Category Archives: Math

8 Year Old Math Prodigy Corrects Science Exhibit

Math prodigy corrects Discovery Place (Phb broke the link so I removed it):

The exhibit had traveled to eight cities in four years. “And no one found this mistake — I just couldn’t believe it,” Briere said. The equations were developed at the Ontario Science Center, a museum similar to Discovery Place. The Canada museum will likely mail a new display for the pyramid to Charlotte by the end of the month, Briere said.

Find the Error…

A jelly bean has a volume of about 1 cubic cm.This container is half a pyramid.
Its base measures 46 cm by 23 cm and its height is 72 cm.
Here’s the formula to find the volume: 1/3 x base area x height.
Now divide your answer by 2 since this is half a pyramid.
Now multiply your answer by 0.9 to account for spaces between the jelly beans.
The answer should be 22,853.

Did you find the error? (it would be better with a photo but I can’t find one.

Knowledge Is Power – Teaching Math

Knowledge Is Power Program:

IM was the second charter school founded for low-income D.C. students by KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP had gained a national reputation for math instruction. The KIPP leaders in D.C. had good reason to think, as they told Suben, that “we have math pretty much figured out.” Suben, 23 at the time, still thought she could do better. She told her supervisors she was going to produce her own fifth-grade math curriculum. A year later, her students achieved the largest one-year math score jump ever seen at a KIPP school (or any other school that I know of), from the 16th to the 77th percentile.

Suben said: “My primary goal as a teacher is to help my students understand the reasoning behind math rules and procedures. I have several core beliefs about this: (1) Understanding is constructed by the learner, not passively received from the teacher. (2) Understanding is built by making connections between as many strands of knowledge as possible. (3) Understanding is galvanized through communication. (4) Understanding is only valuable when you reflect on it and question it.”

The core of her method is the workbook she produced last year on the fly. It “lets students build their own notes and create their own examples. It is incredibly active learning,” she said. They were encouraged to write down the meaning of important terms and strategies they used that worked with certain kinds of problems.

So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist?

Dynamics of Cats (good name don’t you think) has an interesting series of posts: So, you want to be an astrophysicist? The latest is: Part 2.5 – grad school by Steinn SigurÃ°sson:

Think very seriously about whether you want to do theory, observation, data analysis or instrumentation.
You may end up doing things you never imagined out of necessity (like theorists go take observations, cause if they don’t no one else will; or observers running simulations, or building the instrument they need to do the observations etc etc).
…
Finally: READ!!! Pro-actively.
Check arXiv regularly and thoroughly. Read the papers relevant to you and anything else that looks interesting.
Read the references! They are there for a reason. Read the citations – if a paper is interesting, papers which cite it are also likely to be interesting. Use the ADS “C” option liberally and look through it quickly. If in doubt ask you advisor, or just read it anyway.

Next, the slightly tricky issue of what we actually “do”, research wise type of thingy. Might take a while…

arXiv.org is a (even the) great open access article resource. “Open access to 400,419 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.”

NSF Undergraduate STEM Scholarships

NSF Undergraduate Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM).

“This program makes grants to institutions of higher education to support scholarships for academically talented, financially needy students, enabling them to enter the workforce following completion of an associate, baccalaureate, or graduate level degree in science and engineering disciplines. Grantee institutions are responsible for selecting scholarship recipients, reporting demographic information about student scholars, and managing the S-STEM project at the institution.” Students apply directly to the school.

Related: July post on this program (applications are taken each semester) – More science and engineering fellowships and grants

The Emperor of Math

Shing-Tung Yau: The Emperor of Math by Dennis Overbyte

For nine months of the year, Dr. Yau is a Harvard math professor, best known for inventing the mathematical structures known as Calabi-Yau spaces that underlie string theory, the supposed “theory of everything.”
…
But the other three months he is what his friend Andrew Strominger, a Harvard physicist, called “the emperor ascendant of Chinese science,” one of the most prominent of the “overseas Chinese” who return home every summer to work, teach, lobby, inspire and feud like warlords in an effort to advance world-class science in China.

Math, Marketing and Medical Studies

Treat Me? by Darshak Sanghavi:

What, after all, does a 31 percent relative reduction in heart attacks mean? In the case of the 1995 study, it meant that taking Pravachol every day for five years reduced the incidence of heart attacks from 7.5 percent to 5.3 percent. This indeed means that there were 31 percent fewer heart attacks in patients taking the drug. But it also means that the “absolute risk” of a heart attack for any given person dropped by only 2.2 percentage points* (from 7.5 percent to 5.3 percent).

I must say this seems pretty obvious to me, but I would agree this might not be obvious to many, unfortunately (see: Scientific Illiteracy and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement). And yes I don’t put it past people to present things in ways which benefit the presenter, with the hope of taking advantage of math challenged (just look at all the ridiculous mortgage and other loan marketing).

Math for America

Math for America is an organization focused on improving math education in the USA. They offer Newton Fellowships for those who would like to become math teachers in New York City (for 180 individuals between 2004 and 2008). They plan to expand the program to other cities in the future. Aplications are due by 9 February, 2007.

Putting his Money Where His Math is by Joshua Roebke:

Nearly 40 percent of all public high school math teachers do not have a degree in math or a related field. Even the best curriculum in the world, the reasoning goes, isn’t going to inspire students if unqualified individuals are teaching them. (In a recent round of testing, the U.S. placed 24th out of 29 nations in math proficiency.)

The fellowships above aim to encourage those with math, and related, degrees to teach math.

Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology

Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology

Students may enter as individuals or as part of a team. Applications are due by 2 Oct, 2006. Up to thirty individual students and thirty teams (of 2 or 3 students) are chosen to compete at six regional competitions hosted by our partner universities MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, UT Austin and UC Berkeley.

Students who win their regional competition receive a silver medal and scholarships of $3,000 (team members receive $6,000 to be divided equally between team members) and go on to compete at the national event in New York City. The top individual and top team each receive $100,000 scholarships. Runners up receive scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.

The man who saved geometry

The man who saved geometry by Siobhan Roberts:

Coxeter’s legacy is the powerful push he gave the visual geometric method, and the resulting change in perspective that transformed the way mathematicians and scientists create and investigate. “Coxeter’s perspective and ideas are in the air we breathe,” said Ravi Vakil, at Stanford. “It’s not that his ideas are used to solve problems, it’s that the fundamental problems grow out of his ideas. He’s the soil.”

Math and Science Teacher Shortage

Lack of math, science teachers prompts U.S. alarm by Ledyard King:

The lack of certified science and math teachers is a growing quandary for schools around the nation, particularly those in poor neighborhoods. Lawmakers in Washington are proposing to spend billions over the next several years to encourage more teachers to enter those subject fields.
…
Government money could help replicate programs like the University of Pennsylvania Science Teachers Institute, which — at no cost — gives current science teachers an intensive, 26-month course to give them a deeper understanding of science and improve their delivery to students.

This article (from January of this year) is not new information – the shortage of qualified teachers has been a problem for quite some time.