Category: Learning, Education, & Training

Source: Slaying the ‘math monster’: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learning how to think | NWADG

“How often do you hear people say, ‘I can’t read. I hate reading’?”

researchers suggest that apprehension of math — math anxiety — plays a big enough role in the ability to master STEM subjects that it needs to be addressed.

Failure is a tool. Free your mind to learn from failure.

Memorizing formulas doesn’t help anyone to be more logical.

“People associate mathematics with numbers, naturally,” Lawhorn says. “They think it’s the study of numbers. But it’s really more the study of patterns. I think the human brain is wired for mathematics in general.”

“People say, ‘I’m never going to use algebra!’ But that’s not really the point,” she says. “The point is you’re learning how to think. You’re learning how to process.”

According to an analysis (PDF) by The College Board, in the ten years between 2005 and 2016 a total of 270,000 high school students in the United States opted to take the national exam in computer science (the “Computer Science Advanced Placement” exam).

Compare that to the numbers from Russia: A 2014 study (PDF) on computer science (called “Informatics” in Russia) by the Perm State National Research University found that roughly 60,000 Russian students register each year to take their nation’s equivalent to the AP exam — known as the “Unified National Examination.” Extrapolating that annual 60,000 number over ten years suggests that more than twice as many people in Russia — 600,000 — have taken the computer science exam at the high school level over the past decade.

Source: Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia — Krebs on Security

although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011.

“Very few middle schools teach this in the United States,” Allen Paller said. “We don’t teach these topics in general and we definitely don’t test them. The Russians do and they’ve been doing this for the past 30 years.”

One distinguished psychologist explains why he believes this is so and how to reverse course

Source: Is the U.S. Education System Producing a Society of “Smart Fools”? – Scientific American

We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.

Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.
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ethical reasoning involves eight steps: seeing that there’s a problem to deal with (say, you see your roommate cheat on an assignment); identifying it as an ethical problem; seeing it as a large enough problem to be worth your attention (it’s not like he’s just one mile over the speed limit); seeing it as personally relevant; thinking about what ethical rules apply; thinking about how to apply them; thinking what are the consequences of acting ethically—because people who act ethically usually don’t get rewarded; and, finally, acting.

If we start testing for these broader kinds of skills, schools will start to teach to them, because they teach to the test.

Rainbow Project at Yale

Kaleidoscope at Tufts

Panorama at Oklahoma State

Source: Is there a tension between creativity and accuracy? | Michael Nielsen

I believe there is a tension between behaviours which maximize accuracy and those which maximize creativity… A lot of important truths come from very irrational people.

Being overconfident in beliefs that most people hold is not at all the same as being overconfident in beliefs that few people hold.

To be creative, you need to recognize those barely formed thoughts, thoughts which are usually wrong and poorly formed in many ways, but which have some kernel of originality and importance and truth.

Source: Why do so few people major in computer science? | Dan Wang

In 2005, about 54,000 people in the US earned bachelor’s degrees in computer science. That figure was lower every year afterwards until 2014, when 55,000 people majored in CS.
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This is even more surprising when we consider that 1.90 million people graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2015, which is 31% higher than the 1.44 million graduates in 2005. (Data is via the National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics) That means that the share of people majoring in computer science has decreased, from 3.76% of the all majors in 2005 to 3.14% of all majors in 2015.