DanZ

Free Flight Wifi

2009-12-11T06:41:10Z

In the "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" category --- GoGo in-flight wifi (available on most flights) is offering me a free wifi session for each person to whom I give a free wifi session! (Assuming you haven't used GoGo before.) If you are interested in getting free wifi on your next domestic flight, let me know!

NYT on the Afghanistan Decision

2009-12-05T19:25:33Z

A really fascinating article on the process that the White House used to make the decision to go into Afghanistan. Two thoughts:

1) Having been through long, arduous, difficult strategy decision processes with Learning Unlimited (the nonprofit I am starting), I understand what went into this much better—the difficulties, the openness, the strong disagreements. My own experiences are nowhere close to this kind of major decision, but they give me a much better reference point than I've had in the past. Our decision-making process at LU is working, but we also have a lot of thought to devote to how to do it better.

2) I am so very glad to have a President who goes through this kind of a process to make a decision in the White House. I've often felt that the point of a democracy is not to elect those with similar views to yourself, but to elect people who will be able to process the facts available to them (but not to you) and make a good decision based on those facts. I am very pleased with this process and kind of decision-making.

Best quote from the article:

The reaction at the Pentagon, said one official, was “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” — military slang for an expression of shock.

I have to wonder if the NYT writer didn't realize what that stands for, or if they included it with that phrasing just to be amusing.

Visiting the Bay Area

2009-10-02T21:23:55Z

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.

The End of Reading Rainbow

2009-09-02T20:56:11Z

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.

Zombie Attacks, Foiled By Mathematicians

2009-08-21T08:04:46Z

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?

Reflections on a Mathcamp

2009-08-19T04:46:28Z

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.

At the end of last year, I gave a speech. It was the third speech I've given at camp, and I wanted to do something different. So although I put in some humor, and some typical end-of-Mathcamp emotion, the speech was meant to be a wake-up call, a "hard lesson learned." The lesson I meant to teach was this: sometimes, you have to do things that scare you.

And it didn't come out in the speech. I was misinterpreted by people I deeply respect, and by good friends. My delivery was the worst I've ever given in any public speaking situation. I didn't deliver my jokes right. You couldn't see it, but my hands were frozen on the podium. The emotion I felt within didn't come out the way it was supposed to: my voice was stoic, unfeeling, uncaring. People got the wrong message; that running Mathcamp was too easy, that it wasn't worth devoting my life to it. (It is. I would devote my life to making Mathcamp happen. Yes, I would rather start something of my own, because I find that I love creating things, but I would gladly give myself to making Mathcamp happen. Mathcamp was too easy because it didn't scare me anymore, except, apparently, for giving that speech. For leaving it.)

As I said, the message I had intended from the speech was that sometimes you have to do things that scare you. It scared me to do something other than Mathcamp, not because leaving Mathcamp itself was frightening, but because that implicitly untethered my life. Indeed, since then I have left graduate school to pursue a startup, and while I am thrilled with my projects, it's a much less stable situation on a much murkier life path. I wanted the campers who have just discovered this amazing place to realize that there is more out there, and that sometimes you have to leave a place like Mathcamp because it's the right thing to do. I've seen a lot of people who become dependent on the Mathcamp way of thinking, the Mathcamp kind of socialization, and Mathcamp friends, to the point of being unable to interact as well with the outside world and people who are different from Mathcampers. What I intended was also a warning against that mindset, against being locked into a Mathcamp mindset. There is somewhere a fine line between individualism and successfully interacting with others; is it possible that some of us are getting too close to individualism because of camp?

For me, it was also a fear that I had since my time as a JC: by going to Mathcamp, am I giving up something else that I should be doing? Should I be doing research, or an internship, or figuring out what I want to do with my life? My family always argued against Mathcamp, and I argued back. It was, above all else, what I wanted to do. And so I kept doing it while an undergraduate --- when perhaps I should have done an REU --- and while a graduate student --- when perhaps I should have been doing research. Until 2008, when I decided that I needed to do something that scared me, and I said, "no full-time Mathcamp, no grad school, let's do something else."

So this summer, I visited camp for just two weeks. It was fabulous. It was so easy to fall back into the routines of camp, to see old friends, to meet new ones. I had the best two weeks of my summer despite all the other responsibilities that prevented me from focusing on camp. I spent a lot of time thinking about where I'm going and what I'm doing, and I realized again something very important.

Mathcamp is home.

It's been nine years since I was a camper, but I haven't "outgrown" anything. There's no place I'd rather spend time than Mathcamp. There is no sense as rewarding as making this place happen; no place where I am as well-suited to helping to solve problems; no group of people I would rather be with; no environment in which I have more fun. Having now gone out and firmly planted myself in "other things," I'm at last comfortable just being at camp. If my schedule allows, perhaps I'll be able to go back for the full summer, and I won't feel like I'm missing out on something else to do, because I know that Mathcamp is rewarding for what it is. Now that I've found out how much I want to do education, in part because of Mathcamp, I realize that my summers there were never wasted (as if they could be). Now that I am working to start a nonprofit, I'm not worried that I will become set in the ways of Mathcamp: I shall be independent of camp even as camp is my home.

I've always known somehow that Mathcamp is home, but I also felt like I had to leave home at some point in my life. But now that I've left home, I'm comfortable going back to it if time allows; I have both grown beyond it and into it. Mathcamp is not a side-project; it is something that deserves full attention, and I hope that I'll continue to have a chance to devote myself to camp each summer, and whenever it needs me.

The Most Rewarding Career?

2009-05-22T22:00:02Z

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.

Credit Cards for Young People

2009-05-21T18:08:42Z

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?

Studying Happiness

2009-05-15T06:53:07Z

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.

J. Michael Straczynski Speaking at MIT

2009-05-14T03:30:01Z

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.

Astrophysics Report

2009-05-10T04:08:30Z

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.

Star Trek

2009-05-08T07:40:57Z

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.

Let me start out with the conclusion. This movie was excellent, despite its many flaws.

The flaws? There were enough plot holes to fly the Enterprise through. The movie was relatively straight-forward action fare, with little that was really "deeper" running through it. (These two are not mutually exclusive; see, for example, the Bourne movies.) There were extraneous events (did we really need the random monster chasing Kirk on the ice planet?) and unexplained coincidences (Kirk and older Spock were really marooned on the same planet? And speaking of plot holes, Nero really decided to just leave Spock lying around, the only person who knew who he was and what he was up to, on a planet with a Federation base? And Spock waited around without going to the base until Kirk showed up? And they happened to be marooned in the same part of the planet, both conveniently very close to the base? And... well, you get the idea.) Oh, and, of course, the characters sometimes took actions for no other reasons than the plot really needed them to take those actions. (Spock. Spock! sends Kirk back alone because he wants his younger self to be friends with Kirk, even though Spock is clearly better for the job? He's really going to risk Earth on this?)

And yet, despite the uninspired and poorly-done plot, the movie just worked. It was fun. This is a movie that was gleeful in just being a great movie. This is a movie that made no effort to hide the fact that it was Star Trek. It made no effort to be cool and hip despite being Star Trek; it was just cool and hip, period. They could make Trekkie jokes and make non-Trekkie jokes. There was so much fun in this movie that you didn't need much else.

But we did have a lot else. We had the best actors ever to take on the main roles in Star Trek. (Sure, Leonard Nimoy and De Forrest Kelley were great in TOS; Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner were great in TNG; here, they were all great.) Moreover, these actors had really good material to work with. Bones was characterized in an instant and was fantastic, hitting his character perfectly. They had to work on Kirk but they got him. Spock became much more interesting than he was in the original series. Uhura, Chekhov, and Sulu had characters. Scotty was a standout, showing us what the original Scotty could have been if they'd put real work into him. Frankly, many of these scenes are excellent examples of how to set up a character in a single line, both for writers and for actors.

Then there was the overall mood of the piece. Somehow, it felt like Star Trek. On the way over, the people in my car and I were having a conversation about the nature of science fiction today. Post-9/11, post-Bush, mid-Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, utopias don't seem to work so well for sci-fi any more. Instead you get things like Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, which are outstanding but not... optimistic in the same way. Suppose you go back to look at TNG. It's clearly a product of its time. Is it naive to think that humanity might evolve to something consistent, and better? Maybe so, but even if it is naive, it's good to see it as a possibility, to see something to strive towards. Given the mindset society has now, with fears about the mid-East blowing up and terrorism and pandemics and economic meltdown, it's important to be reminded that we can strive towards something better, that we don't have to be lost in a Battlestar Galactica-style cyclic struggle. I don't think TNG is naive; I think it has an important message. That message, that humanity can come out to something stronger, that it can grow and mature just as individuals can, is intact in this movie. This is a movie of role models, with a society that can be a role model for our own, but without the mindless (if appealing) "everyone reads Shakespeare" of earlier Treks. I think that's fabulous, and an important contribution to society and our cultural dialogue.

So yes, I really liked the movie. I think it's deeply flawed but I don't care; this movie reminds me what movies can be. It inspired my imagination and got me thinking. It told a story that was Star Trek, and good Star Trek. Somehow, lost in soulless and forgettable Harry Potter movies and ruined Narnia movies and various somber indie movies and so forth, it's just so nice to see a good, inspiring, non-trivial action movie with real scope and interest, something that provokes the imagination and reinspires hope. (I wonder, is the Star Trek mindset particularly apt for the age of Obama?)

But really. Really. Was this movie that I actually liked written by the same people who wrote Transformers?

A postscript: I've had some fun lately reading the reviews of all the Star Trek movies posted by a relative newbie over at Rotten Tomatoes. It's called Trekking With Tim, and in his review of this most recent movie he sums up his experience:

When I began this project, I went into it with an open mind, but I still harbored a sneaking suspicion that Trekkies' devotion wasn't wholly warranted. Decades of parodies and potshots directed at Klingon-speaking, hopelessly nerdy conventioneers can do that to you. As I watched these films, what I discovered was a worldview (or, in this case, a universe-view) that was admirably positive and enlightening. So many sci-fi films present a dystopian perspective on the future that it's comforting to see a vision of racial harmony, of fundamentally sound scientific advancement, of morality and camaraderie. Though the mythology of Trek at first seemed impenetrable, I found many of these films accessible on their own terms; if a greater understanding of Gene Roddenberry's creation deepens the viewing experience, it's by no means essential. Even the occasionally outmoded and cheesy aspects of the movies become strangely charming if you view them within the larger scope of the series. I began this undertaking as an agnostic. At this point, I'm certainly no evangelical, but I'm definitely a believer.

This, I think, reminds me perfectly of why I have always so much liked this series; I think it also explains why the later iterations had so much difficulty navigating between the darker tone they were hoping to set and the utopian ideal that had been laid before them.

Greener

2009-03-01T18:23:52Z

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.

XKCD, right again

2009-02-27T23:31:36Z

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. :))

Argument for No Child Left Behind

2009-02-26T18:07:28Z

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.

Help us choose a name!

2009-02-19T23:26:01Z

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_3d

I would love to get ideas and brainstorming feedback for the name; feel free to discuss in the comments. Thank you!

Seeking Coteachers for an Awesome Astrophysics Class

2009-02-13T02:46:21Z

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. :)

On Being a Mathcamp JC, 4X Video Games, and Finding Your Path in Life

2009-02-05T02:02:43Z

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.

My Battlestar Galactica Theory

2009-02-05T01:58:04Z

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.

Sometime in our future, at least 3600 years in the past from the timeline in the series, humanity develops the ability to "upgrade" itself and make improved humans, if you will --- the skinjobs of the show, a combination of genetic and mechanical engineering. We also construct Centurions to help with manual labor. This use of technology --- including sentient but repressed machines (the Centurions) and modified humans --- causes a great deal of public debate, perhaps even civil war, leading to an exodus of the pure humans who lose this conflict to their stronger brethren, the Cylons. They leave and find Kobol, where they settle.

Two thousand years ago, humanity, now on Kobol, causes some kind of disaster and/or is exiled by the gods (whatever that means), and they split up into thirteen tribes. Twelve of these tribes go off to found new worlds, the Twelve Colonies. The last decides to go back to Earth and retake their home. They return to a peaceful Earth with no serious space-based weapons, and they obliterate it. What they don't know is that these modified humans have somehow succeeded in finding a way to transfer their consciousness out, or at least some of them have. This is the second exodus: Cylons, "running" from their destruction at the hands of their human brothers by resurrecting elsewhere. Perhaps this technology was new, and only five Cylons --- the "Final Five" --- are able to resurrect elsewhere. With Earth destroyed, the thirteenth tribe goes off to find another planet at which to settle, leaving their original homeworld in ruins.

The Cylons come back at their Resurrection Ship or equivalent, but there are only five of them, and they head out to find the Twelve Colonies. Eventually they do and they reintroduce the appropriate Cylon technology, allowing for their "race" to be reborn. The newly-created Cylons rise up against the Colonies, and history as we know it happens.

I like this explanation because it has a clear thread (*we* create the Cylons by modifying ourselves, and this is all fallout from that), and there is ambiguity about what "humanity" is --- after all, the Cylons are just us, modifying ourselves. The Pythian prophecy makes sense (I had to look this up online): it prophecies the events of 2000 years ago (leaving Kobol), says "all of this has happened before [the exodus from Earth] and all of this will happen again [the exodus from the Twelve Colonies]," and makes no claim that the final settling point of humanity will be Earth. The timeline matches up: Earth was nuked 2000 years ago, which is when the exodus happened. It makes sense that Anders would be playing Bob Dylan's music in the future, because such revered music could very well survive. It makes sense that Colonial technology would be much like our own. There was indeed a Thirteenth Tribe that left for Earth --- they just weren't trying to colonize it.

The "promised land" is not Earth. Roslin has to die before we reach it --- much more likely now that she's avoiding treatment --- and it will be where the Thirteenth Tribe settled *after* they destroyed Earth. The emotional center of the show is about reconciliation between the humans and the Cylons, two warring groups who diverged and must now find it within themselves to create peace between them and break the cycle of war. When the humans come across the remnants of the Thirteenth Tribe, that tribe will be angry and distrustful of Cylons, furious to find out that some survived their bombardment, and it will probably coincide with the arrival of Cavil's fleet. Defusing that chaos and the destruction that would otherwise follow will presumably be how this plays out.

What this doesn't explain is the metaphysical aspects of the show. I still don't understand how Baltar's visions could come true, and I don't understand a lot of the elements that seem to be guiding the Final Five. One possibility is that the Final Five were secretly manipulating things so that Head Six's prophecies came true, but I don't know; perhaps they created a central consciousness to guide things while they strove to do what they most wanted to do, live out normal, human lives, where they feared death and were made whole by that fear.

I see a very satisfying ending on the horizon if I'm anywhere near true: the ultimate quest for forgiveness and joining back together, humans and Cylons, when they find the bitter Thirteenth Tribe (if they are still alive), a coming together that has been impossible for millenia as the two races warred. An offspring of both human and Cylon would be a major accomplishment: the races would be coming together (able to breed again, no longer different species) and it would be a symbol of their unity. This is the essential conflict that is driving the show, from the initial bombardment of the Colonies, to the Cylons' attempts to create a true hybrid that would recover the best of both species, to their misguided attempt to "rule" New Caprica and bring the species back together, to their newfound mortality that puts them on the same footing as humans.

I'm making this up out of nowhere, but it has a ring of potential truth to it. Then again, I would never, ever presume to be able to predict something that happens in Battlestar Galactica, so much remains to be seen.

Boston, the Changing Everything Edition

2009-01-27T05:36:59Z

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.

On the benefits of volunteering on an overbooked flight

2008-12-27T16:31:12Z

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.

Inauguration Music

2008-12-18T17:35:55Z

A quartet that includes Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma will play a piece composed for the inauguration by John Williams, whose “Patriot” resounded during Mr. Obama’s election night celebration in Grant Park in Chicago.

Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma.

*swoon*

Brain Differences by Socioeconomic Status

2008-12-11T20:57:45Z

In some circles, discussing the effects of how kids are raised is taboo because (among other reasons) there's a concern that it will emphasize differences that reinforce stereotypes. These fears are not unjustified, but sometimes you read studies like this, and you really start to think that we need to understand these issues. (Disclaimer: the article is, in typical journalistic style, rather more alarmist than is warranted.)

Math for 6th Graders

2008-12-10T16:07:52Z

A teacher who's in a class with me has requested suggestions on reading for a few 6th graders in his classroom (or maybe 7th, but I believe 6th) who are apparently doing quite well and could use some extra challenge. I don't know what their level genuinely is, but I'd like to give them something challenging and which could lead to more good stuff. Any suggestions?

Horrendous or Inspired?

2008-11-27T19:11:42Z

Advertising on Exams.

I have no expressible opinion at this time. Comments?