growing interest thanks not just to the excellent recent episodes but also the surprisingly good board game --- it's time to post my theory about "what the frak" is going on. Pardon to those who want to avoid geekiness. :) Warning: oh, the spoilers. ( MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ) | | Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | | 12:36 am |
Boston, the Changing Everything Edition
As some of you have no doubt heard, I have moved to Boston to start a new education nonprofit. This post is long overdue --- I moved almost three weeks ago --- but I've been keeping busy, and so telling everyone about what's going on has fallen by the wayside. The organization will create and support a network of college student groups that run outreach programs to middle and high school students. Based on the successful MIT ESP model, these programs are designed to get kids excited about learning and engaged in their own education; ultimately, they exist to show our students where their education can take them. Dually, they introduce college students to teaching and leadership in education, promoting a lifetime of involvement. Some programs target underserved populations while others have no specific targeting; we believe that everyone's education can benefit from this new approach. All of them are incredibly efficient, operating with volunteer teachers and administrators and free space from the university: our program at MIT provides a weekend of learning to 2000 kids and needs no outside funding, while our program at the University of Chicago can reach 500 kids from the south side for $2000 or less. The organization now is in its infancy: we have not even yet incorporated as a nonprofit. (Indeed, I can't claim that we've even fully settled on a name; we have ideas that might work but which feel mediocre, and we'd love suggestions that might fit.) Once it does incorporate, it will begin to seek funding, and with a lot of hard work and some luck, we will hopefully find funding before my own personal funds run out. (Doubly important once my college loans come due!) On a personal note (this is LiveJournal, right?), I am both tremendously excited and utterly terrified by this development. I think the organization has a lot of potential and I am absolutely thrilled to be challenging myself with something entirely new and very difficult. I'm seeing for the first time what it is to have to make your own direction and your own luck in life. On the other hand, I have never been in a situation where I don't have any outside source of money, nor have I ever done something as drastic as leaving graduate school to pursue a distant vision. For the first time in my life, I don't know what will happen next on a very fundamental level. With changes come opportunities to reconnect, so if you're in Boston, drop me a line so we can reconnect, and if you're not in Boston, feel free to say "hello" anyway! As to the organization itself, if you have any inspiration for a name, want to help in a more meaningful way, or have ideas where we might find funding, please do tell! I'll leave you with a current draft of our mission statement, with edits certainly to come but perhaps still capturing the spirit of what we hope to do: [The organization] is a coalition of grassroots member groups that run programs for middle and high school students. We believe that exposing students to deep, exciting, and fun learning experiences can inspire them to become more engaged in their own education both within our programs and without, and that helping to create those experiences can inspire teachers and program leaders to become more involved in education for the rest of their lives. We support a broad range of programs that espouse these goals by giving them the tools to thrive and by engaging in constant experimentation, both to improve our currently-operating programs and develop new and better ones. | | Saturday, December 27th, 2008 | | 10:16 am |
On the benefits of volunteering on an overbooked flight
Suppose that you're in a scenario in the airport when your current flight is overbooked and they're looking for volunteers. Should you take it? Naturally it depends on a number of factors. You should be sure that your compensation is in a dollar-value certificate, not in a free flight --- because free flight certificates are often limited in use. You should be sure that your certificate can be used online, because many airlines only post their lower fares online, so that agents on the phone or in person are unable to access them at all. And then, if you have the time, you can volunteer in exchange for a dollar-value voucher, vouchers for food at airport restaurants until your next flight, and a hotel room should your new flight be on the next day. There is, it turns out, another secret benefit to this. Suppose that the flight you volunteer for is in danger of being canceled due to weather. Then, should you be stuck overnight, the airline will not pay for a hotel room nor for food. However, if you volunteered, then even though the flight would have been canceled anyway, you will still get these perks: free food until you fly, and a hotel room. This is, as it turns out, the case for me now in Atlanta. I stayed at a wonderful hotel last night for free, because I volunteered for a flight that ended up getting canceled anyway! This may sound like an odd thing for the airlines to do --- perhaps they didn't notice that the flight I volunteered for got canceled anyway. But it's actually a very smart thing for them to do, because now I am much more likely to volunteer for future flights. I know that I'll be cared for with food and a good room, that it can function as a "backup plan," at very little cost to the airline (certainly less than having to greatly increase their voucher value or involuntarily kick off another passenger). So everyone wins. And I get a good night of sleep after arriving in from an overnight, international flight. | | Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | | 11:33 am |
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