91–100 of 112 posts
This makes me want to chant USA a lot more than the soccer game.
or you could learn math & science...way better
Earlier quoted context omitted.
??? Wouldn't it be better for mankind ... if as many people like these kids as possible pursued math and science more vigorously ??? Especially kids like these, who have what I would term "creative" intelligence. Why would we want those people in law ??? That gives us far less than having them in math and science. And we will get the MOST by having them in art AND math and science. Then we'd really get their creativi…
IMO, high level Math and Science is generally a waste of a lot of really smart peoples time. The LHC for example is studying particle energy's so far outside of 'reasonable' that we are not going to get useful technology from there. The same is true of a lot of esoteric Math which mostly ends up divorced from anything actually useful. That's not to say funding such things is necessarily a waste, just the focus on STE…
Another cool application is the superconductors in the NMR devices. They can see what is inside your head and even do something equivalent to a chemical analysis (with NRM spectroscopy) without opening it. The first superconductors experiments used Helium at 4K, so they were only a laboratory curiosity.
For everyday use, I like the giant magnetoresistance. This is my favorite case to explain that strange quantum effects have real world direct applications. Just start talking about the spin in electrons. Then explain that some magnetic conductors have a different value of the current with spin up and the currents with spin down. Then add the sandwich with non-magnetic conductors. At this moment it looks like a weird laboratory experiment. Then suddenly explain how it is used in hard disks heads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_magnetoresistance
This makes me want to chant USA a lot more than the soccer game.
This is definitely off-topic, but have people taken a look at Po-Shen Loh's company expii.com? He's the coach for the US team. It says: Expii is a collection of free, interactive, explanations written by people from around the world Interesting!
However, after being appointed to the national coach position, I realized that the USA would not be able to consistently deliver top results unless we lifted our mathematical level across a broad base. It seemed that technology could provide the solution to that problem, in the sense that it's possible to crowd-source the scripting of automatic virtual tutors, which can then be replayed (for free) on mobile devices throughout all regions, rich or poor. Thus, expii.com was born.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11SdySDDrMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6WVbFIz43M
-- Po-Shen Loh
This is definitely off-topic, but have people taken a look at Po-Shen Loh's company expii.com? He's the coach for the US team. It says: Expii is a collection of free, interactive, explanations written by people from around the world Interesting!
I gasped when I saw my acquaintance's name on HN. By coincidence, I'm wearing an expii t-shirt right now. He's really nice, and excited about improving math and science education. Expii could be called an "explorable explanations" Wikipedia[0]--one can write code (I think a subset of JS), embed videos etc in service of a better explanation. I'm also fond of him because his office has an X server (or would that be X c…
Has their education system declined or something else perhaps? I know they have a low birthrate....
This makes me want to chant USA a lot more than the soccer game.
Something about this comment really annoys me. It's like you are disparaging high achievement by others just because it's not in a field you are personally interested in?
Getting really annoyed is silly. I try not to be easily offended by hackernews comments.
Russia nowhere to be seen. We used to be a powerhouse too, but it seems the education here is in absolute shambles now.
To be fair, this contest measures the performance of six people. The education that is most directly tied to IMO performance is specific "math for the top few students in the country" stuff which is usually some specialist math camp thing. So I don't think it necessarily means that much about a whole country's math education, if their IMO team doesn't do well.
This is definitely off-topic, but have people taken a look at Po-Shen Loh's company expii.com? He's the coach for the US team. It says: Expii is a collection of free, interactive, explanations written by people from around the world Interesting!
Thanks for noticing! :) Indeed, I've been working with a certain segment of the population through my roles as the national coach of the USA IMO team and as a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University. However, after being appointed to the national coach position, I realized that the USA would not be able to consistently deliver top results unless we lifted our mathematical level across a broad base. It seemed tha…
May I ask what your plan is for defending lessons against cranks, crusading ideologues, and the less-than-knowledgeable once it gets more adoption? Other collaborative projects such as Wikipedia have suffered as a result of this, but I noticed in your talk that your aim is to maintain "higher" quality than Wikipedia or even Stack Exchange and Quora. I'm curious how this can be accomplished once the user base expands beyond its initial network.
Congrats on this year's IMO result!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, high level Math and Science is generally a waste of a lot of really smart peoples time. The LHC for example is studying particle energy's so far outside of 'reasonable' that we are not going to get useful technology from there. The same is true of a lot of esoteric Math which mostly ends up divorced from anything actually useful. That's not to say funding such things is necessarily a waste, just the focus on STE…
The standard example of unexpected esoteric physic application is the Special and General Relativity corrections of the GPS. 100 years ago nobody thought that we would ever use that small correction or that everybody would have a special-and-general-aware device in the pocket. Another cool application is the superconductors in the NMR devices. They can see what is inside your head and even do something equivalent to…
Don't get me wrong, QM for example was ridiculously useful. But, pointing to past and saying these tiny particle accelerators where useful let's make a multi billion dollar one feels like cargo cult science for the lack of a better phrase. We just keep piling higher and deeper without a clear reason to do so other than we can afford to do so.
String theory is another example where lot's of effort from seemingly smart people with no practical basis.
Dumping all of LHC's money into say a large ITER style fusion project would have also been cutting edge, but there would have at least had the possibility of useful results. Hell, even ISS would qualify as vaguely useful.
How about a self sustaining bio-dome in Antarctica. Now that's probably harder and possibly more expensive, but would have real useful applications if we ever want to try and colonize Mars.
PS: Not that the 13+Billion for the LHC was all that expensive, but there are a lot of similar projects out there.