Media Mania

It was a quiet day on campus: Final's week in the spring leaves the place almost as deserted as the tail end of the summer semester. With no dorms, the only people on a CC campus this week are in class writing an exam or the faculty giving them. I was there only to be sure mine were printed and ready ... and to start getting ready for my summer class.

So I spent most of the day at home, stunned into disbelief at the media mania that was the daily press briefing and coverage of The Flu Story. I'm not making light of it, since my Grandfather told me about the pandemic in 1918, but seriously: if it is so freaking dangerous in Mexico, why do all of the networks have people doing live stand-up reports in busy public places in Mexico City?

But what really entertained me was the coincidence of some of our faculty giving a final exam in a (very) basic "college level" (scare quotes intended) math class that would be required for journalism majors. You see, they happily read the report that says the incubation period for the disease is 3 or 4 days, and then ask inane questions about the health of President Obama - who visited Mexico on April 16, which was 11 days ago. Let's see if we can figure out this "college level" problem that seems to escape the entire White House Press Corps: 11 days minus 4 days is 7 days, and 7 days is a week. Yep, that means he would have been deathly ill one week ago if he had been exposed to the swine flu during his visit.

Oh, and so would the Press Corps, who were along on the trip. I think Obama's press secretary finally made that point - that they should be concerned about their own health if they are concerned about the President's health.

The rest of the story seems to be that the conspiracy theorists among the Press are simply calling the Mexican authorities liars for saying that the man who died of pneumonia a week after Obama's visit did not have influenza while reporting as factual every other statement from the health authorities in Mexico. They must be some kind of cross between idiots who don't read their own news and racists who would never think to question similar statements from US health professionals.

They really need to stick to facts, and help people learn the common sense aspects of public health that are needed to contain the small outbreaks, the difference between the flu and food poisoning, and put particular emphasis on what to do if you think you have been exposed on a trip to Mexico by yourself or an acquaintance.

And they could also explain the role of Evolution in what is taking place.

PS -
I also really like the panic-engendering graphics that color the entire state of Texas in panic yellow or red because it has two (non-fatal) cases of flu somewhere in that huge state. BBC did them one better in this map: they colored all of Canada red for something like 6 confirmed cases.

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Question of the Day Winner

A student asks Rudbeckia Hirta:

"Can you give me permission to fail algebra for a fourth time?"

I really have a hard time keeping a straight face when I get ones like that, but I usually manage to tell them that only a Vice President, on the advice of an appeals committee, can do that. One colleague, however, would preface that with a "Well, bless your heart, sweetie. I'd love to help you out but they just won't let me near the computer since that time when ... well, you might have read about it in the newspaper. You'll have to go to the Office of Academic Inquisitions like everyone else."

That combination of enthusiastic naivete is, sadly, not uncommon. But at least I have the excuse that I am at a CC, with its share of enthusiastically naive students, not at an alleged Flagship University of the State.

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Cool Gift Idea

Ah, the things you can sell to tourists.

Check this out.

Paper made from Wombat scat.

It is said to have a nice organic scent.

Just when you think it can't get any stranger than making coffee from beans that have gone through an animal's digestive system, we get this story!

I wonder when they will start selling it globally, on the internet, rather than just selling it to tourists.

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Teaching and Research

There was a really great article Thursday on the general topic of post docs and their view of what a PI does. It links to several articles that are also worth reading. See them here, here, and here. The last one, by MsPhd, got me into this thread. She also is writing some interesting things about the differences between different levels of R1 programs from the perspective of someone in the bio-med area.

Writing as someone who has done both a long-term soft-money gig (with all of the grants etc that go with that) and the big-time teaching gig (now), I think Prof in Training only left out the service part. Many of the points made in that article were made in the tenure at an R1 article I wrote a few years ago, as well as in a more recent set of comments about an IHE advice article, not to mention another one, commenting on an IHE article about a bad tenure-seeking experience.

And if you want to read even more from me ...

I'll just add one little thing that falls in the dark void between service and teaching: service related to academics when accreditation "reaffirmation" time rolls around. Not only do you have to do all of the things mentioned under teaching (hours of prep for each lecture, evaluating how each lecture worked, writing exams as well as grading them and evaluating how well they did what they were supposed to do), and continue to do them even after 5 or 10 years, but you might have to develop "learning outcomes" and "learning assessments" for courses you and others teach, written like you were a frigging Ed.D bureaucrat. If the words "quality enhancement" don't mean anything to you, ask around. (Oh crap. I just googled "Quality Enhancement Program" and got 3.8 MILLION hits.) Just don't whisper those words (quality enhancement) quietly while standing behind an administrator. Might kill them. Learning Outcomes are going to be the big thing the next time around. We are starting to work on them and we aren't up again for quite a few more years.

We'll see if I can get the posting software to work so I can add them as a comment on PiT's blog. I've also added a version of these remarks to the old articles of mine linked above.

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And now for something else from the brits...

How can a great article about the number of calories consumed in alcoholic beverages go from informative to sublime?

Easy. Look at the first comparison in the calorie count table: a pint of hard cider (200 calories) is equal to "beans on toast".

Beans on toast?

A "pint of bitter" (190 calories) being equal to a great looking donut, yes. This connects well on both sides of the pond. Although most American 'beer' drinkers wouldn't recognize something stronger than water as a beverage, we all like donuts. That one even looks like it came from Krispy Kreme.

But ... Beans on Toast? Either they have a twisted sense of humor or Britain needs a better cook book.

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Susan Boyle in 1999

I'll assume you've seen Susan Boyle's performance on "Britain's Got Talent". (If you haven't, or if you have only seen news clips, go watch it in its entirety on YouTube. The start is worth it just to see the skeptical audience before and after she starts singing. I can't begin to imagine what it was like to be in the audience and see that live.)

But it turns out that this is not all that she has recorded. Thanks to a BBC story today, I learned about a 1999 recording she made - as reported by a Scottish newspaper. It was cut number 12 on a privately-made charity fund-raising CD.

Take a listen. It is simply stunning.



I think it is better than the song from "Les Miserables" she did in the competition. She has soul.

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Changing the Game

The profit-loss calculation for piracy has taken a sudden turn for the worse if you view piracy as a way to make million dollar profits for yourself and your friends.

My own guess got it half right. I figured the captain would be rescued by Navy SEALS, but thought it would be done from an underwater assault - but sniper work got a lot easier when the lifeboat was taken under tow.

It has also been interesting to see how the White House played this. No "Cowboy George" riding to the rescue and strutting in triumph. So far, the Obama White House seems happy to let the military take all of the credit, right down to making the call of when to shoot. This has also put all of the media coverage where it belongs, which is on the men who did a difficult job without error.

The NBC graphics folks sure botched it, however. They had an animation of a shadowy group firing multiple rounds from automatic weapons, leaving me laughing. Come on. I've seen the program about sniper school on the History Channel. I had little doubt that three men fired as one. Snipers only need one bullet, particularly at a range set by an 82 foot tow rope - less than 30 meters.

Some commentator said the pirates will be unlikely to make the same mistake again, as they will learn from the tactics employed to free the captain. Other than not go after an American flag vessel, what exactly would they do differently? Without hostages, they die or go to prison, and killing their hostages, as one pirate said they will do in the future, will result in death or prison when the ship is retaken by force. Not many good choices, since hostages have been their only way to defend their ships.

Time will tell, but the game has definitely changed.

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Remediation - and Calculators

Dean Dad put together a fantastic article Friday about the remediation "death march". Timely as well as interesting. Timely, because the part of our college that has this as its mission has been working hard for the last two years to revisit the entire system they use, and interesting because I'm not in an area where I learn much about how others address this challenge.

I only have one thing to add on the main theme (beyond what I already said in my comments on his blog), but will expand on two other issues: the "tough sell", and issues related to algebra preparation (remediation) for pre-engineering students.

Math Remediation:

Math is really where the death march takes place. Math is handled so badly at the K-12 level (with most of the damage taking place in the 3-8 territory based on my limited contact with a range of students who enter our CC as math cripples) that students are math phobic - putting off their remedial math classes and often barely giving them a chance to work.

I already commented on the structure of our system, which mirrors the one DD described. That is pretty typical, although ours is going to have some major internal changes (involving more targeted remediation) in the near future. I only know the broad outlines of the plan, which will be implemented over the next couple of years, but I think it builds on something we learned about some higher-level math classes as a result of a major effort by one of our best low-level algebra teachers. We learned that the usual process of starting with "review" topics was fatal. It bored the ones who had actually learned the material in the previous course, and led all of the students to believe there would be nothing new in this next class. The new approach is to present new material on the very first day !!! and work the review skills in on the fly. It appears to be working, although it still works best in the hands of experienced professors.

The Tough Sell:

Our success rate with remedial courses is much higher with students who return to school after many years working. They are under no illusions that their HS education has prepared them to take college classes, because they know they have forgotten what little they learned in HS. They are ready to start over, and often thrive in our environment.

The challenge is to reach students who have just left high school and have high self esteem and little else. The ones in the middle third, the ones who can't get into university unless they can play football or basketball, are a big problem. They got coached well enough to eventually pass the math exit exam so they could earn a diploma. They think that this should mean that they are ready to move from HS math classes to college math classes, just as they moved from middle school math to HS math. Unfortunately, no one told them that the HS exit exam only proved that they were ready to leave middle school.

I am not joking. It is not enough to look at those exams and notice a few problems at the level of 9th grade Algebra 1, as one commenter did on DD's blog. You don't need to get every problem right to pass the test. If you look at the score needed to pass, it is immediately clear that they don't need to know any HS math at all. If you factor in the detail that they have a calculator when taking that test, and have been coached in how to test answers against questions, etc, etc. I could not disagree more with what Sherman Dorn wrote on this subject. The confusion is between taking something called "algebra" and the sad fact that such a course in HS merely prepares a student to place into a remedial class, particularly if the next two years are spent taking "consumer math". They certainly are not ready for college algebra.

As I commented, my old article presenting an idea for Freshman Orientation at a CC suggests telling them they were lied to in HS. I have no idea if this would work. They probably would not believe any adult. It would have to come from a student. The same goes for the reality of failure in college.

This problem is deeply ingrained because of the massive amount of propaganda related to passing rates and No Child Left Behind. (None left behind? Ha! Read Sherman Dorn about "graduation rate statistics". Eye opener.) They could very well have improved math skills in our local high school grads. I have little doubt they used to be worse based on stories from my elders. But students and their parents (plus taxpayers and legislators) have been led to believe they know some math when they don't. Only the best local schools produce an average grad who does not need remediation.

Algebra for Physics and Calculus:

Finally, the promised remarks concerning what mthgeek wrote in the comments about calculators and other technology in the calculus classroom - and what the expectations are by the customers of calculus.

Mthgeek wrote (first comment):

At my university we proudly outlaw calculators from the Calc sequence even though all the disciplines we "serve" want their students to be proficient with technology including calculators, spreadsheets, and computer-packages.
Maybe, just maybe, the conversation about remediation should also be expanded to include discussion of the credit-bearing courses as well.

We already did a first step in that expansion at our CC. Other changes appear to be working their way down from the one mentioned earlier, and there is some hope that other changes will work their way up. I am particularly sensitive to the low level of algebra skills in the students who enter my physics class. They can do basic algebra, but they can't follow algebra being done at the board at anywhere near the rate expected in a calculus or physics class. So I hope the use of calculators in algebra classes gets looked at.

I don't know if this reflects the fact that our CC proudly requires a specific calculator and spends weeks teaching them how to do algebra with it. Weeks! How to graph. How to identify discontinuities and poles. How to "trace" to a zero. None of this time does anything to increase the chance that they can move symbols around or substitute an entire expression into another one. Yet, despite all of this experience, a large fraction still don't know how to use a calculator correctly. In addition to entry errors (some related to not knowing how scientific notation works), they round intermediate results and can't round answers correctly to the relevant significant figures.

As I wrote on DD's blog, the engineering school attended by most of my grads has its very own indoctrination program for everything from computer drafting to computer algebra. All classes use the same set of programs, and these are taught in conjunction with other basic engineering skills in some set of intro "gateway" courses taken by all entering juniors. Reports from my grads indicate that experience with programs like Maple or Matlab in some of their calculus classes has made that transition easy, but they find it far more significant that I expected correct free-body diagrams along with correctly calculated answers.

But the use of symbols rather than numbers in problems is something we often think about and talk about. There was an excellent article on this subject from Chad over at Uncertain Principles, including the other article he links to (by Excited State) and the ones linked from the comments. I will single out the ones in comment #16 from "Gerry R", chair of the mechanical engineering department at Portland State, as worthy of particular attention. I will have to spend some time this summer thinking about how to write problems, like ones from his MechE fluids class, that combine conceptual and quantitative skills within the same wrapper.

Mthgeek also wrote (later comment, selectively editted):

And, if all of our examples have nice answers so that the arithmetic is simple what happens when it's not?
And if all of the examples are nicely segregated into sections of text based on the methods that they use what happens when they run into an ill-defined problem?
But, I am saying that the way that many such courses are constituted only imparts a very small set of skills that students only know how to apply in nicely-formulated problems. I hope you expect more from us, seriously, I do.

Journal of Mathematical Behavior 26 (2007) 348–370:
The results also show that about 70% of the tasks were solvable by imitative reasoning and that 15 of the exams could be passed using only imitative reasoning.

Oh, we expect more, because we definitely give comprehensive midterm and final exams that require analysis and retention of much more than the least memorizable unit. Yet, even then, I know many of my exam problems require only imitative reasoning. I hate to say that I set my goals low, but I am rarely teaching math majors or even physics majors, and even most physics majors don't need to be creative theoreticians. Most of them need to be creative experimentalists (ditto for the engineers), and this does not require much beyond imitative reasoning applied (over and over again, with extremely high levels of reliability) to creatively constructed scenarios or designs.

And I agree with the concern about what happens when the numbers are not simple. Ditto for when the functions are not simple. (Do you teach them about integral tables, like G+R, or numerical tools? Those are used a lot by people who know how to set up problems that contain an integral as part of the solution. Few real problems produce easily integrated functions.) I can tell you that my problems contain non-trivial numbers as well as symbols, but more of the former than the latter. However, a correct answer that does not start from a correct symbolic presentation of the solution does not get full marks. Sometimes it gets less than half marks if the answer comes from numerology rather than physics.

I could write more, but I have already chewed on my first draft enough times that it is time to let this go.

PS -
A recent article by mthgeek really needs a response. I can't believe there is a grad program in any field where students don't learn to write papers by working with faculty who are writing papers, but maybe I am naive about areas outside of the sciences.

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This Needs to be Read.

Hat tip to Chad at Uncertain Principles, who offered his own version of this story:

A security guard tried to take some luggage from a disabled person in a wheelchair because "some body" was not in possession of it. Read it yourself. The ADA meets Homeland Security.

Totally outrageous, yet not surprising given how disabled people are often treated. Now imagine that the person involved was the Iraq war vet, a triple amp, who attends the CC where I teach. (Welcome home, vet, and thank you for your service, but you are no longer a person without your legs.)

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Thirty Years since Three Mile Island

Today is the 30th anniversary of the accident at TMI, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside Harrisburg, PA. Since that event, there were no new nuclear power plants started in the US, and some projects were terminated. More on that later.

I need to find a slide I took of the plant approximately one year after the accident and scan it. The paranoia of a security guard was captured nicely.

Among the many ironies of that event, the movie The China Syndrome was released on March 16, less than two weeks before the accident. With the tagline "Today, only a handful of people know what it means... Soon you will know.", it described a Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) quite similar to TMI accident, except there was apparently no meltdown in the movie. By the way, the similarities between the movie and the actual events were no accident.

Irony #2:
Why were they no accident? If you look at the safety considerations that go into nuclear power plant design, as I have, you will see that they are built around the statistical analysis of various ways a reactor can fail. The best solution is a design with passive safety features, where the loss of some crucial element results in the device shutting itself down. If that is not possible, you build active backup systems that protect against likely (and unlikely) scenarios and forbid operation of the reactor when those systems are not available. Likely scenarios get more attention than unlikely ones. The one that started the TMI incident, a LOCA, is considered to be a highly likely scenario - whether from a pipe break or a shutdown of the main feedwater pumps (the problem at TMI, followed by a stuck valve) or manual intervention due to faulty readings (in the movie, where later events concerned a possible major pipe break).

The accident at TMI started when coolant was lost due to a failure in the external cooling system that shut down the main feedwater pumps and scrammed the reactor. This is not all that rare. The first defense against a LOCA like that at TMI is a secondary feedwater pump. My recollection from the time is that this system was physically disconnected for maintenance, but this is not mentioned in the Wiki article. I'm pretty sure that its normal operation after the reactor scram would have prevented any further problems by removing the post-fission decay heat from the reactor. Operating while it was shut down resulted in a significant increase in the probability of the next event in the failure chain. In addition, my recollection is that red tags, warning that a certain system was off, obscured crucial instruments and other tags warning that even more important systems were off. They were not operating a reactor that looked like the one analyzed to estimate the probability of an accident like this taking place.

The next key event is that a pressure relief valve opened. This was normal. However, it stuck open, and pressure in the cooling system fell. Again, an automatic "active" safety system, the emergency core cooling system (ECCS), kicked in. If allowed to run as designed, this would have prevented the accident. However, much like the error made by the operators in the movie, the ECCS was shut off manually because the operators believed the water level in the reactor was too high and did not know (due to a poorly designed warning light) that the pressure relief valve was open. This error was noticed two hours later when a new shift arrived, and actions taken at that point prevented further damage.

Irony #3:
The movie was based on the premise, common in both the anti-nuclear movement and many experts in nuclear power, that once a core meltdown started, it would lead inevitably to a full melting of the core - right through the containment vessel until all of that radioactivity got released into the atmosphere and ground water. The irony is that we learned, long after the fact, that the core of the TMI reactor had been damaged and a meltdown had started. This accident, along with some observations long after the Chernobyl disaster (see this section in particular as well as this picture of the post-TMI situation), showed that the molten core material does not appear able to sustain a "critical" nuclear reaction. It forms a lava-like mixture with whatever is around as it forms. It does not appear that it could get through undamaged concrete, let alone get to groundwater or to China.

Irony #4:
The China Syndrome movie was produced as anti-nuclear power plant propaganda, yet the accident at TMI did more to harm nuclear power than any movie could. It was the eventual loss of about a billion dollars, from an accident that would not have taken place if management had sensibly realized that safety rules were there to protect their investment rather than cut into their profits, that led the industry itself to cut back on investment in nuclear power. Who would loan money or invest in something where all of that money, and more, could be lost in an hour by a failure to operate the system prudently?

It has taken more than a generation with no comparable failures to bring back nuclear power. This is also no accident, as it resulted from revised training procedures and better control room design. In addition, the new reactor designs are far superior to the old ones, with more passive safety systems.

Shared Lesson:
The "graveyard shift" (third shift, typically 12 mn to 8 am or 10 pm to 6 am) is well named. Both TMI (4 am) and Chernobyl (1 am) occurred during that shift, and poor decision making contributed to - and likely caused - both "accidents". At TMI, the tired operators never re-evaluated what was going on. The fresh shift, arriving at 6 am, identified the actual problem almost immediately. At Chernobyl, key decisions were made under pressure, late at night, after a long day, and in some ignorance of the physics of the reactor that was the basis for rules saying you should never do what they eventually did.

The Ultimate Lesson:
Many things are safe only if you treat them with the proper respect due something that is actually dangerous. In the case of nuclear power, the challenge is to convince the public that this technology is safe while simultaneously convincing management and plant operators that it is NOT safe. It is only safe if you act as if it isn't. This applies to many things in life, ranging from shooting guns to driving cars. For example, the risk of death in a car accident is much lower if you wear your seatbelt, particularly in a car with air bags. This does not mean you are so safe in a car with air bags that you don't need to wear a seat belt. An air bag is of minimal value if you are not belted into the space in front of it. Promotion of air bags has obscured this not-so-minor detail and people die as a result.


PS -
One thing that I found interesting is that, despite its politically charged importance, the Wiki article about TMI is extremely accurate and (apart from my memory that there was a backup cooling system disabled that was the first stage in the ECCS, before the pressure valve would have opened) contains nothing inconsistent with my memory of the NRC report I read way back then.

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Advice to those seeking tenure

There was an excellent article in IHE today providing advice to those in a tenure-earning position. I was going to add it to a collection of articles in a followup to one of my "jobs" series, particularly part 4 on tenure at an R1, but think it deserves its own place.

What I Wish I'd Known About Tenure by Leslie Phinney.

Read it, but keep in mind that it is clearly written about tenure at a comprehensive or graduate research university, not a teaching college like a CC. (The author was formerly at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.)

I should add a few comments about the parts I think are relevant at a CC, but will do that at another time.

Updated on March 28, after the first 3 comments appeared:

One of those instances of someone with a high-quality research program being denied tenure at a top-10 physics department (alluded to in my comment on this blog) is in the list of blog comments at the bottom of my article two summers ago about the difference between being hired into a t-t job and earning tenure in it. I've also put a back-link to that article up at the top of this blog entry. UIUC is in the top 10 for both physics and engineering, so the experiences of the author of that opinion piece about tenure are most relevant at that level of competition. Unlike universities at other levels in the top half of all physics research programs, the top ones are much more likely to hire people without the presumption that they are more likely than not to earn tenure if they merely continue to publish grant-supported research. I have heard respected researchers refer to a particular department as being "nuts" to deny tenure to certain individuals, individuals who went on to great success in their field (at another university). For example, getting a 4-year NSF award and a NASA fellowship (as in the case of Dr. Phinney) would absolutely guarantee tenure at a mid-tier R1 unless you did something illegal along the way.

Now, as noted earlier, I am going to add my comments about each item in the original article, mostly (but not entirely) from a CC perspective.

• 1. The Gamble: Part of the gamble at an R1 is that the 3 M$ commitment is balanced against what the university has already gained in profit from the first 7 years of research funding by the person up for tenure, and a judgment concerning the chance this productivity will continue. The other part of the gamble concerns the cash flow at the university in any particular college or department. The latter consideration is all that applies at a CC (where the gamble might be "only" 1.5 M$), but that decision is normally made before the t-t line is advertised. There are some exceptions, particularly today with the chance of further major budget cuts on the horizon, where one-year hires occur without the promise the job will even be considered for tenure. It does remain true that the final decision is made in the college's interest.
  
• 2. The Fraternity: This is generally good advice, but some of it reflects being a female professor in a college that has few women above the Asst Prof or Instructor level. Physics shares that distinction with Engineering, whether in academia or private practice, so this is advice that looks more significant to me than it would someone in the Evergreen areas or Education (where Sherman has his experience as a historian of education). It is much less important at a CC where female and minority faculty are more common than at universities, particularly in the sciences and math, but still relevant. However, I think the tenured faculty at our CC push this process of integration into the college so less initiative is needed by the newly hired prof.
  
• 3. Making a Solid Case for Tenure: This pretty much mirrors what I wrote about tenure in my "part 4" article about universities, and I already wrote a detailed article about the differences at a CC as part 5 in my jobs series.
  
• 4. The Gray Area: I believe this bit of advice has little relevance below top 10 institutions, although it can also apply at upwardly mobile top-quartile or (in particular) second-quartile departments. Elsewhere, hires appear to be made with the assumption that the candidate will likely get tenure unless they screw up and fail to maintain the quality research and/or teaching program that got them hired in the first place. That is certainly the case at our CC, but I have seen one instance where the person just didn't have what we thought they did.
  
• 5. Risk Factors: This is mostly relevant toward the top of the R1 heap, and many of the things I mention under item 3 (and in my "part 4" article) apply here as well. It certainly is VERY risky to go to a top R1 without a research post-doc and some experience with grant writing to support a research program that is uniquely yours rather than one identified with your major prof. It can even be risky to take a teaching job at a CC with little teaching experience.
  
• 6. Mobility: This observation looks a lot different to me today than it might have a few years ago. Budget cuts have made my job much harder than it used to be, due to significantly increased student loads and less support from staff in the last two years. However, I doubt that it is any better at most other schools! But, if necessary, I think I have the record needed to move elsewhere (assuming that the utter collapse of our state government is the exception and not the rule). And that should be the message to someone at an R1: Build a program good enough that you can move to another, more rational institution if your first choice does not see the value in your contribution.
  
• 7. Priorities: I can relate to this. My priorities are much more easily satisfied teaching physics to motivated, upwardly mobile students than pushing a research program at an R1. That is also true for a significant number of the PhD faculty at my CC.
  
• 8. Job Flight / 9. Life Choices: To thine own self be true.
  

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Defense?

A CBS "commentator" said something about U Conn having to face the "frenetic defense" of Missouri. Sorry, but "holding" Memphis to "only" 91 points (2 more than they scored in a win over Maryland and 10 more than they scored in a win over Cal State Northridge) is not my idea of defense.

Holding Duke to 54 (10 less than the scored in a win over Texas) is my idea of defense.

But it was frenetic: especially if you take the meaning of "deranged" or "insane".

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy watching the tiny bit of the game we saw in our region even if it hurts to see big basketball players cry. I wonder if it was just sinking in that their conference had not prepared them for the challenge of a tournament game.

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Madoff's Ponzi Lesson

You all know about good old Bernie Madoff, whose recent conviction has brought the story to the forefront. CNBC assembled some of his "victims" (scare quotes because a Ponzi scheme, more so than a normal con like driveway sealers or a money switch, relies on greed rather than just pure salesmanship) to discuss the matter. You can read some of that in this story.

Now, granted, there are plenty of reasons to point to the failure of the police in this matter (the SEC regulators who are supposed to be giving speeding tickets), and one very good lesson for those of us in academia. [The person who repeatedly blew the whistle on Madoff complained on "60 Minutes" that the SEC was full of lawyers who could check that forms were filled out correctly but could not follow a simple statistical or mathematical argument. We should mention that every time a student in the liberal arts complains that ze does not need math because ze is going to be a lawyer.] But I was sorely disappointed when one person on the TV broadcast was asked point blank what lessons she had learned.

Sadly, she did not learn that the reason she only lost 2/3 of her money while others in the room had lost all of their their retirement funds was that she had only given 2/3 of it to Madoff.

The lesson from Madoff, and other recent events, is to Diversify.

Those events have reminded me of a bit of family lore that has guided a few decisions I have made over the years. Here is the story.

Both of my parents were raised during the Great Depression, so I know some things about their view of that time but almost nothing about what THEIR parents were thinking as they struggled to survive and raise kids. I'm not sure my parents knew much about their parent's economic thinking until a half century later when illness or death brought their parent's finances under their control. Those finances have a lot to tell us, and my parents made it a point to share those stories with us.

Story 1:

After my grandfather died rather suddenly, it fell to my Dad to figure out his financial records. My grandmother had never even written a check in her life, let alone have any clue about the family finances. She got her weekly cash and that was it. [So lesson 1 is that my wife and I are careful to be sure we each know as much as possible about the big picture, including our separate retirement accounts.] My Dad ended up having to visit or write every bank in Chicago plus those in another city to try to find all of the accounts and CDs my grandfather owned. [Lesson 1A is that my parents are also careful to be sure we know where their money is buried.] One can only assume that Grandpa lost a lot of money as a result of bank failures circa 1930 and had distributed his cash as widely as feasible. He had dozens of bank accounts, in addition to other investments. He would never have given it all to Bernie Madoff.

I don't have all of my retirement money in accounts managed by the same company. That was by plan. But I never really thought about the fact that we have accounts in several different banks and credit unions until now. However, we keep it down so we know where they all are.

One of his other investment strategies always struck me as a good one, but it isn't as feasible today as it used to be in the days before mergers and conglomerates. As one example, he owned stock in Borden because he liked Cracker Jack. He had bought stock in Cracker Jack, which was later bought by Borden. (Like a product, buy their stock. Of course, today Cracker Jack is owned by Frito Lay and Borden is part of Hexion Chemical that is owned by a private equity company. So much for THAT strategy!)

Story 2:

The finances of the other set of grandparents didn't become clear until they became seriously ill and had to go into nursing care. When cleaning up and out their house, they found a bag of money (mostly silver coin) under the mattress. A big bag. Turns out they had more cash than the other, apparently much better off, set of grandparents. In fact, they didn't know how much they had, so they didn't know that they could have moved into a very nice, upscale, retirement community with lifetime care. [Lesson two, learned by my parents: Know your net worth, and plan to move into a lifetime care facility while you are still healthy enough to walk in the door. Once you are sick, your choices become extremely limited.] Sadly, they also didn't know they had the funds to visit "the old country" with plenty to spare.

Paraphrased conversation. Mom: "Wasn't it uncomfortable with that bag under the bed?" Grandma: "We were used to it." When they moved from one house to another, they had somehow moved that heavy bag of money themselves so no one, including family who helped with the move, even knew it existed. I would assume that they also lost money when banks failed circa 1930. That zero interest investment strategy looks pretty bad until you look at 40% losses in the stock market or 100% losses with Bernie Madoff.

They had continued to save even while on Social Security, just to be "safe". They could do this because they owned their home, so their only living expenses were food, power, property taxes, and insurance. That could be how their cash resources remained significant even with inflation going on. [Lesson three: Don't re-mortgage your home with payments extending 20 years into retirement. Own it, and live in it. A home is a great investment if you can live in it rent free for 20 years. What you had been paying toward the mortgage becomes available for investment while you are still working, and what you don't have to pay in "rent" will make retirement income go a lot further.]

All of their decisions were not good ones, just as all of mine have not been good ones, but diversification has (so far) protected one big chunk of our investments from any loss of value in the current slump. Talking about finances within a family can be the most valuable investment of all.

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First Day of Spring!

This white narcissus always seems to be the first bloom of the season.

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Happy St. Patrick's Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We had a fun one at work. I think the faculty have more fun with this one than the students do. One of my colleagues wore all sorts of green bling to his classes, while the students seemed focused on learning.

I see the dual advantage of giving an exam right before spring break: (1) the students have it all crammed in their heads from studying and doing homework right up to the exam, with no chance to forget it all over break, and (2) the wake up call when they get back from a week of work or partying and get the exam back.

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Bunnies Made of Cheese?

Today is Approximately Pi Day (3.14) as well as Einstein's 130th birthday (and also, according to Google's promotion of Mars in 3D, Giovanni Schiaparelli's birthday) ... so what better way to celebrate than with yesterday's announcement that Chad Orzel's book about teaching quantum physics to his dog Emmy is on its way under the title "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog".

Click here for full size view of lame cover art.

It is scheduled to ship just before Christmas. This link to the Amazon order info was on Chad's web page, and is the place to go to request that they publish it for Kindle.

What is disappointing is the first level of marketing: the title and cover.

It is hard for me to figure out why they chose that title, or even the dog used on the cover. I mean, why isn't "quantum physics" in the title? And even Emmy's blog photo might make for a better cover if it showed her thinking about the overlap integral between bunnies and cheese (such as an appropriately labeled graph of the s and p solution with just "probability" on the vertical axis) than what they have in the cover mockup. If bunnies aren't appropriate for some marketing reason, they could pick something else (treats and dog food, steak and cheese) or just have a quantum/classical duality question in her thought bubble. Too late to change the title, but you need to get quantum on the cover.

Chad, these ideas are free to you to use ...

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Second Blogiversary

It has been two years now since I got this thing started on the eve of Pi Day.

What better way to celebrate than with a story from the BBC (complete with video) about flossing monkeys in Thailand teaching their infants how to floss! If only my mother had been nearly as successful as these. For me, it was never "monkee see, monkee do"....


And below the fold, how about the charming presence of Emmy, the Queen of Niskayuna, on facebook to help promote her role in Chad's pop-science book about Quantum Mechanics? Having vastly enjoyed the stories on his blog (see this collection for a sample), I eagerly await the appearance of that book - and hope to see his book tour visit to the Colbert Report.

Or an argument (not unfamiliar if you have heard any talks about "Brain-Based Education") whether the internet has, or has not, created a stupid generation? I take the Negative side on that debate. When professors see uncritical use of citations (or not) from the tubes of the internets in student work, they forget that they used to see uncritical use of periodicals of questionable repute and cribbing from print sources in the past. One generation was cured of that the same way this one can be, by actual instruction in critical analysis. In some ways it should be easier today: there was nothing like Google or Turnitin to identify the use of copied works.

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Advice for a New Professor

Rather late for someone starting work about seven months ago (woo hoo, only two more months to go!), but IHE has a nice article today titled I'm a Professor. Now What? with advice for the new college teacher fresh out of grad school.

The premise that someone will enter a teaching job without anything more than a PhD is rather a stretch, since most people who fit that description are at an R1 that should emphasize research over teaching during the first year (as described in a recent article by FSP), but the advice is mostly solid.

Relax and be yourself is probably the best one, along with the KISS approach outlined as "black and white". However, that begs the question of the actual objectives of the class. You have to have clear objectives that guide everything from the book you select (if you have that option) to the material you emphasize to the format and coverage of your exams. Temper that with the expectation that they might truly retain (long term) only 10% of what they get right on a test so you choose your battles carefully.

What I dislike is the failure to emphasize the use of a single local mentor on a regular basis, not just when setting up the syllabus. It is not a sign of weakness if you ask for guidance. I've seen the arrogant opposite, and it isn't pretty. It is much more than "don't reinvent the wheel" if you really haven't taught before. I was well prepared by my undergrad department, and got eased in by doing recitations where you see all of the difficulties that require a solution in lecture and problem sessions. I can't imagine where I would be if I was teaching a major class without that preparation and experience.

What seemed missing was to look at your own notes from the class you took as an undergrad - but to tailor it to the institution you are teaching at now. Your own teachers might have had some good ideas about what was important, and you now have the background from grad school to add your own views to that frame.

Finally, I really like the US Army lesson plan format linked at the end of the article, as a warning. Something tells me we will be doing that for all of our classes before SACS et al get done with their emphasis on detailed learning objectives. I just wonder about the value of having over 140 of those pages archived somewhere for a class like mine when the thing that works the best on a given day wasn't even on my own outline of what I planned to do.

Updated April 2009:

There was a really good article about the transition from post-doc to professor from Professor in Training that deserves a link here as well as in one of my older articles. I gather that Prof in Training is wrapping up the first year of research AND teaching. Quite the perspective. Even though that is ancient history to me, I agree that there is a lot you don't know as a post doc, and even as a research professor on someone else's grant. For other links and comments, go to a more detailed article in my blog.

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Comment semi-Moderation

Hat tip to Dr. Crazy for this one.

I've had a few contemporaneous 'spam' comments show up on the blog, and tolerated them by mocking them in my reply. However, I have recently noticed them show up in older articles, particularly ones that get linked in a comment on another blog. One was particularly lame, to borrow Dr. Crazy's term, simply a list of words that were linked to various places.

So I am enabling comment moderation for articles that are more than 10 days old. That should cover it, with little pain for me. Moderation will be light, but might not always be promptly carried out.

The way you make this change is simple. You just go to the "Settings" tab, click on "Comments", and select the middle option to moderate comments posted more than N days after the article appears.

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Math with Manipulatives

Another hat tip to Sherman Dorn for his comments about the "Springboard" math (and language arts, aka English) curriculum in his county school system based on an article in the local paper about it.

[By the way, when did they invent "language arts" anyway? Do they read poetry in the original Russian or plays in the original Greek? Aren't all of the classes based on English translations when they deal with foreign authors? It's English, folks, and your students need to be able to read and write it so they can deal with my lab class and know enough about literature to survive college classes in composition and the humanities.]

Based solely on the article, which spent most of its column inches criticizing the content of the HS literature courses (when it wasn't shocking me with the huge difference between their curriculum and mine as noted in a footnote), I think I came away with a misleading view of what they are doing on the math side. I find the example Sherman ridiculed to be potentially very effective in the hands of a competent teacher because its purpose was not what the journalist thought it was. Details are below the fold.

The article introduced the math content as follows

In math classes, just four SpringBoard lessons are required each year. Among them is an Algebra I SpringBoard lesson that starts with students arranging baby marshmallows and spaghetti on blue paper to discover different ways to multiply binomials.

Seventh- and eighth-graders in Jennifer Apgar's Algebra I honors class at Ferrell Middle Magnet School in Tampa couldn't wait to dig into their bags of marshmallows in January and were relieved to find extras for eating.

The marshmallows represent office computers; spaghetti separates sections of the office.

"I'm kinesthetic – I like to use my hands," said Giana Moore, 12. She said she prefers such hands-on activities to doing math problems on the computer. The seven computers lining one wall in her class are rarely used, she said.

Well, at least I know where the student mentioned in my previous article picked up on that Learning Style terminology! In Middle School? (Little does this girl know that this is actually a visual learning tool. Your hands are only used to arrange them. Kinesthetic learning would be actually connecting computers into a network, getting your muscles to learn how to pull cable and plug in the connectors.)

This description from the newspaper article sounded a lot like the "discovery" (aka look-say or guessing) way of not teaching math that has been used in some elementary math curricula. The sort of curriculum that produces students who cannot divide or work with fractions when they get to college. What changed my mind was seeing a video showing what it really is, in action, albeit in the hands of an experienced and clearly skilled teacher. That video is part of an article from a Tampa Bay Online story from February 2009 that turned up high on a Google search for the term. The video probably resulted from the same dog-and-pony show, since it featured the same teacher at the same middle school in Tampa (clearly filmed on January 15). It just took another month to get the print version of the story out.

Several things were immediately clear.

The marshmallows were not being used to discover equivalent ways of multiplying binomials, they were being used to represent computers in a cube farm that was described in a rather long and detailed story problem (correction, they are now called Word Problems because story problems are even scarier than nuclear power) that you can see on the screen at the start of the video. [Side comment: I love how up-to-date the problem is, dealing with physically networking computers. The simplest answer to this problem is to go wireless!] That problem would be way over the heads of most college students I encounter, who act as if they had never had to analyze a word problem. My colleagues at Wannabe Flagship say the same thing, and my guess is this results from it not being on the local HS exit exam. From what I can see, the trend in "college" algebra has also been to avoid word problems as much as possible unless they fall in a very narrow class so only one 'type' shows up on an exam and can be solved out of habit rather than by analysis. (They spend the time gained from dropping this topic to teach students how to graph functions on their calculator.)

Anyway, back to the main point:
The video makes it immediately clear to me that the marshmallows are not being used for what the reporter says, but rather to help visualize the geometrical situation that has been described in words in the problem. Even better, the developers of this module recognize that there might be a vocabulary issue with the word problem and make that part of the analysis explicit. As the teacher puts it, "A lot of good practices are in Springboard". Looks that way to me. The 'manipulative' (which has the advantage of being edible) is there to illustrate why the equations work out the way they do. I really like the emphasis on collaborative learning, which is a great way for students to work on problem solving by articulating their strategies.

I see this as the math equivalent of theory and experiment in physics. We set up a problem, we solve the problem, and then we see what happens when we measure the unknown in an experiment. Incorrect approaches are exposed by the harsh light of reality. You see an example of that in the comment of one student in the video story. I can see why the math faculty have had little trouble adopting this system. In addition to changing only a fraction of their curriculum because they added selected modules to supplement their existing approach (no doubt tailored to their HS exit exam), it does what experienced teachers already do. The upside is that it helps inexperienced teachers by giving them an entire exercise with printed worksheets to guide students through this process.

The unanswered question is whether they can transfer this skill to wholly new problems. If it is just one exercise with no reinforcement, it will be lost quickly. Experienced problem solving requires more time and additional coaching. (Do they still do "coin problems"? Those can be tested with play money.) Can they use everyday objects like marshmallows to model some other problem? To identify the marshmallow with a variable like "x"? That would be great. But unlikely except in the best classes.


* Long Footnote:
I really was shocked to see the huge difference between what they described as the "national" curriculum and the college prep curriculum I experienced decades ago. Bro, if you read this, please comment on the sequence your kids followed in HS. We had a 7-9 and 10-12 system that only changed to the middle-school scheme when my 2000 capacity HS went from overcrowded with 3 classes to capacious with 4, so I don't have a clear memory of what we did in 9th grade. I can still remember the trailer where I studied 10th grade American Lit, which was followed by a year called "world" lit that started with Greek plays and ended with British literature, so we got a good mix of plays and poetry that year. Senior year was devoted to a capstone composition class that featured (in my case) a wide range of fairly contemporary short novels and short stories with an existentialist bent, with major focus on learning how to research and write a 10+ page term paper. We read Conrad, Hesse, "Clockwork Orange", etc. No movies, no "iTunes", the modern books-on-tape, but (unlike one class mentioned in the article) we could all read at the 9th grade level or above. Even one kid notable for his lack of intellectual curiosity got connected in this class.

The curriculum described in this article lacks a senior composition class and puts world lit before American lit so they have limited exposure to advanced American English before taking their "high stakes" exit test. If this is a national curriculum, it is no wonder so few students can even write a decent lab report. I think they also struggle with reading problems because they appear to have never heard of the critical reading exercise of writing a pre'cis (a short summary of a text that contains only facts, no opinions) that was common in our curriculum.

The comments on this article were also interesting. The usual suspects show up attacking "government" schools, but I have seen little evidence in our area of a major difference between non-selective private schools and the public schools. They also place into 5th grade math. The public doesn't know how they measure up because they don't have to take the state exit exam to graduate from HS, so everyone assumes they are doing a good job.

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