There's a neat article [1] in the September-October 2008 issue of American Scientist (although sadly, this particular article seems not to be online) in which Brian Hayes discusses the Monty Hall problem and people's strong resistance to the official solution...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 7:10 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today Chad has an interesting post about attitudes among academics toward math and science versus the humanities and arts. The general attitude Chad sees on display in his academic milieu is that a gappy knowledge of art history or music...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:12 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Some screechy monkey or other tagged me on the song chart meme. The idea seems to be to come up with a visual/graphical representation of a song or some lyrical subset of it. In other words, you can get your...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 4:50 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Impatience is easier to quantify if you're good with numbers.
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 1:38 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Will going meatless stave off global warming better than losing the SUV? Or are we comparing apples and Citroëns?
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 11:57 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On my last post, Kristine commented: My favorite "finals week activity" was defending to two students why they couldn't take the lab exams three weeks after all of their classmates took it, just because they realized now that they never...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 7:11 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A real nerd can combine love of math and poetry, like so: {(12+144+20+3(4)^0.5)/7}+5(11) = 81 + 0 It's a true equation. And, it's a limerick. Read it out loud and you'll see:...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 8:30 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Numeracy and innumeracy
Sadly, this makes me think more kids should have been watching M&M commercials in December of 1999. As reported by the Gainesville Sun: Proofreaders at the University of Florida appear to have failed the Pepsi challenge. UF has called off...
Read on »
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:55 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks