College students who don't know what they should know

"Tall, Dark, and Mysterious" has a post about the state of college students where she is teaching. She is trying to teach Calculus to students who don't have a good background in the basics, such as algebra. I have reason to believe that this is not isolated to British Columbia, or even Canada.

She writes:

See also: mathematics by pattern matching, word problems, et al. So much of this problem can be traced to the fact that students do not understand that an equation is a relationship among quantities. Each equation they see is a concept unto itself, to be memorized and applied to the word problem on the test that looks like the word problem that I did on the blackboard and that used a similar equation. If the word problem on the test doesn’t look like any of the problems I did in class, then that question is “totally unfair”. Most students will leave the question blank, or solve a completely different problem (one with a ready-made equation) in the space provided.

She also writes:

An equation is a relationship among quantities. How many times have I tried, and failed, to get this idea across? Imagine getting students to realize it for themselves! Unfortunately, many students lack the intuitive ideas about math needed to know, even subconsciously and with the help of leading questions, that equations are anything other than a jumble of letters, numbers, and symbols. (Even though I spent twenty minutes showing how we could use the definition of a circle and the Pythagorean Theorem to derive the equation of a circle in the Cartesian plane, nearly all of my students were angry that I wouldn’t provide the formula on the test. I mentioned, incorrectly, that they could derive the formula themselves, on the test, if they needed to; of course, I was wrong.) But I would gladly sacrifice 80% of the poorly-learned content in a first-year college math course if I could instead effect a solid understanding of what equations really meant - and how to get one from a sentence or two of information. I wonder if Fish’s lesson could be adapted to the first-year math classroom.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I much preferred the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy over Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The latter was violent and evil, while the former was good fun. Of course, it is enough of a cult phenomenon that my wife and her friend were somewhat perplexed by it. If you are a purist, you might object to what was done with the Hitchhiker, but we had the benefit of Douglas Adams having been involved before he died.

Jerry Pournelle has a good piece about Global Warming

Jerry Pournelle writes about a subject that interests me: Global Warming. He points out that in the past, we have had periods of warmer weather:

But the facts remain: the warming trend was going on well before the CO2 levels began escalating. The Earth has been both warmer and cooler in historical times. Computer models produce predictions, but none of those models can duplicate the past (start with 1900 and run a 100 year projection that "predicts" the realities of the Year 2000; or start with 1950 and predict 2000 with the model; or heck, just give us a good picture of what is going to happen next year, or this summer). Observation scientists tend to be less enthusiastic about the "consensus" and many reject it entirely. And there are counter-trends: We don't know if we are headed for an Ice Age or Global Warming, but for a while at least Warming produces a more benign world with more resources to spend. And the return of the Ice Ages would be very bad.

Sarbanes-Oxley

If there is anythingholding back business right now, it is the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. It was enacted in a burst of demagoguery, starting in 2001, made possible by the Enron and World Com scenarios. The Democrats in Congress were doing everything they could to make trouble for President Bush and the Republicans in Congress, and they seized on the Enron collapse as one possible solution. It ultimately failed in the primary motivation, but it still had the consequence of torpedoing business. It was made possible by the Republicans feeling that they had to show that they were as strong against business excesses as the Democrats. Now, we are stuck with a bad bargain that is hurting the economy and country. Not that you would know it by listening to the various news outlets.

Jane Galt on European Unity and the Euro

Megan McArdle ("Jane Galt") has a post on the danger to the Euro from economic differences between European countries. As was just mentioned to me, countries have lost the ability to "print money" to jump start their economies. Italy is in the grip of stagflation, she writes.

I'll tell you what is a big deal for the EU, though: the euro. The disparities between euro-zone economies are not shrinking as everyone had hoped; in some places, they're growing. That is making it nearly impossible to craft monetary policy that is both hawkish on inflation, and doesn't throw huge economies (i.e. Italy and Germany) deeper into the slough of economic despond. Italy, meanwhile, is managing to disprove the adage that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" by having stagflation, a recession, and an inflation hawk at the monetary helm. If the euro falls apart, it could have major repercussions for the EU, as it would be a full scale retreat from "ever-closer union".

Jacques Corriveau denies that the payments were kickbacks

Jacques Corriveau now says, contrary to what he had said in April, before the Gomery Commission, that he had not made kickbacks to the Liberal Party. The Globe and Mail has the story, this time by the "Canadian Press".

A graphic designer denied at the sponsorship inquiry Monday that paying the salaries of three Liberal party staffers was a scheme to divert sponsorship profits to the federal party.

Jacques Corriveau, a long-time party organizer and friend of Jean Chrétien, said he took on the Liberal workers in 1998, before he realized sponsorship subcontracts would earn him millions.

Marc Cooper gets around and rubs shoulders with celebrities

Marc Cooper writes that we just passed the 19th anniversity of the drunkest he has ever gotten. He had done a Playboy interview with Oliver Stone. You also find out a lot more about Oliver Stone, his morals, and his buddies (more than I wanted to know).

I’ll leave any comment on the voting in France and Lebanon, the revoltin’ Bolton, and the war in Iraq for after Monday.

I continue in holiday mode and reserve the right to be frivolous. Anyway, this weekend is the precise 19^th anniversary of the drunkest I ever got. The story even has a celebrity news hook. Because the drunkest I ever got was with Oliver Stone. Yes, the same Stone who unwittingly commemorated that same event the other night by getting busted for DUI out on the Sunset Strip.

Anyway, it was on another Memorial Day weekend, in 1987, that I found myself in South Hampton finishing up a marathon Playboy magazine interview with Oliver Stone. (The finished product is hard to find online so as an act of public welfare I am offering a full-text version of the interview which you can find at the bottom of this posting ).

Oliver had just won his Oscar for Platoon and he was out in the Hamptons on the set of Wall Street. I had already spent a couple of days with him earlier in the year in Santa Monica laying down some tape. I followed him to the Hamptons to ask the final follow-ups.

If you are a voyeur, you might read the rest of Marc's post.

Jeff Jarvis LIKES moderates and compromises

Jeff Jarvis, of Buzz Machine, apparently likes moderates and the sort of compromize that the gang of 14 did. He writes:

Howard Kurtz writes that blog coverage of the moderate revolution was filled with anger from the right and left while mainstream media celebrated the moderation (as did I... apparently because I am either strange or mainstream, take your pick). He's onto something.

He concludes:

What this split in coverage really indicates, as Kurtz says, is the essential difference between big and citizens' media (and I'm repeating myself): because newspapers are institutional and blogs are personal, newspapers try to be dispassionate while blogs are passionate.

And that's what we see in the coverage of what I hope to call the moderate revolution: Blogs speak up when they have cause to be pissed about or to celebrate over but rarely to be moderate and thus dull. The big press has to cover the story and thinks it has to see both sides; it likes to show both sides yelling but, of course, it doesn't want to be caught yelling itself.

My reaction is that events of the last week were caused by a combination of the political ambitions of Senator McCain and the increasing restlessness of liberal Republicans.

Keith Thompson, at Sane Nation writes about transcending left and right in politics

Keith Thompson has a blog called Sane Nation. He has a series of posts about transcending left and right in political discussions. The last is called Beyond Left and Right. The one before that is called "Binary Myopia". On Monday he wrote about a conversation that he had on the radio:

Yes, that was me speaking to Rush Limbaugh live a few moments ago. I was the one celebrating Bobby Kennedy. Rush was the one who was remembering Hubert Humphrey with respect. So it goes in the amazing political landscape called America. Who knew?

Marc Cooper on the new Leftist McCarthyism

Marc Cooper is my favorite leftist intellectual. Michael J. Totten had pointed him out to us quite a few months ago. Marc's credentials as a leftist are impeccable. He got thrown out of the California university system by Ronald Reagan, and then went to work for Salvador Allende, in Chile. He is married to a Chilean socialist, his daughter is a "notorious union organizer" and he is an editor for The Nation. He writes about how a segment of the left have become "Leninist Liberals". Max Blumenthal, Sid's son, has been slandering Christopher Hitchins, accusing him of having Nazi sympathies (!), which is amazing enough. Mark concludes:

With the rise and fall of Clintonism, however, many of these libs have morphed into quite bitter and resentful street fighters who have adopted their own form of red-baiting (if we understand red to mean, for example, red-staters). These Leninist Liberals are ready to purge anyone who steps out of line either to their right or left. Satanize Ralph Nader because he took away all those votes from Al Gore. Hang (or smear) Christopher Hitchens, the once-left apostate who now supports Bush and his war. Leninists certainly not in any ideological way--but rather in assimilating that old-time leftist sectarianism (on second thought maybe this is wholly appropriate for a failing Democratic Party that seems headed to becoming only a sect).

I’m all for disagreement and heated, no-holds-barred debate and polemics. Take on anyone you damn well please. But do it with some solid arguments and some sound reasoning. Not with slander and innuendo.

I’m told that Hitchens is currently overseas and will soon be responding to Blumenthal’s second smear. In this match-up, my bet is third round win for Hitchens by KO. It wasn't really a fair fight from the outset.