Monday Miscellany

...Science fiction, savantism, mushy Common Core, MOOCs, take your pick:

1) Both math and science fiction geeks should find Sol Lederman's latest wide-ranging podcast with Chuck Adler, physicist and recent author of "Wizards, Aliens, and Starships," interesting; lots of ideas tossed around:

http://wildaboutmath.com/2014/02/13/chuck-adler-inspired-by-math-33/

2) I sometimes take note of prodigies and savants here, and the Jason Padgett story is one of the most interesting (Jason attained his mathematical artistic talents only after having been mugged and receiving a severe head injury). A new book out, "Struck By Genius," chronicles his story:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0544-04560-6

3) and then there's this:

“If you were to graph the creative flexibility afforded our highly educated and maximally qualified teachers over time with common core, you would find that both the first derivative of the function and, most alarmingly, the second derivative of the function, are negative. There is no point of inflection as the function approaches infinity (i.e., increasingly decreasing teacher autonomy, with no turnaround in sight.)”

If you haven't a clue what that's all about, read the rest of an engineer's commentary on Common Core here:

http://tinyurl.com/lu5e4w2

4) Finally, MOOCs are full of good, bad, and uncertainty, and continue receiving lots of criticism from outside observers -- sure, there are various numbers/statistics that give rise to such negative views, BUT I for one continue to think we're still very early in the game of a revolutionary development.  Perhaps no one has thought about (and worked on) MOOCs any more than Keith Devlin, and so another quick take from him defending their future:

The Oracle of Devlin ;-)

I wish that just once Keith Devlin would write a blog post that I could yawn at and didn't feel obligated to refer my readers to. But the man just seems incapable of writing anything mundane or trite or ordinary. His latest thoughtful offering, on MOOCs and "quantitative reasoning," here:

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2013/12/moqr-anyone-learning-by-evaluating.html

I love watching Dr. Devlin's experience with MOOC-building evolve over time, and his openness/honesty in letting us observe as he rides the roller-coaster of hope/doubt/optimism/pessimism/confidence/uncertainty that seem to coincide with the development of MOOCs (if not education change/reform in general!!)
He will be substituting something he calls "Test Flight" in place of a final exam in the next iteration (beginning Feb. 3) of his own mathematical-thinking MOOC, and watching to see if it succeeds or 'crashes and burns.'

He winds down this particular piece with these contemplative words:

"The more people learn to view failure as an essential constituent of good learning, the better life will become for all. As a world society, we need to relearn that innate childhood willingness to try and to fail. A society that does not celebrate the many individual and local failures that are an inevitable consequence of trying something new, is one destined to fail globally in the long term."

MOOCs as "Silicon Valley's Next Grand Challenge"

Professor Keith Devlin once again (this time in Huffington Post) with a thoughtful post on the future of MOOCs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-keith-devlin/why-moocs-remain-silicon-_b_4289739.html

Wish I could just quote the whole thing, but I'll leave you with these bits:

"The fact is, Silicon Valley has yet to come to terms with education... A lot of what goes on in good (sic) education is almost certainly not scalable. That means the familiar hockeystick growth in users that can result in a hugely profitable IPO or buyout is not likely. On the other hand, as companies like Pearson and Apple know very well, the market for any particular educational product renews every twelve months as children and young adults move through the system."

"[MOOCs] are not 'regular university courses online' and they won't replace universities. They may well, however, reach a stage where they disrupt higher education, and if so, institutions that don't adapt to a changing landscape are indeed likely to go out of business."

"...there you have tomorrow's talent supply. Those huge [MOOC] dropout rates that were once regarded as a big problem turn out to have been our first glimpse of an amazing global filter for people with commitment, persistence and ability."

"MOOCs do not and, I believe, cannot replace a good university education. But they can, and in some cases already have, provide a pathway to such education for millions of people around the world who, for various reasons, do not at present have any access. Scale that across the entire world, and you have disruption."

...Meanwhile, for any interested, and who haven't already seen it, my overview of Noson Yanofsky's "The Outer Limits of Reason" (a fabulous volume I heartily recommend to all science-types) is now up at MathTango:

http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/11/phenomenal-book.html





 

NSA Critic/Curmudgeon To Again Teach MOOC Course

;-)

The 3rd edition of Keith Devlin's MOOC course "Introduction To Mathematical Thinking" is coming up beginning Sept. 2 (...I understand it will include a special added section this go-around on whistleblowing and NSA thought control…. er, no, nevermind, just kidding, not on the syllabus).

Seriously though, anyone contemplating joining the 13,000 already signed up for the course should read what must be Keith's best intro yet to what the course IS and ISN'T (I suspect a LOT of people sign up for the course with a mistaken notion of what it will be like!):

http://mooctalk.org/2013/08/13/evaluation-rubrics-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Early on, Keith states,

"With the primary focus on helping students develop an new way of thinking, the course was always very light on “content” but high on internal reflection. A typical assignment question might require four or five minutes to write out the answer; but getting to the point where that is possible might take the student several hours of thought, sometimes days."

It is a long post that covers a lot of general ground, and should be read by anyone thinking of taking Keith's course, but may well be of value to anybody thinking of taking… OR, offering… any MOOC.

...Oh, and lucky Princetonites! Dr. Devlin (who is based at Stanford) divulges in the post that he will be spending a term at Princeton early next year teaching in the undergraduate classroom (something he hasn't done for years).

Meanwhile, in other news, the new (101st) 'Carnival of Mathematics' is up-and-running here:

http://aperiodical.com/2013/08/carnival-of-mathematics-101-prime-numbered-special-edition/

and the 65th 'Math Teachers At Play' carnival is here:

http://mathandmultimedia.com/2013/08/14/math-teachers-at-play-65/

Monday Morning Buffet

Catching up on a few math links today:

1) Interesting view on how the trendy interest in "data science" or "big data" is different from academic statistics… and is that for good or ill:

http://simplystatistics.org/2013/04/15/data-science-only-poses-a-threat-to-biostatistics-if-we-dont-adapt/

2) Story on elite school, Amherst, rejecting affiliation with MOOC promoter EdX:

http://tinyurl.com/cqtbbh5

I'm curious how many, if any other, elite institutions have rejected outright invitations to participate in MOOC programs???

3) A nice introduction to limits from the "Better Explained" site here:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-introduction-to-limits/

4) Have to admit I'd never heard of prodigy and lightning calculator Shakuntala Devi, an Indian math genius and astrologer(!), but apparently she was well-known to many. She passed away yesterday at 83. Learn about her interesting life and prowess at Wikipedia (which has additional links):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi

5) …and lastly, I've put up an overview of Jim Holt's 2012 "Why Does the World Exist" volume over at my MathTango blog:

http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/04/from-whence.html

ADDENDUM: haven't had a chance to listen yet, but just realized Sol Lederman has a new podcast up with Ken Fan of "Girls' Angle," an organization specifically devoted to improving girls' experience with high school math:

http://wildaboutmath.com/2013/04/21/ken-fan-inspired-by-math-29/

Two for Tuesday

1) Here's a very good, informative commentary on Keith Devlin's math MOOC course (now at the 6-week point), from one of those enrolled in it; especially good read for anyone contemplating taking the course:

http://tinyurl.com/bqe9jck

(Keith is traveling right now, but it's probably close to time for him to weigh in as well with another update on the course at his MOOC blog.)

2) Overlapping a bit the Matt Springer piece I referenced a few days ago, here's another interesting post on the randomness of pi, this time from Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/are-the-digits-of-pi-random_b_3085725.html

Speaking of pi, I'll leave you with this wonderful question wafting in your brain (...David Wees recently tweeted it as coming from his nephew, and I of course love its self-referential aspect):

"If Pi contains every possible sequence of numbers, does it contain itself?"

(...I think the answer is pretty clearly 'no,' but still a marvelous question from a nephew.)

Devlin on Bonobos etc... ;-)

Yet another great piece from Keith Devlin, this time at Huffington Post, once again taking the educational system to task, while contemplating the value and future of MOOCs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-keith-devlin/massive-open-online-courses_b_2946591.html

He compares the stagnant K-12 educational system we have with  "the educational method animal psychologists use to train Bonobo apes."  And continues, "More to the point, it is also the method that was developed (for children) in the early 19th Century, when countries around the world were introducing universal education. Its purpose was to prepare a workforce to fuel the post industrial revolution society. A key requirement was to train millions of people to think inside particular boxes. And that is what it did, very effectively." But, he goes on to say, it is "woefully inappropriate in today's world."

So many trenchant thoughts in the piece, be sure to read the whole article, but here are a few more excerpted lines to whet your appetite:

"Given the stranglehold on U.S. public K-12 education held by various powerful groups with a vested interest in preserving the status quo, buttressed further by others who want to enter the same lucrative market, MOOCs offer a wonderful opportunity to overcome the damage schools do."

"...those of us developing these new courses need to resist the pressures -- from many sides, including many of the students themselves -- to conform to existing educational models."

"I think that with some effort, we can scale enough of it so that MOOCs can make up for much of the damage resulting from putting 21st Century students through a 19th Century school system. And we can do it on a global scale."

EdX, MOOCs, the Road Ahead

I suspect in response to my latest post over at MathTango, and/or recent one here, Sol Lederman emailed me a link to another blog that has a recent interview with Anant Agarwal, President of edX, another major MOOC endeavor that competes with Coursera and other online education efforts (edX is a non-profit backed by Harvard and MIT, two educational interests you may have heard of).  It is a great, and positive, discussion of the future of the MOOC model (over 7 pages though, so it requires some reading commitment, but worth it); it also delineates some of the differences between Coursera and edX:

http://tinyurl.com/b8oy5aw

Too much to try and summarize, but I think this quote from the interviewer, Sramana Mitra, actually captures much of what Agarwal is suggesting:

"This is the paradigm where education is going. I truly believe online education is the driver. The old model of education was the ‘sage on stage’ model, where a professor stood in the front of a class to guide learning. That is fine if you have excellent professors, but there are really smart professors who do not have the charisma to present a topic in a way that students can understand. When quality content is delivered from an online source, there is a consistency in the content. The course itself can be benchmarked and the results tracked, allowing the course content to mature to ensure students are learning the material they are supposed to learn. The paradigm shift is toward the blended model. Even if you have a mediocre or substandard professor, the course material itself is excellent. The professors can still serve a  worthy function as they are there managing the classroom and guiding discussions. They provide structure and administration. The students learn from world-class content. That is a highly scalable education model."

I've already expressed my belief that MOOCs ARE a wave of the future (in some form)... but IF, with the rapidly-growing time, energy, money, and talent going into them, they indeed fail, it won't be for lack of creative effort... and it will say a great deal about the nature of human learning.

The Future of MOOClear Power?

I'm fascinated watching Keith Devlin twist and squirm a bit as he works his way through MOOCs, wavering slightly back-and-forth between optimism and uncertainty (or at least caution) about their future. His latest upbeat post, as he embarks on his second go-at-it (beginning March 4), is here:

http://mooctalk.org/2013/02/20/here-we-go-again/

Devlin notes that MOOCs are still very young, barely out of the starting gate (indeed he compares the effort to "running a marathon"), and that 'missteps' are to be expected. I totally agree, and find it remarkable that some folks already pan them as a failed experiment, or, as Keith writes, "Anyone who views such outcomes as failures has clearly never tried to do anything new and challenging, where you have to make up some of the rules as you go on."
My own ultimate optimism for MOOCs (long-term) stems from one simple reason… supply-and-demand (...it's worked well for capitalism free enterprise in the past). There are a limited number of truly excellent programs and instructors in any given academic field, but there are often 100s of thousands of prospective students around a shrinking globe who would love access to them. The demand for such access, once it is viewed as possible, will drive those in charge to find an effective way of making it work -- we may not know that precise "way" yet, but 'necessity (or demand) is the mother of invention'… in short, as others have noted, MOOCs are the avenue to a scalability that is desirable but was previously unfeasible. Tangentially, after medicine, higher education is probably the next most inflationary cost in the U.S… a cost that must be reigned in if education is to remain broad-based and not the luxury of an elite. MOOCs are a clear egalitarian antidote for that cost-control.
Anyway, here's wishing Keith great success with his second MOOC endeavor... and his 3rd, and 4th, and 5th and....

(Again, if any reader here is taking Keith's course, I'd love to hear reports back about how it goes).

Talk Mathy To Me! ;-)

2 interviews to pass along today…

Over at mathblogging.org, their latest transcribed interview is with the always interesting mathematical physicist John Baez of Azimuth blog: 

http://mathblogging.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/john-baez/

And Sol Lederman now has up his second podcast interview with some fellow named Keith Devlin, who he first interviewed almost a year ago -- guess he's giving this Keith guy another chance to try and get it right this time… ;-))

http://wildaboutmath.com/2013/01/22/keith-devlin-%E2%80%93-inspired-by-math-17/

but… seriously… in it, Keith talks almost exclusively, and extensively, about MOOCs, "massive open online courses" (too late now, but I wish someone had dreamed up a better name for these ventures!) …his experience with them and their future. It's a long (100 mins.!) 2-part interview. Very interesting; very worthwhile stuff. I especially enjoyed the last 30 mins.-or-so where Keith discusses the future of education (and Sol points out that until recently online degrees and education were very much looked down upon, while Keith is predicting a very bright and expansive future ahead for digital education with the MOOC model). Also, at the end Dr. Devlin hints about a new, separate learning project he has underway that will be publicly debuting in about 3 weeks!

Devlin, Dunbar, Dominoes...

1) Registration for the second run of Keith Devlin's Stanford MOOC course, "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" is underway (course beginning Mar. 4 for 10 weeks). More details here (where it states, "The goal of the course is to help you develop a valuable mental ability – a powerful way of thinking that our ancestors have developed over three thousand years").:

https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

I've previously (highly) recommended the 92-page book Keith authored for this course (same title as course), but it would be incomparably better if read in conjunction with the course itself, than on its own.  I've not taken the course myself, but sincerely hope that some readers here do imbibe in Dr. Devlin's offering (and maybe even report back to us!?). There is very little computational math involved, but the ideas/work required for completion still may not be easy (depending on your background).

2) I wrote about the so-called "Dunbar number" here last year (the notion that neurological constraints limit one's close friendships or interpersonal relationships to very roughly 150 people). Now a much longer general article on Dr. Dunbar and his illustrious number:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks#p1

3) A recent nice little tutorial on the number e and ln here:

http://tinyurl.com/bnpfle6

 4) And lastly... how to knock over the Empire State Building with dominoes… and a little physics (a short, fun, but also educational, video):

Keith Devlin Wrapping Up

"For sure I’ll offer another version of this course next year, with changes based on the huge amounts of data you get with a global online class of 64,000 students. Despite the enormous effort in designing, preparing, and running such a massive enterprise, there are three very good reasons to pursue this…
"...there is a huge, overall, feel-good factor for those of us involved, knowing that we can help to provide life-changing opportunities for people around the world who would otherwise have no access to quality higher education." --Keith Devlin

Keith Devlin has begun writing his wrap-up to his 5-week MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), "Introduction To Mathematical Thinking," offered through Stanford University. Fascinating, insightful reading… and a must for anyone interested in the future of education and online learning.

http://mooctalk.org/2012/10/26/answering-the-64000-students-questions/

He touches upon research opportunities, the "feel-good factor," trolls, and grade obsession, among initial topics he's addressing, with more to follow.
The lecture hall is now the world.

TIME Reviews MOOC

TIME magazine reviews Keith Devlin's Stanford MOOC course (on "mathematical thinking"), the pluses and mostly minuses...:

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/02/mooc-brigade-with-free-online-classes-guilt-is-part-of-the-bargain/

The experience of the writer is not terribly positive, but I suspect is not uncommon when 1000s of individuals sign up for an online course, especially if they've never taken one before. As Devlin himself no doubt realizes, this is an experiment-in-progress. One bottom-line, I think, is that the 'free'dom of many MOOC courses (both monetarily and pacing-wise) can be a double-edged sword: lending the student a lot of leeway and lower stress, but also a lack of discipline/incentive and ease of calling-it-quits.

In other matters, if you're up for some heavier-duty reading/thinking, the gents over at "Gödel's Last Letter" have a post up centered around ramifications of finding P = NP (but I DON'T recommend this for the writer of the TIME piece ;-):

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/why-we-lose-sleep-some-nights/