Last week, Nurse Hatchet provided some thoughts about blogging and work, namely that one should never do the former at the latter, and that one should only occasionally and very very carefully do the former about the latter. Her advice is reasonable enough, and I’m paranoid enough, that I plan to follow her recommendations to the letter, and that’s why I’ve been spending the past five days rereading her post in the hopes that I missed the “unless there’s something really really juicy, in which case, WRITE AT LENGTH AND IN GREAT DETAIL” exception the first twenty times. But, alas.”Let me give you a taste of just what I’m leaving you in the dark about, okay? Here – my first week of work involved a lot of mini-meetings, most rather standard, with the experienced staff: here’s where to find the office supplies, here’s a project you might be working on next month, here’s how to log on to the office database. That sort of thing. And then yesterday: here’s a pile of confidential emails that illustrate just how batshit insane some of the people we deal with are. And although I want so very much to elaborate on this, I MUST NOT TELL YOU ANY MORE. Never since Abraham laid his son upon the altar has God so tested one of His people. Oh, I thought of using the old “just make stuff up” device to satisfy the urge, but this is so completely a case of truth being stranger than any sort of fiction I can spin that there’s really no point. Really – think of the craziest type of work-related emails you can imagine. These are crazier.”Other than that, this job? Pretty good so far! I like the people I work with! The commute is too long! It sure is raining an awful lot these days!”And before anyone points out the obvious – my last job was a contract position, and I suspect that I could have skinned a live cat in any one of my classes and the university still wouldn’t have fired me and looked for someone to replace me for less than six months, at zero notice.
Archive for October, 2005
Thus commented Geoff the other day. Timely remark, that one, for tonight a whopping eighty-five percent of Canadian adults waited eagerly to see if they took home the Lotto 6/49’s record-breaking $40 million jackpot, and we all know what that means: it means that it’s time for journalists nationwide to present us with a panel of mathematical geniuses who regret to inform you, Joe Ticketbuyer, that you’re probably not going to win:” The results of the biggest lottery jackpot in Canadian history will be announced tonight, but experts are warning people not to get their hopes up.”For the uninitiated: you play the Lotto 6/49 by selecting 6 numbers out of 49. You win (part of) the jackpot if all six of your numbers all match the six numbers drawn.”According to experts, this event – whose probability, by the way, I had my never-were-any-good-at-math-and-always-hated-the-subject psych majors compute in my discrete math class last year, and most actually managed to do so correctly – is unlikely.” What are the chances that your ticket will hit the $40 million Lotto 6/49 jackpot?” Not good, according to Simon Fraser University Professor (well, senior lecturer, but who’s keeping track? – Ed.) Malgorzata Dubiel. She has calculated that the odds are just short of one in 14 million.”All the while muttering to herself: “For this I got a Ph.D.?”"Semantic quibble: the odds are slightly better than one in 14 million; they’re one in 13 983 816. So I take issue with the use of the phrase “just short”, which implies “a bit less than”, no?”Anyway, is followed by three paragraphs about the would-be philanthropist who said he’d donate half his winnings to charity if he won the jackpot (he didn’t), and then this:” [Dubiel] also debunked the myth that a person can “crack the code” of lotteries.” “Everything we know about mathematics says no, it can’t be done.”"This makes it sound as though the sum total of the mathematical canon to date, from Archimedes to Zariski, was brought to bear on the age-old question of “Stochastic Processes: Totally Stochastic, Or Just Kind Of?”. And, at last, produced the long-awaited conclusion that as a matter of fact, God occasionally does play dice with the universe, at least when He’s choosing the Lotto numbers. On top of that, I wince at the “everything we know” wording, which is reminiscent of Underwood Dudley’s dealings with aspiring angle trisectors. Many of those sorry folks explained their obsession with the problem with something along the lines of “mathematicians say that trisecting an angle using compass and straightedge alone is impossible, but they’re just not trying hard enough.”"But I digress: whether or not the lotto code is crackable isn’t a mathematical question, dammit. If the code is crackable, it’s because the random number generator selecting the numbers is somehow not completely random, and seriously? Take it to a computer scientist, dude. (Except that lotto numbers are still selected by that spinny thing with the balls, no? And we’re asking a mathematician if it gets all spinny on the balls in a crackable way? Is this what people start thinking when they watch shows like Numbthreers?)” Dubiel admitted that there have been cases of people winning multiple times, but put it down to luck.”Note the use of the transitional term
Ode to general knowledge
Oct 24
I’ve stated before that I don’t believe that college is for everyone. For example, college is not for Stacy Perk, who just wants to write for Glamour magazine, but her dumbass school is making her learn stuff, and she doesn’t care enough about stuff to actually go to class and do her homework and shit, so her GPA is suffering and so she might get kicked out of j-school, OH THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL. (Where did I find this again?) There’s cheap dig about Glamour magazine (Americans spell
Show me the data.
Oct 20
What’s that you say? You’re sick of all those long-winded education rants that never go anywhere? Me too! However, I can’t pass up this opportunity to commend the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing for so succinctly summarizing everything that’s wrong with elementary-school-level mathematics education today. And in an exam that every prospective teacher in the state is required to write, to boot – now that’s efficient delivery!” Many people believe children will never learn mathematics if allowed to use pocket calculators. Having spent countless hours memorizing multiplication tables and doing long-division problems unaided by any mechanical device, many adults cannot conceive of anyone acquiring this knowledge without similar effort and practice. ______________. What many people fail to understand is that mathematics is constantly evolving; it is not a fixed body of facts. Students must still learn basic skills, but they do not need to perform the endlessly repetitive exercises that calculators largely eliminate. Youngsters can better use their time
[Crappy photo of Al Pacino in a car. Taken by me!] So, we’ve established that no one’s interested in my pottery. Tough crowd, but I’ve been spending nearly all of my time in the studio lately, so that’s all I’ve got. How about a story about my pottery and Al Pacino, then?”Gallery Show this week. Here’s my stuff. Those of my readers who follow the amateur pottery scene will note that the bulk of my work does not conform to the preferences of the consumer, who will pay good money for a turd dipped in blue glaze after rejecting every other colour of bowl, mug, vase, or plate, regardless of how skillfully made and well priced. I’m not kidding; every single one of my pieces that sold in the past two days was blue. Someone bought the fifth piece I made, ever. It was crap, but it was blue. Don Davis, author of one of my pottery bibles, once remarked that potters tend to focus on form, while non-potters pay closer attention to the surface of a pot. This certainly holds true in my experience, and it’s a shame, because glazing is my weak suit, and it shows. Throwing is my strength and my passion, but only other potters seem to recognize that.”But, Al Pacino. Sales were slow at the gallery yesterday morning, and the other studio member who was manning the tables with me decided to duck out for a few minutes to promote our show. A few minutes turned into half and hour, and when K returned, she explained that she had had trouble getting across campus, what with the movie being filmed around the science building (*), and what with every student and their dog trying to get a piece of the star, Al Pacino, who was six feet from her, and her without her camera!”I had my camera. K dispatched me to the scene, and I had no trouble finding it. Or, as it turns out, walking into it: I soon found myself six feet from Al Pacino while a handful of security guards idly looked on, but I convinced myself that it wasn’t actually him, because wouldn’t the security guards have held me back? As I turned a corner, a stagehand called out to me, “Hey! Get back! Only extras are allowed in here!”"”I’m an extra,” I lied, because, why not? I had nothing better to do yesterday than be in a movie.”The stagehand didn’t buy it. “No, you’re not,” he proclaimed with such conviction that I couldn’t help but feel hurt. What gave it away? I surveyed the actual extras across from me as I tried to assess what separated me so obviously from them. Was it my glasses? My aspherical breasts? My underwear-covering jeans?”The stagehand was forthcoming: “Our extras are not covered in dirt,” he sneered.”"Clay,” I corrected, self-consciously fingering the dried bits of slip in my hair. Nevertheless: point well taken.”I apologized for walking onto the scene, and explained that the security guards on the set had seen me and hadn’t tried to stop me, so I had assumed that the filming was taking place elsewhere. The stagehand sighed heavily. “Those are not security guards,” he explained slowly, “Those are actors playing security guards.”"I excused myself from the set. Off to the side, two female students were chatting up another assistant. The topic of conversation was something along the lines of Al Pacino is here? Like, right here? Can we see him? Can we get his autograph? I injected myself into the discussion long enough to ask what the movie was called, because on the off-chance that its editors suck, then they’ll leave in the scene that was filmed when I accidentally wandered onto the set. Look for the clay-covered girl, appearing soon in a theatre near you!”"It’s called 88 Minutes,” replied the assistant. “It’s about a guy who has 88 minutes to find three people .”"”What three people?” asked one of the girls.”And at this, the assistant gave a lopsided grin, and said, “If it were up to me”- here he pointed – “it would be you, you,” – eyes settling on me, and a huge wink – “and you.”"A few hours later, when I’d gotten myself to a computer, I looked for some more information about 88 minutes. Here’s a plot summary:” [88 Minutes is a] thriller about a college professor who, while moonlighting as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI, receives a death threat telling him that he has only 88 minutes to live. In narrowing down possible suspects, he frantically seeks to communicate with a problem student, an ex-girlfriend, and a serial killer on death row. (**)”Which makes “and you” a contender for the worst pick-up line ever. Regardless, I have been really low on bloggable material lately, so I giggled and smiled back at the assistant, and handed him a promotional postcard for the gallery show. “You’ll have a lot longer than eighty-eight minutes to find us,” I said, and winked back at him.”I spent this morning in the studio attaching handles to mugs, and just after lunch I wandered up to our display to see how sales were going. “You sold some stuff,” the studio secretary informed me. “Some guy came in and asked for you specifically. He didn’t know your name, just told me what you looked like. It was weird. I told him where your stuff was.”"”Dude in his thirties or so, tanned, light brown hair?” I asked.”"Yeah,” replied the secretary.”Son of a gun. “Did he buy anything?” I asked, incredulous.”He did. He bought a mug.It was blue.
It is difficult to overstate the value of practice. For a new skill to become automatic or for new knowledge to become long-lasting, sustained practice, beyond the point of mastery, is necessary.” By sustained practice I mean regular, ongoing review or use of the target material (e.g., regularly using new calculating skills to solve increasingly more complex math problems, reflecting on recently-learned historical material as one studies a subsequent history unit, taking regular quizzes or tests that draw on material learned earlier in the year). This kind of practice past the point of mastery is necessary to meet any of these three important goals of instruction: acquiring facts and knowledge, learning skills, or becoming an expert.”But what does that guy know, anyway? The times (tables), they are a-changin’! Mathematics is evolving! Get with the program!”I’m curious about something, though: is this anti-repetition view unique to mathematics education? Have the musicians among my readers, for instance, noticed a similar trend in music pedagogy? Music is EVOLVING! It is not a FIXED BODY OF FACTS! We have new-fangled technomology that enables students to bypass all that boring stuff, like learning scales! Or do music students still practice scales, even though scales really aren’t that much fun to practice? I know that when I teach pottery, I spend a fair bit of time focusing on the basic skill of centering the lump of clay, even though it’s more rewarding to throw teapots.”Onward: Youngsters can better use their time