Cool

If true.

Only $33?

Wow. Imagine if you were stranded on a desert island, without a calculator, and you needed to quickly multiply two large numbers. I mean, when you are stranded on a desert island, life is fairly hectic. When you need something multiplied, you need it now!

Well, thank God, Albert Clay has found the code to mentally multiply two numbers. Actually, I should say "cracked" the code, since that is what the headline said. Funny, I do not remember anyone encrypting math. Was I given a key in third grade when I learned my multiplication table? Damnit! What did I do with that?

I think the opening line from the original article in The New & Observer was even more laughable:

"On a yellow scratch pad, Albert Clay works out a math problem that can stump a calculator -- and all of the ciphering occurs inside his white-haired head."

Wow, that's impressive if true. What was the problem? Fermant's Last Thereom? Maybe the Riemann Hypothesis? How to love? Surely, this must be difficult!

54,321 x 12,345 = ?

(Collective groan). Really? That's not special! What kind of crappy ass calculator couldn't do this? Apparently, the pocket calculator could not display enough digits. Again, not special. If you have a 10 digit display, then you can enter 10,000,000,000 x 10 and the calculator will be unable to display the result unless it can do scientific notation. And a pocket calculator!?!? Was his abacus in the repair shop? Ok, well what is the trick?

"Suffice it to say you multiply the digits on the right, cross-multiply and add the digits in the center, then multiply the digits on the left."

That's not a code! That's math! This is not a short-cut. It's just doing the problem in a different way so that you can remember the steps easier. It's almost as if you can't just create information from nothing. Damn you Shannon! But wait, this old fart will sell you his "secret" for only $33. Why? For what purpose? The only value this has is as a party trick for a really, really dull person at a really, really dull party.

"Dude, this party is so lame!"

"Not to worry braugh, I scored us some paper and #2 pencils. We can long-division the shit out of this party!"

Christ, I wish I could say that this was a just some small town paper in rural America, but this is my hometown newspaper and served the area known as The Research Triangle.

Bobby McFerrin on the Pentatonic Scale

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

It's not news, it's CNN

I love how every year, a survey comes out saying that college graduates in math and science fields earn more than other majors. What's more appalling is that some think this is news. The article here states that it is a matter of supply and demand, but this is not entirely true. However, this article inspired me to share a couple of stories from my own family and how the educational system in America is failing.

It is true that there is a "braindrain," which is largely the fault of the poor education in math and science being delivered by the public schools in The United States. Personally, my family has two stories: one from public school and the other is sadly, from private school. The public school story involves my little sister. Her calculus teacher was working through the details of a problem in class, and he must have been proud of his work because he stepped back from the board and stated, "You know, I should have taken calculus; I would have been pretty good at it!" The idea that someone can teach a subject by following along in the book or staying just a lesson ahead of the students is appalling. In order to teach a subject, you need to understand the subject on a level deeper than the book; otherwise, you will not be able to explain the subject in a different way than the book. One thing I've learned in teaching is to present the same subject material in several different ways because what works for one student may not work for another.

Another problem, which I find even worse, is that the teacher says he should have taken it solely because he would have good at it. If you only take on challenges because you are good at it, then you are not really challenging yourself. Imagine the impact of John F. Kennedy's speech if he said,

"And they may well ask why climb a small hill? Why, 35 years ago, fly from New York to Boston? Why does Rice play local high schools? Because these things are easy and we'd be really good at it!" (Original quote may be read here.)

Not exactly inspiring. Thankfully, JFK did not have such defeatist attitude, but believed we do things "not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal [of going to the moon] will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." I get chills every time I hear this speech. No matter how many times I hear it, I am always inspired.

The other story, and maybe more shocking, involves my little brother. At a parent-teacher conference, his teacher told my mother that my little brother needed to stop working ahead of the class because "it wasn't fair" to the rest of the students. I am still amazed that mother did not bitch slap the teacher for saying that a student needed to stop learning.

There are more reasons that math and science majors earn more than liberal arts degrees than just supply and demand. I hope to discuss other reasons in a future post.

Awesome

Spotify in the US by this fall? Like I said, awesome!

Taxes for Ear Candles and Other Silly Crap

Note: The intent of this article is not meant to persuade one for or against a government, single-payer health care system. Rather, it is to address the specific application of tax dollars to medical methodologies that do not hold up to the rigors of scientific testing.

When I started this blog, I made a promise not to discuss politics unless it crosses the lines of promoting woo through legislation (note: I do not care if a politician believes in crap (for this blog), but I do care if they want to force taxpayers to pay or believe crap). Dennis Kucinich has given me just such a chance with a recent blog post on the Daily Kos. Specifically, this is to address the following comment:

"One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine)."

This should make anyone who has an understanding of science shudder. What is wrong with this amendment? First, in order for something to be alternative to medicine means that it either has not been shown to be medically (i.e., scientifically) effective or has been disproven to be effective under numerous rigorous test. For instance, here are some examples:

• Accupuncture has been shown to have no effect on back pain. This is also an example of the media being scientifically illiterate with such ridiculous headlines such as "Even fake accupuncture helps back pain."
• Ear candles. Wow, be more ridiculous.
• Homeopathy. This is may be my favorite medically-based pseudoscience. Want to cure a cold? Take an a small amount of onion (because both onion and a cold cause you to tear up and affect the mucus membranes in your nose), dilute it with water to the point that you would need a container the size of the solar system to have a realistic chance of retaining just a single molecule of the onion, then ingest or drink a small amount of the diluted solution. How do the practicioners of homeopathy justify their treatment when there is zero probability that I have ingested a single molecule of the onion? Water has memory, which is strengthend by shaking the "mixture" at each stage of dilution. No joke. They really want to throw away everything we know of chemistry. Further, the more you dilute something, supposedly it gets more powerful. Take that physics!
  

Essentially, this legislation not only allows for any treatment to be used, but the government will now pay for it! While we are at it, why not allow for people to get energy tax benefits because they claim their car is a perpetual motion machine? Is it not bad enough that the government has spent $2.5 billion researching CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) only to find it does not work? The only thing worse than spending this amount of money is to then ignore the findings and pay for people to get ineffective treatment!

Anyway, I encourage people to write to their congressman or congress woman to voice their concerns about any legislation that uses tax dollars to administer disproven medical methodologies.

Homeopathic A&E

Just awesome...