Category Archives: technical issues

Selfish Altruism

Posted on 2010-06-13 by alan

‘Psychological Altruism’ is just a special case of ‘Biological Altruism’ and the “gene” for either is the most selfish of all. Of course the concept of genes for actual characteristics all being in one-to-one correspondence with discrete sequences of DNA … Continue reading →

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Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

Posted on 2010-06-11 by alan

I was led to this by a #CritLit2010 Tweet from Ruth Howard. In it Clay Shirky responds to Nick Carr and others who worry that “the internet is making us dumber”. But I think to some extent Shirky misidentifies the … Continue reading →

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Collateral Murder

Posted on 2010-06-09 by alan

Arrest over leaked video of US gunship attack – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The video really is shocking – especially since nothing I could see (except the camera) looked remotely like a weapon to me.  But the former soldier … Continue reading →

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A Mindful Beauty – Math and Poetry

Posted on 2010-06-08 by alan

I have nothing to add to this, just want to keep the link.

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Brain Scans as Lie Detectors

Posted on 2010-06-08 by alan

BBC News – Brain scans being misused as lie detectors, experts say. And of course those who claim to interpret the scans will also call themselves experts. (Which leads us off to another conversation entirely) I am troubled by the … Continue reading →

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Patterns of Change – Calculus as a Critical Literacy

Posted on 2010-06-08 by alan

Stephen Downes’ introductory blog posting for the second week of the Critical Literacies Online Course ( CritLit2010 ) deals mainly with how we describe change, and in fact it would (with some minor edits) be the basis of a good … Continue reading →

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Why People Hate Mathematics and Atheists

Posted on 2010-06-04 by alan

Jason Green’s response to the readings for Week 1 of the Downes&Kop Critical Literacies course concludes with the question  “how does one think critically without it coming across as a baseline of distrust?” I actually think that a “baseline of … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematics, religion | Tagged | 1 Comment

Shaw « Deep Packet Inspection

Posted on 2010-04-18 by alan

Shaw « Deep Packet Inspection. I do believe that DPI and related technologies will be abused by ISPs and media conglomerates if they are allowed to do so – and also that they should not have the option to arbitrarily … Continue reading →

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LRB · Joseph Stiglitz · The Non-Existent Hand

Posted on 2010-04-18 by alan

LRB · Joseph Stiglitz · The Non-Existent Hand. One comment in particular rang a bell for me. Often the use of a mathematical model is considered  as giving predictions greater credibility when all it really does is ensure that they … Continue reading →

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iPod Levy Proposal Makes Sense

Posted on 2010-03-30 by alan

Michael Geist – Angus Defends iPod Levy Proposal. IF the “Canadian solution” of a media levy is valid (and I think it is), then there is no logical reason to distinguish in any way between different types of digital memory. … Continue reading →

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OnLine Educational Resources

Posted on 2010-01-09 by alan

Scott Leslie may be on the right track with another 1/4-baked idea – OER “virtual reference librarian” at EdTechPost, but I suspect that it may be less with the idea itself than with the doubt he expresses as follows: <<Is … Continue reading →

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Have a Heart!

Posted on 2009-11-21 by alan

It is always interesting when a probability question produces a counter-intuitive result, and the following “glimpse a heart” question is a wonderful example of that:-

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Hard Problems

Posted on 2009-11-20 by alan

hardproblemsmovie.com is the website of a documentary made about the US team in the 2006 International Math Olympiad. << Although American students on the whole rank well behind many countries in mathematics, American math Olympiad teams regularly finish among the … Continue reading →

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Why Math?

Posted on 2009-11-06 by alan

A couple of recent additions to the arsenal of reasons for promoting mathematics education are this recent article by Ian Stewart in the UK Telegraph and the collection of ‘Math Matters – Apply It’ posters developed by SIAM (the Society … Continue reading →

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Stanford Study of Writing

Posted on 2009-11-06 by alan

The Stanford Study of Writing provides a welcome counterpoint to some of the nonsense that has been put about regarding impact of the internet on literacy.

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A Widening Gap

Posted on 2009-11-01 by alan

The Back Page article by Joseph Ganem in this month’s APS News suggests that nominal content and student capability outcomes in US high school mathematics are moving in opposite directions – and attributes this largely to attempts to introduce abstract … Continue reading →

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Blog Action Day

Posted on 2009-10-15 by alan

This year’s Blog Action Day is devoted to the theme of Climate Change and an understanding of mathematics is certainly essential for anyone involved in making making decisions about how to respond to this issue (which in a democracy is … Continue reading →

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How to remember trig ratios

Posted on 2009-10-05 by alan

Inventing cute mnemonics is fun, and the process of inventing and checking them may help reinforce the definitions, but beyond that they really are useless – and I believe they do more harm than good when people actually try to … Continue reading →

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Facebook Problems caused by Skype Firefox extension

Posted on 2009-09-28 by alan

Recently Facebook has been running very slow for me and even just hanging completely on page reload. I wasted a lot of time trying things within Facebook and after reading of many others with similar problems was even considered abandoning … Continue reading →

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Teaching math using interactive white boards

Posted on 2009-09-21 by alan

This interview with a recent convert to teaching math using interactive white boards includes a lot of good ideas for using the computer display but  leaves me wondering what the IWB adds over what could be done with a tablet … Continue reading →

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