I'm a 6th grade math teacher with an EM elementary system. I started using Singapore math 5th grade level by myself last year, 2nd nine weeks and the stanines increased dramatically along with number sense scores. So this year I'm doing what Barry did and starting at 3B for measurement and continuing with 4A for my regular kids and 5A with the advanced kids.

I love the program! The kids learn so easily it's amazing!

Also, there is a student with asperger's in the advanced class! Finding ktm was serendipity!

[break]

Math is math. The texts we use are all basically the same. I earned my degree in engineering and loved teaching myself math. I figured I could teach other people to do what I do. After 5 years my [student] scores were good and I was looking for more ways to improve them. I read Liping Ma's book and started looking for "chinese" ways of teaching. The TIMMS results told me that Singapore was the best so finally I ordered Liping Ma's textbook from Houghton Mifflin and then Singapore Math. It didn't look that different. I tried Liping Ma's books on my remedial class and discovered that they couldn't even subtract well. The diagrams looked the same in the Singapore Math books, so I tried them out next.

I do my own thing, try to stay in my room and my kids learn! I do have some helicopter parents :) but after awhile they start to trust me and my kids are learning.

Also, I do try to let my special needs kids do what everyone else does and then find out what accommodations they really require. Most kids can do a lot more than preconceived notions. Nobody fails unless they do nothing. I require nightly homework which causes frustration occasionally, espcecially at the beginning of the year. There are quizzes everyday too.

[break]

I forgot to say... I buy everything myself. I have my own copy machine, laptop computer, software...

So far, no one has questioned my materials. I try to follow the general structure of the county's curriculum.

If your scores are good, no one will bother you.



wow

KTM Guest is one of those miracle teachers who's carrying our kids straight into the future — !

Talk about 21st century skills!

KTM Guest's kids are getting them!

Incredible.




what works versus whatever works

KTM Guest's comment is exactly what I imagine would or could be the best way to run our public schools: create a good, solid set of standardized tests, decide what scores we want students to attain, give this information to schools, then get out of the way and let teachers do the job.

That's what McDonald's did with its animal welfare audit.

They hired Temple (Grandin) to help them put her very simple 10-item animal welfare audit in place at supplier plants and told everyone they had to pass or forget selling to McDonald's.

In 18 months' time, the meatpacking industry had completely transformed its animal handling practices. This is an industry that was rife with abuse; animal welfare activists had been trying to reform the thing for decades. McDonald's & Temple did it in a year and a half. No one thought, going in, that was possible.

But it was.

Temple's audit is a classic "tight-loose" approach, strictly focused on outputs, not inputs. She doesn't tell plants what kind of flooring to install, how the lighting and heating have to work, how much training the employees have to have, etc., etc., etc.

She just tells the plants what has to be happening & not happening to the animals.

The animals can't be falling down; they can't be mooing in distress; they can't be getting whipped; they have to be unconscious before any butchering procedures are carried out.

She also rejects a zero-tolerance approach. Animal welfare activists typically want a requirement that all animals be killed on the first shot. Temple says that's never going to happen in the real world, because in the real world equipment malfunctions and accidents happen. She sets the bar at 95%. Ninety-five percent of the animals must be killed on the first attempt.

Plants that are audited using the 95% requirement end up doing better than plants audited using a 100% requirement. Temple has the data to prove it.




tight-loose for schools?

Last summer Temple and I wrote an op-ed laying out an audit for high schools. I'd read a lot of the research on high school outcomes, and we came up with three criteria:

• percent of students who graduate

• percent of students who go to college and graduate

• percent of students who, if they do not go to college, get and keep jobs that require either further vocational training, or moderate to long-term on the job training (this includes graduates who start their own businesses)
  

These three standards, I'd be willing to bet a decent sum of money, would distinguish good high schools from the mediocre and bad. (You'd have to be adjusted for SES, of course, but that's doable.) Any high school doing a good job educating its students would have high numbers graduating from high school, graduating from college, or finding and keeping good jobs offering on the job training.

We lost interest - maybe I should say confidence - in the op-ed after we finished, so we didn't send it to papers.

I've been wondering ever since whether a "whatever works" approach can be used in public schools.

Obviously, it can; that's what KTM Guest's county is using. In KTM Guest's county as long as teachers are showing results, nobody's telling them they have to use Everyday Math.

However, I've become very pessimistic about the odds that other counties, districts, and states will follow suit. Reforming the meatpacking industry, I've come to see, isn't analogous to reforming American public schools, in spite of the many similarities between children and a herd of never-tamed, mooing, stampeding farm animals. (I'm joking.)

Meatpacking plants were a mess. They were worse than a mess; they were a scandal.

But they weren't ideologically committed to being a mess. Meatpacking plants treated animals badly because it wasn't a priority not to treat animals badly. At least, that's my outsider's perspective. A historian would find a complex and complicated history, I'm sure. However, it's accurate to say that meatpacking plants weren't ideologically committed to beating up the animals.

Once McDonald's told them they had to stop beating up the animals, they figured it out and they figured it out fast. Temple has wonderful stories about plant troublemakers turning into plant troubleshooters practically overnight. One guy started maintaining equipment on an hourly basis, as I recall, so there wouldn't be all kinds of mechanical glitches that terrified the cattle and made them balk. He did this on his own. He was a line worker, a high school graduate & union employee who was a pain in the toochis. Once he had his standard to meet — only so many animals mooing in distress or getting zapped by electric prods — he came up with a new way meet it.

That would happen in public schools if ed school professors, administrators, and all teachers were pragmatists.

But they're not.

Public schools are run by people who are ideologically committed to their practices — people who adamantly do not see their practices as in any way harmful to children.

No Child Left Behind, a law I support, probably makes neoprogressives even more committed to those practices. In The Knowledge Deficit, E.D. Hirsch suggests an interesting sequence:

• neoprogressive educators define reading as a "formal" skill (find the main idea, "inferencing," etc.) rather than an ability that depends on content knowledge (broad vocabulary & general knowledge)

• increased testing drives progressive educators to drill these formal skills for hours every week in order to increase reading comprehension scores

• hours of tedious drill in "inferencing," "clarifying," "questioning the author" etc. lead neoprogressives to conclude that what students really need is more natural — more wholistic — modes of teaching
  

The upshot is that reading comprehension doesn't improve, but neoprogressives don't blame their teaching methods for the failure.

They blame the law.




hedgehogs and foxes

Neoprogressives are hedgehogs. They know one big thing — progressive education — and that one big thing guides every small thing they do. (Foxes know "many things.")

That would be great if the one big thing were correct.

Unfortunately, it's not. Hirsch has a great passage in The Schools We Need:

The history of American education since the 1930s has been the stubborn persistence of illusion in the face of reality. Illusion has not been defeated. But since reality cannot be defeated either, and since it determines what actually happens in the world, the result has been educational decline.

My question is always: why doesn't reality win?

Or, rather, why doesn't reality win at some point? How does an illusion persist for 100 years?

There are a number of answers to that, it seems, but a new one I've stumbled across recently is Philip Tetlock's finding that hedgehogs aren't inclined to admit error. They get more things wrong than foxes do in the first place, and when they are wrong they're the last ones to see it, if they ever do.

...hedgehogs are more likely than foxes to uphold double standards for judging historical counterfactuals. And this double standard indictment is itself double-edged. First, there is the selective openness toward close-call claims. Whereas chapter 4 shows that hedgehogs only opened to close-call arguments that insulated their forecasts from disconfirmation (the "I was almost right" defense), chapter 5 shows that hedgehogs spurn similar indeterminacy arguments that undercut their favorite lessons from history (the "I was not almost wrong" defense). Second, chapter 5 shows that hedgehogs are less likely than foxes to apologize for failing turnabout tests, for applying tougher standards to agreeable than to disagreeable evidence. Their defiant attitude was "I win if the evidence breaks in my direction" but "if the evidence breaks the other way, the methodology must be suspect."

I assume Tetlock would see me as a fox, but I've had plenty of I was almost right moments. Probably more than a few I was not almost wrong moments, too.

Reality is never going to win. Not without a lot of help.







Chapter 1: Quantifying the Unquantifiable

KTM Guest shows how to do it
hedgehogs and foxes



-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Sep 2006

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TheWinnerIs 07 Sep 2006 - 21:18 CatherineJohnson



Old Grouch left this comment on the subject of missing wallets:

Murphy's Law says that as soon as you get the replacement license, the purse will turn up. ;-)

Happened to me once: One of my cats stole my wallet and hid it under the dresser.

You ktm people know everything!

I should have talked to you before I cancelled every single credit card in my possession.

Christopher came home from school with word that my purse has been inside his backpack all day.

long story

diary of a mad housewife
Old Grouch calls it
Murphy's Law
Mark Roulo's wisdom for the ages
Susan takes the cure

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Sep 2006

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JohnDeweyExperiencesStomachFlu 08 Sep 2006 - 13:30 CatherineJohnson



I fear that our friend John Dewey is beginning to show the strain.

He started out gangbusters, enrolling in ed school, acing the Praxis II, landing a reasonable, non-crazed individual as professor of his first ed school class.

That was then.

This semester it's NCTM Time.

[pause - back shortly]


I think this may be my favorite part:

What grabbed my attention was the standard that required that students be able to solve quadratic equations in one variable with a graphing calculator as the primary tool. My feelings about graphing calculators aside, I noted to the others in my group that it said nothing about students learning the quadratic formula, much less its derivation. A woman in my group, in apparent defense of the standard, told me her daughter didn’t have to learn the quadratic formula in Algebra 1. I pointed to that standard and said “You’re looking at the reason why.”

When our turn came to report our findings to the class, I said the Algebra 1 standards were vague and allowed teachers to not teach the quadratic formula. Some others in the room agreed. The teacher—Mr. NCTM—in a thinly veiled, poker-faced support of anything resembling NCTM standards, responded that the standards were in fact, not “prescriptive”. This generated some discussion about giving teachers flexibility and I found myself in a debate with a bright young man who although agreeing that the quadratic formula should be taught was also caught in an unconscious effort to please the teacher. He found himself arguing that the standards were what must be taught “at a minimum”, that the non-prescriptive nature of the standard gave teachers flexibility to go beyond the minimum.

I've come to view language like "not prescriptive" as fighting words.

NCTM is not a libertarian organization. Search its site for the words "to each his own," or "live and let live," or "different strokes for different folks." See what you get.

Bupkis.

Sure you might find "different learning styles" or "differentiated instruction."

You will not find the sentiment that for some folks teaching algebra 1 without using a graphing calculator to solve quadratic equations in one variable might be a good idea, too.

I managed to invent a new term yesterday (at least, I think I invented it): micro-fascism.

I say that tongue in cheek, but in its essence it's true. Organizations like NCTM are authoritarian in nature, design, and ambition. End of story.

ARG Cartoon Animation



edspresso search: Dewey letters

John Dewey at edspresso, part 1
John Dewey at edspresso, part 2
John Dewey at edspresso, part 3
John Dewey has the stomach flu
John Dewey at edspresso Letter #5

John Dewey at ktm
John Dewey at ktm part 2
John Dewey experiences stomach flu
John Dewey writes again

johndewey


-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

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MurphysLaw 08 Sep 2006 - 14:51 CatherineJohnson



Carolyn says:

that's a corollary to Murphy's law; the purse will only turn up after you've cancelled all your credit cards.

Or at least, only after you've cancelled the credit card that you had all your autopayments (gas, water, phone, etc.) linked to.

True.



diary of a mad housewife
Old Grouch calls it
Murphy's Law
Mark Roulo's wisdom for the ages
Susan takes the cure

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

comments...

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MarkRoulosWisdomForTheAges 08 Sep 2006 - 15:12 CatherineJohnson

I don't think you understand how these things work. Cancelling every single credit card in your possession is how you get the purse back. Waiting doesn't help ... the purse won't turn up until the credit cards are cancelled.

I believe I've demonstrated this proposition to my satisfaction.



diary of a mad housewife
Old Grouch calls it
Murphy's Law
Mark Roulo's wisdom for the ages
Susan takes the cure

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

comments...

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SusansCure 08 Sep 2006 - 15:23 CatherineJohnson

For a few years I kept losing my purse/wallet right at Christmas time. I decided my ADHD was in high gear during those times. I would either leave it at a store or some weird place or it would fall out in a parking lot. I finally broke the habit when my husband looked at me with that pitifully embarrassed look and said, "Will you be doing this every year?" I haven't done it since.

I wonder if that would work for me.




diary of a mad housewife
Old Grouch calls it
Murphy's Law
Mark Roulo's wisdom for the ages
Susan takes the cure

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

comments...

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ScholasticAchievementOfHomeSchooledStudents 08 Sep 2006 - 17:26 CatherineJohnson

The grade equivalent score comparisons for home school students and the nation are shown in Figure 2. In grades one through four, the median ITBS/TAP composite scaled scores for home school students are a full grade above that of their public/private school peers. The gap starts to widen in grade five. By the time home school students reach grade 8, their median scores are almost 4 grade equivalents above their public/private school peers.

source:
Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998
Education Policy Analysis
Volume 7 Number 8
March 23, 1999

Maybe we should forget the ed schools and go hire some homeschooling parents.

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

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EmailFromTheNewPrincipal 08 Sep 2006 - 17:51 CatherineJohnson



Dear Ms. Johnson,

Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to correspond with me about your concerns. As a courtesy to the professionals working with Christopher, I strongly encourage you to contact your son’s teachers to make them aware of his needs before I intercede. More often than not I have found it far more productive to work hand in hand with the individuals directly involved with the situation than through a third party. If after doing so you are still unable to come to a meeting of the minds, I would be happy to set up an appointment with you and his teachers to try to rectify the matter.

As always, please feel free to contact me should you have any additional questions. I look forward to meeting you and your husband at our September 14th Open House.

Best wishes,

Joe Witazek
Principal

Dear Mr. Witazek,

You’re certainly right about the third party issue. (Ed is an administrator, by the way. He’d say the same.)

I’m not going to pursue it further unless we see a lot of binder explosions and POINTS OFF.

Christopher is so much more mature this year than last that he may be able to deal with all the extra stuff his new young teachers want him to lug around. Also, he doesn’t want to be different from the other kids (he’s not that mature!)

The larger issue, which is a female staff evaluating boys according to girl standards and strengths—neat handwriting, coloring inside the lines, making uniform-sized Xs on graphs in math class (Ms. Kahl took POINTS OFF for unevenly sized Xs last year without telling the kids she was planning to do so beforehand), falls under your purview.

Irvington Middle School is an institution in which girls sweep the awards and the principal tells parents that “Everyone knows boys do worse than girls in middle school.”

Turning IMS into a school in which boys and low-SES children succeed will take leadership from the top.

You’ve already taken a big step in the right direction as far as we’re concerned. Christopher came home yesterday and said, “I like Mr. Witazek. He told us, ‘We’re going to get the field finished as soon as possible. I want you moving your legs.’”

Fantastic!!

Last year the kids were banned from the field. They spent their lunch breaks milling around outside teachers’ classes and getting yelled at. Christopher gained 26 pounds in the 10 months of the 2005-2006 school year, nearly 3 pounds a month. That’s what stress & a six-hour school day with limited exercise will do to an 11-year old.

Over the summer we whittled 5 pounds back off and are now working on the rest. So we’re thrilled to hear you’re planning to get the kids out on the field & moving around.

Good for you!

Catherine J





spaced repetition

email to the new principal
email from the new principal
new regime
back to school 2006

happy man:
Bitter Single Guy

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

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NorthStar 08 Sep 2006 - 19:14 CatherineJohnson



This is cool.

I just got a letter from the editors of NorthStar: Focus on Reading and Writing, High-Intermediate Second Edition.

They want to publish an excerpt from Animals in Translation.

Fun.

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

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HedgehogsAndFoxes 08 Sep 2006 - 19:23 CatherineJohnson



I mentioned earlier that neoprogressive educators are hedgehogs.

Dan Drezner quotes a terrific passage from Louis Menand's review of Philip Tetlock's book:

[In the realm of international affairs] a hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a single bottom-line force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the “actor-dispensability thesis,” according to which Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only “off on timing,” or are “almost right,” derailed by an unforeseeable accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out. Foxes, on the other hand, don’t see a single determining explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, “to see the world as a shifting mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in which success breeds success, and failure, failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone too far.”

Tetlock did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs were liberal as well as conservative, and the same with his foxes. (Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme politically, whether rightist or leftist.) He also did not find that his foxes scored higher because they were more cautious—that their appreciation of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions. Unlike hedgehogs, who actually performed worse in areas in which they specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs routinely over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass, versus ten per cent for the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure did not, against twenty per cent for foxes.

The upside of being a hedgehog, though, is that when you’re right you can be really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example, are often hedgehogs. They value parsimony, the simpler solution over the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability—but, even there, there can be traps in the kind of highly integrative thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has published an analysis of the political reasoning of Winston Churchill. Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere with his idées fixes. This led him to make the wrong prediction about Indian independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right about Hitler. He was never distracted by the contingencies that might combine to make the elimination of Hitler unnecessary.

Our problem is that ed school professors aren't Winston Churchill & Hitler.

Ed school professors are Winston Churchill & India.




hedgehogs

Plato
Dante
Proust
Nietzsche


foxes

Montaigne
Balzac
Goethe
Shakespeare

source:
The Fox and the Hedgehog



Chapter 1: Quantifying the Unquantifiable

KTM Guest shows how to do it
hedgehogs and foxes



-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

comments...

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DownTown 08 Sep 2006 - 21:39 CatherineJohnson




Silverstein Properties via Associated Press

source:
New York Times ($)


On the train last night Ed ran into the dad we know who's working on the Ground Zero buildings.

He had these pictures with him; Ed said they were beautiful and they are. Though I miss the twin towers. If it were up to me, I'd put them back up the same way they were before....

Anyway, Ed and I had been down to the site just last week, and we'd noticed some construction. The dad said the construction we saw is nothing. Starting in mid 2007, he said, and continuing through 2012, there will be 3000 - 5000 workers on site every day.

He said you can already see Korean deli owners pouring into the place, setting up shop, in anticipation of this huge influx of workers to feed. Ed said it's like Schumpeter's creative destruction; the whole place is springing to life now, a year before the action starts.

Of course, it wasn't capitalism that created the destruction. Quite the opposite.

Our acquaintance also said that the city now houses more businesses and workers than it did before 9/11. Also, through some serendipitous chain of events a lot of huge longterm 15- and 20-year leases are set to expire at the time the new buildings are scheduled to be completed.

So everyone expects all the space to be rented from the get-go.

Good.

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Sep 2006

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SeptemberElevenTwoThousandSix 11 Sep 2006 - 14:39 CatherineJohnson



MSNBC is running all of its live coverage of the day 5 years ago.


-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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DogPile 11 Sep 2006 - 15:36 CatherineJohnson

I'd never heard of dogpile before today.


-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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ManWhoSavedGeometry 11 Sep 2006 - 16:31 CatherineJohnson

Donald Coxeter peers into a giant kaleidoscope (right). (Eden Robbins Photo at left)

...geometry was, for much of the 20th century, a discipline very much in jeopardy. It was deemed by a generation of mathematicians to be old-fashioned, a fine recreation for idling away a lazy afternoon, but in essence little more than a trivial tinkering with toys. Modern mathematics was all about prickly algebraic symbols and undulating equations-impenetrable hieroglyphs with no diagrams, no shapes.

The task of fending off these attacks fell to H.S.M. ``Donald" Coxeter, the greatest classical geometer of the last century. Through his lifelong work as geometry's apostle, Coxeter, who died in 2003 at 96 (prematurely by his measure-his lifelong vegetarianism guaranteed he should live to 100, he figured), became known by his followers around the world as ``the man who saved geometry" in a mathematical era characterized by all things algebraic, abstract, and austere.

Fifty years ago this summer, Coxeter was summoned by the Mathematical Association of America on a roving lecture tour through the United States. He traveled as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska, as far west as Stanford, Calif., and east to New York City, speaking with a missionary's zeal to schoolteachers and any other willing listeners.

Coxeter lectured about ``the beauteous properties of triangles," about circles and spheres, and about the Platonic solids: the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron. According to a recent cosmological hypothesis (and a similar theory put forth by Plato) the dodecahedron is a potential model for the shape of the universe-bound by 12 walls, each the shape of a pentagon.

good grief

I'm reading the article as I post ... and have just come to this section:

But just as Coxeter set out upon his career, classical geometry-with its emphasis on shapes and diagrams-was being supplanted by modern mathematicians' penchant for algebra.

A secret society of the créme de la créme of French mathematicians epitomized the shift in the mathematical zeitgeist of the early 20th century. Writing under the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbakis, the collective set out in the 1930s to rewrite the history of mathematics in one grand mathematical treatise, and perhaps the most distinctive feature of their work was the absence of diagrams.

The Bourbakis espoused mathematical rationality and rigor. They believed the subjective and fallible visual sense was easily led astray, falling victim to impressionistic reasoning. In 1959, at a conference in France addressing the need to overhaul the French education system, Jean Dieudonné, a founding member of the Bourbakis and the group's scribe, infamously proclaimed: ``Down with Euclid! Death to Triangles!"

French perfidy!

Down with Euclid!

Death to Triangles!

oy

Ed says the French really did come up with the line about such-and-such "working in reality but not in theory"....

a geometry gap

Eventually, the Bourbakis way of mathematics pervaded the Western world, reaching even into grade schools with the Sputnik-motivated New Math reforms of the 1960s, which aimed to improve students' performance and to ensure America was not left in the scientific dust by the Soviet Union. Instead of shapes, children studied axioms and set theory.

As a consequence, mathematical and scientific investigation suffered from what Walter Whiteley, a great admirer of Coxeter and director of applied mathematics at York University in Toronto, calls the ``geometry gap." Whiteley's thesis holds that when the areas of the brain that process visual and geometric concepts fall into disuse, the realms of mathematics and science suffer as well.

This is something we've talked about at ktm before, without reaching a conclusion, or even a coherent hypothesis.

Mathematical talent and "spatial ability" are constantly linked in journalistic accounts of research on gender differences in math talent.

And, anecdotally, I've known at least three people — including Carolyn (iirc) — who deliberately studied drawing to improve their math. Moreover, all of the women I know who excel at or simply like math are also either artists or would-be artists. (I'm in the would-be category. I've been fascinated by drawing for my entire life, and have always wanted to learn how to do it. I had begun taking drawing classes when I was sidetracked onto math.)

So I think there's something there. But I don't know.




UPDATE:   John Saxon

John Saxon says that it's not possible to understand fractions, decimals and percent without the aid of diagrams. In fact, he says this in 3 of his books that I know of. Here is his first statement of the principal in Algebra 1:

To solve word problems about percent, it is necessary to be able to visualize the problem. We will begin to work on achieving this visualization by drawing diagrams of percent problems after we work the problems. Learning to draw these diagrams is very important. [emphasis in the original]

I'm Coxetering today!

So Coxeter set out to make the case for the visual geometric approach, using a number of tactics.

On a popular level, he proselytized for the classical geometric treasures he loved, praising their simple beauty and symmetry. The elegance of his talks and essays gained him an avid following around the world, a fan base of professional and amateur geometers alike who became just as passionate about classical geometry as he was.

Coxeter, for example, was muse to artist M.C. Escher, famous for works like ``Ascending and Descending," a seemingly precarious building of stairs winding in an infinite loop. Coxeter and Escher became friends in the 1950s, and the mathematician's work assisted the artist in his quest to convincingly capture the concept of infinity. (Escher was known to say, ``I'm Coxetering today!")

fearful symmetry

But Coxeter did more than just popularize. He also managed to reinvigorate the discipline through his academic research. He injected a modern relevance, allowing classical geometry to transcend its old-fashioned origins and find far-reaching applications in both mathematics and the sciences.

Specifically, Coxeter classified the symmetries of polytopes, which allowed him to translate these geometric entities into algebra, thus building a powerful bridge between algebra and geometry.

Coxeter also invented mathematical tools-now called Coxeter groups, Coxeter numbers, and Coxeter diagrams-which shed new light on symmetry, broadening and deepening its study. His best-selling book, ``Regular Polytopes," became a classic. ``It's like the bible for me. I refer to it all the time," said John Ratcliffe from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who has one copy at work and another in his study at home for late-night consultations.

Symmetry underpins all mathematics-an equation being an expression of perfect balance.

I will never be a hedgehog

The visual and the algebraic perspectives are in constant flux in the mathematical and scientific disciplines. ``The battle between geometry and algebra is like the battle between the sexes," said Sir Michael Atiyah, honorary professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University. ``It's the kind of problem that never disappears. It'll never be dead, and it will never get solved. The question is, `What is the right balance?"'

``It goes back and forth, and not in an accidental way," said Peter Galison, professor of the history of science and physics at Harvard. ``Pushing hard on the visual methods ends up pushing toward the antivisual. Beliefs swing between an almost theological dogma that images are stepping stones to higher knowledge, or that they are deceptive idols that keep us from higher understanding."

I find that kind of talk to be Rank Hedgehoggery.

i.e., the bad kind of hedgehoggery




legacy

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."

source:
The Man Who Saved Geometry
by Siobhan Roberts Boston Globe
9-10-2006
(registration required)
Siobhan Roberts' Toronto Star article on Coxeter is available online in pdf form.
The King of Infinite Space by Siobhan Roberts








-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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UsOpen 11 Sep 2006 - 17:31 CatherineJohnson

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)


Roger Federer won his 3rd U.S. Open title last night, and summer is officially over.

[sob]

Christopher, Ed & I have now seen Federer win all 3 titles. He's won so many titles we may have to start rooting for him. Either that or start setting our clocks by him.

< Federer just won the Open, time to put away the sleeveless t-shirts. >

Andy Roddick is adorable.

In case you were wondering.

Also from the world of Grand Slam tennis, Martina Navratilova should never, ever speak on her own behalf.

If something needs to be said re: Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert should say it.

End of story.

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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GeekPressLogicalFallacies 11 Sep 2006 - 17:54 CatherineJohnson



My favorite:

Argumentum Ad Nauseam:

Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.

see also: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

and

Logical Fallacy Bingo

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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ItsAboutNothing 11 Sep 2006 - 20:04 CatherineJohnson

“I always did well on essay tests. Just put everything you know on there, maybe you’ll hit it. And then you get the paper back from the teacher and she’s written just one word across the top of the page, “vague.” I thought “vague” was kind of vague. I’d write underneath it “unclear,” and send it back. She’d return it to me, “ambiguous.” I’d send it back to her, “cloudy.” We’re still corresponding to this day … “hazy” … “muddy”…"

Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage Bantam Books: 1993)

I've been watching Seinfeld reruns.

That got me thinking about those old Letters From a Nut books.

I could write one of those!

Years ago a friend and I were thinking about writing a book of what I called "eff off and die" letters. I'd written a few eff off and die letters already; I'd written enough that I had reached proficiency in the genre as a matter of fact.

We were going to do a book of eff off and die letters to ex-boyfriends because we got dumped a lot. (Did I mention I was living in Los Angeles at the time?) Then after we published the book we were going to do book signings where the boyfriends, not the authors, autographed whichever letter was written to them. It was going to be a "You're so vain" book party, after the Carly Simon song, the theory being that the men in question were so vain they'd want people to know they were the guy to whom the letter was addressed.

I did mention I was living in Los Angeles at the time, right?

Yes. I did.

source:
speed dating cities

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

comments...

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NewRegime 11 Sep 2006 - 23:46 CatherineJohnson



Christopher came home today reporting that his English teacher says he can use the fabric poly file folder after all.

Also, the field is finished, and the kids are out running around on it during lunch.

This bodes well.



(footnote: I'm pretty sure a lot of parents have been pressing the exercise issue. I'd never raised it before myself, though obviously I should have.)






email to the new principal
email from the new principal
new regime
back to school 2006



-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Sep 2006

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ShangriLaUpdateSeptemberTwelth06 12 Sep 2006 - 13:32 CatherineJohnson



7-14-2006 Friday

Started Jimmy, Christopher & me on the Shangri-La Diet.


9-12-2006 Tuesday

Jimmy has lost 10 pounds, Christopher 5, Catherine —2 & +2.

oh, wait! no. that's not right. Catherine is —2.

Turns out The Daily Plate only tracks 5 or 6 weeks at a time at a time.... so all our July data has been dropped out.

Jimmy's weight loss curve is pretty much straight down; Christopher has been plateaued for a month (apparently we need those 6 hours a day of tennis camp); mine is down, then up then plateaued.

"self-experimentation" notes^*

I lost weight when I switched from ELOO^** to sugar water, then regained plateaued when I switched back to ELOO because sugar water is a pain in the tochus.

Early on Jimmy seemed not to be faring well, so I switched him to sugar water & he began losing steadily. After vacation I got lazy, put him back on ELOO, and he's still losing steadily.

Christopher's going on sugar water today. He's not happy about it, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile one of his chums told him that his mother thinks it's disgusting Christopher has to drink olive oil.

My reputation in the community is growing!

Martine is still offering Christopher junk food behind my back. Yesterday she tried to give him something from Dunkin' Donuts. He managed to say 'no' before she got whatever it was out of the bag and showed it to him. Martine has fattened me up every time I've lost weight (as a welcome side effect from various meds); the instant I start looking skinny she starts going to Dunkin' Donuts & buying oversized blueberry muffins, then presenting them to me as a "gift" mid-afternoon, the very moment I am least likely to resist temptation.

I'm in a black mood.

This time she's busted, regardless of whether that makes her mad at Christopher for "telling."




points off

Ed, Christopher, & I took a goofy test in Why Gender Matters on "how masculine are you?"

One of the items was "I can get people to do what I want them to do, even when they don't want to"

I got zero on that one.




as I was saying ....

Not only is Martine setting Christopher up to gain weight, she's setting him up to lie to Ed & me about what he's eating. How long is he going to be able to resist Dunkin' Donuts? I can't resist the stuff at all when you put it under my nose. Once he starts eating Dunkin' Donuts, he'll start not-telling us about it, or fibbing if we ask.

I already addressed this issue with Ed, who is skinny, and has never once, in his entire adult life, needed to lose so much as an ounce of weight.

Christopher walks home with his thin friends every day, and they stop at the corner deli and buy junk food.

So Ed told Christopher he couldn't buy anything. His friends can buy crap; he can't.

I told Ed, who agreed, that he was setting Christopher up to lie to us. There's no way a kid is going to be able to obey his dad and resist junk food while all his friends are chowing down. It's not just the food; it's the social issue. Under a no-junk-food-after-school rule he'd be the fat boy who has to do what his daddy tells him. That would be his rep.

So the rule is one piece of junk food a day — and get it with your friends, after school, not at lunchtime. And yes, our school sells junk food in the cafeteria. We have a brand-new super-expensive super-fancy high-ceilinged cafeteria chock-ful of crap to eat. oh, and sushi. We have a sushi bar in our school cafeteria. So the kids can eat sushi and brownies for lunch.

I'm pretty sure there's a huge amount of parent pressure about this. At least, I hope there is. Plus we have our state-mandated Wellness Committee looking into things. (federally mandated? pdf file) Changes are being made. But if it were up to me I'd take every bit of food-crap out of the place. No vending machines, no pastries, no potato chips — just get it all the hell out of there. EVERY diet book on the planet tells you NOT TO HAVE CRAP IN YOUR HOUSE. So I miraculously manage to purge most of the CRAP from my own house (except for the stuff squirrelled away in meat drawers and ovens, of course) while my school sets out a luscious array of junk before the kids and then tells them in their state-mandated Health Class to "eat healthy."

Thanks, guys!

Christopher is packing his lunch every day, and taking only enough money to buy one piece of junk food after school, nothing at lunch.

Then he doesn't go to the cafeteria at all during the lunch break. He eats his lunch outside, then runs around on the football field that our new principal seems to have been instrumental in getting opened up to the kids. (THANK YOU)

Of course, in keeping with our family motto, Ed went to the store and bought Christopher some microwaveable soup-in-a-cups on grounds that soup is filling.

Soup is filling, but microwaving a cup of soup means going into the cafeteria.

I feel besieged. (Did I mention I'm in a black mood?)

Cup-a-soup is staying home.


All of this is making me believe the guy Drudge linked to the other day, the climate change researcher who says civilization was not a step up.

Civilisation was a last resort - a means of organising society and food production and distribution, in the face of deteriorating environmental conditions.

Sounds about right to me.