June 6, 2009, 3:06 pm
By Robert Talbert
This report Frinom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, citing an article in the June 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that differences between boys’ and girls’ performance on standardized mathematics tests correlates with the level of gender equity and other socio-cultural factors in the country in which the test was taken.
The study’s co-author says:
“There are countries where the gender disparity in math performance doesn’t exist at either the average or gifted level. These tend to be the same countries that have the greatest gender equality,” article co-author Janet Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a university news release.[...]
“If you provide females with more educational opportunities and more job opportunities in fields that require advanced knowledge of math, you’re going to find more women learning and performing…
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April 23, 2009, 8:54 am
By Robert Talbert
On Twitter right now I am soliciting thoughts about calculus courses, the topics we cover in them, and the ways in which we cover them. It’s turning out that 140 characters isn’t enough space to frame my question properly, so I’m making this short post to do just that. Here it is:
Suppose that you teach a calculus course that is designed for a general audience (i.e. not just engineers, not just non-engineers, etc.). Normally the course would be structured as a 4-credit hour course, meaning four 50-minute class meetings per week for 14 weeks. Now, suppose that the decision has been made to cut this to TWO credit hours, or 100 minutes of contact time per week for 14 weeks.
Questions: What topics do you remove from the course? What topics do you keep in the course at all costs? And of those topics you keep, do you teach them the same way or differently? If differently, then how would you …
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January 15, 2009, 4:08 pm
By Robert Talbert
December 14, 2008, 1:42 pm
By Robert Talbert
My latest post at the Young Mathematicians Network blog is on how to get from graduate school to your first academic job without hopelessly screwing yourself over financially speaking, like I did. It takes some time for the post to appear on the YMN web site, so I will include it below the fold for CO9s readers (I should call this “premium content”!). (more…)
June 22, 2008, 7:19 pm
By Robert Talbert
November 8, 2007, 9:46 pm
By Robert Talbert
Jackie asked a series of good questions about the textbook-free modern algebra course and some of the student outcomes I was seeing in it. I tried to respond to those in the comments, but things started to get lengthy, so instead I will get to them here.
Do you think the results are only a result of a textbook free course?
To repeat what I said in the comments: I think the positives in the course come not so much from the fact that we didn’t have a textbook, but more from the fact that the course was oriented toward solving problems rather than covering material. There was a small core of material that we had to cover, since the seniors were getting tested on it, but mostly we spent our time in class presenting, dissecting, and discussing problems. We didn’t cover as much as I would have liked, but this is a price I decided to pay at the outset.
Most traditional textbooks don’t lend …
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August 9, 2007, 2:26 pm
By Robert Talbert
Apple just made major updates to the software I probably use the most, namely iWork and particularly Keynote. I downloaded the 30-day trial (which makes me wonder why we can’t just download software from Apple) and have given Pages and Keynote a very (VERY) brief once-over. I hope to have more later. But for now, here are some first impressions.
They are really pushing Pages now as a word processor. Before, it was a little hard to know exactly what it was. Is it a word processor? Is it desktop publishing? Is it something in between? We didn’t really know, and I hardly ever used it unless I had a document to print that had a lot of graphics in it. But now, check out the updated toolbar:
Mercifully, you can now adjust stuff like font size, typeface, aligment, etc. from the toolbar — no more click, click, click to navigate through those damnable Inspectors to do such simple stuff. Just …
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August 5, 2007, 11:49 am
By Robert Talbert
This post on the TV show Jericho has produced 13 comments, making it one of the top 5 most-commented-on articles I’ve posted here at CO9s. Almost all these comments are from new commenters. So welcome to all of you folks. I guess we’re witnessing the power of a Technorati keyword search at work.
Technorati Tags: Jericho, Technorati
August 5, 2007, 11:34 am
By Robert Talbert
I made it back from Reconnect 2007 safe and sound around 11:30 last night, and without a single flight delay! I didn’t have wifi at any point on the way back — see mini-rant below — so I kept a text file with some running commentary while I was waiting for my flights yesterday. Here you go:
- Both the Raleigh-Durham airport and the Newark Liberty Airport have wifi… for $7.95 per 24-hour period. That’s lame. Wifi in an airport should be free. Especially in Newark, which has one of the highest rates of traffic in the world — and one of the most boring gate areas. I’m writing this blog post offline at my gate in Newark, because of the non-free wifi, in case you were wondering.
- I’m hoping that Washington-Dulles has free wifi, because I was counting on snagging a Jericho episode from iTunes for the 90-minute flight back to Indy (in the dark).
Update: Dulles has three different wifi …
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August 3, 2007, 8:00 am
By Robert Talbert
I found out during one of my interminable waits in the Charlotte airport that CBS has this site called Innertube, where you can view entire episodes of some of its shows for free. Included in that list of shows is the entire first series of Jericho, a drama that has become a cult favorite even though it was cancelled after its first series. I watched the first episode in the airport, and I was hooked.
It’s about life in a small town after a devastating terrorist nuclear attack on the United States. I have always been a sucker for post-nuclear holocaust fiction — call it a morbid holdover fascination from having grown up in the 80′s. Jericho is small-town slice-of-life drama, meets post-holocaust, meets government conspiracies — all in a neat, weekly serial package. This is one of the few TV shows I’ve made an effort to watch lately, and I’m not the only fan. There’s the Emmy-nominated…
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