Hard Problems at MSRI

I am here at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute for the northern California premier of Hard Problems, a documentary about the Math Olympiad.

Quotes from the movie I thought were particularly good

1.  The subject of math rather than just the random facts I was taught in school
2.  Math is more of exploration than knowledge
3.  You cant really do math emotionally, that doesn't make sense.
4.  Math doesn't have to be straight out of the book,
5. For a really cool problem you can explain how its really cool without having to get in the gritty details, I think math is like that it speaks for itself its very beautiful.
6. I have a little bit of a distaste for schools.
7. I have this theory that the smarter a mathematician is the better a mathematician is, the less they like to work.... I don't know if its true, I haven't asked enough mathematicians
8. I don't do mathematics because its mathematics. I do it because of the astounding connections and creativity it allows (ending line, one I think that is very incisive about the nature of mathematics

And now, onto the Q&A panel.
7:05  Two interesting threads, the moderator brings up, the one about what the IMO is and questions about the IMO and then also about how to bring more people into the IMO and increase higher mathematics training, however, the question i find interesting, and want to hear about, is instead how we can take the lessons gained from the higher level math education to get better math education around the board not just for those kids gifted with math talent, but to increase math education overall.

7:15 Zvezdelina Sankova puts on an interesting presentation about the Berkeley math circle, it seems like a great way to teach math, why don't we adapt a math circle setup to teach math to all children?

7: 20 Melanie makes a great point on how most of the students who do the IMO have seen some exciting math whereas moth high school students have not seen any interesting math.

7:25 Competition aspect is an important hook. "competitions were the venue in which I learned that there was interesting math"

7:40 Guy behind me comments on how the math circles helped him teach and make better, Zvezdelina makes a point about how the BMC was supposed to me a trail program, and that the allocation of resources is making it happen at colleges and universities, not schools.


7:50 some douchebag in the back asks 4 annoying questions, I hope he dies in a fire.

7:50 Ryan makes a good point about how people are not exposed to interesting math problems.

7:55 I get a question in on the first quote in the list, Zevezdelina talks about how the math circle gives the problem first then develops the tools to solve it rather than just give students the tools of mathematics with no context rhyme or reason.

ill distill this into some final thoughts when I get home.

Criminally Boring, A Rant About Math Education.

For years I assumed that, over time, I would get less and less angry with my high school math teachers. I was wrong. Instead, as it turns out, the massive failure of high school mathematics education serves as a constant pit of fury that I can call on anytime I need (especially when people say they hate/are bad at math, I'm convinced it stems from terrible education into what the subject is...).


Why do I harbor such rage? because it would be inconceivable to not be furious at the grand scale of the failure. When I ask people why they hate math, the most frequent response is that it is 'boring'. And, while I disagree to the utmost, I understand where they are coming from. The fact is mathematics is perhaps the most poorly understood subject by its teachers and the population at large. I was lucky to have a father who cultivated my interest in mathematics at a young age, but even so, as I left high-school I had become convinced that math is boring, a dull subject populated by endless formulae that are applied in an arcane seemingly random manner.


But mathematics is far far greater than I was led to believe from how terrible my teachers were. Mathematics, the study of relationships between objects truly is the queen of the sciences.  As I started college and realized that Electrical Engineering, my chosen major, would give me no chances to take any non engineering classes, distraught over this prospect, I decided I needed to change majors, but I had no clue what to change to, then my father gave me two books to read, The Man who Knew Infinity and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Reading these, my eyes were opened to the true beauty of mathematics, I saw what my high-school teachers so failed at imparting, what mathematics is. It is the study of how objects relate to one another, regardless of what the object is. It is indeed the language of the universe, the noblest science.


And this, this is what they were able to make boring. I was dumbfounded, how could people in good conscience make such a beautiful and interesting subject boring. I could not understand, perhaps it was from laziness, or misunderstanding, or tiredness, but still, to take such a subject and make it boring should be a crime. The mathematical training of American high schools is downright criminal. Not only does it not grant the students even a shred of mathematical literacy and maturity, it makes them distrust and hate the subject. A subject full of beauty and wonder, a subject where even the most simple rules will lead you into bizarre worlds full of things to explore, and they, these villains that teach the subject have turned it into a cesspit of boredom for most of their students. How is this not a crime? If anything should be a crime should not turning something interesting and beautiful into something ugly and boring be a crime?

Britain apologizes for its treatment of Alan Turing after the war.

In what must be a gratifying feeling for the LGBT community but should definitely be celebrated the world over the British Government formally apologized for their treatment of Alan Turing after the war. For those of you who don't know, Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, the solver of the decision problem. and the man who cracked Enigma and very likely won WWII for the allies, was homosexual. and after the war, turing was convicted of Gross Indecency for his sexual preference. he was given the choice of chemical castration and hormone therapy or jail-time, lost all of his access to his classified work, and, after a year committed suicide. One of the greatest mathematicians of this century and the man who did more than any other man to defeat the Axis powers died after being persecuted for something so silly as his sexual orientation. It is I think, one of the more shameful occurrences in modern history and it is quite refreshing to have the government that caused it to formally apologize, even if it is years later.

2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

An Atheist Reads the Bible (Mission Statement).

So over the past few months, when I haven't posted anything on here at all, I have become more and more of a Atheist, the expelled commentary happening just as I was reading the god delusion probably didn't help my once strong spiritual side. And I know how religious people like to claim that if Atheists just read the scripture they will be saved, now, that seems like a fine experiment to do as, because it is the foundation for a large amount of western culture I have been meaning to comprehensibly read the bible for years, hence my new plan. I will read the bible using the order of the liturgical calendar (as to get a sampling of all of the scripture each week) and give comments and thoughts on the passages.

The first episode will be posted shortly. But first a rundown of how the system will work (at least ideally)

Each week I will update 4 times, once for the old testament reading, once for the new testament reading, once for the psalm and once for the gospel. I will be using the Episcopal Lectionary because I grew up in the Episcopal faith (and to be honest, I still have a little part in my heart for the great writing of the BCP)

So.... lets do it to it

The Retrofuture and the Meaning of Life

The more I think about it the more I pine for the retrofuture. The sad fact of the matter is that thanks to the Internet we really are living in what could easily be called the future, the only problem with this is that this future sucks. we are in the future but we have lost all sense of wonder. we have no frontier to explore, no new worlds to conquer.

This is the true failure of our age, not only do we have no new frontier, no new lands to colonize, no way to spread the human race out to the myriad worlds of tomorrow, we have lost any desire to do so. Talking with people I hear no wish to move out to mars, All I hear are gripes about how much it may cost, that is, on the rare times they think about it at all.

People are content with the world as we know it, admittedly they all want a few small changes, but in all they are happy with the stagnant shape of the world, they merely argue over texture. I deny such feelings, I don't want to be confined to a spheroid only 24,901.5 miles across. I want the endless galactic spaces promised to me. I want the world of tomorrow Circa 1950. I want to fight Nazi's on the moon, I want to live in a self contained unit in the asteroid belt, I want to farm on Ganymede.

The Internet has made the world succumb to our collective human will. Thanks to the instant speed of communication we are approaching what may easily be called the first global human culture. so, when you are discontent with this culture where do you have to go? unfortunately we do not have such a place, it just doesn't exist anymore. we are all bound by the chains of our gravity well, and I at least, wish to escape.

Let us not forget the Human beings were not meant to be enslaved, not even by the laws of physics. The retrofutureyearning of the human spirit to reach out for whats next. We are called on the same mission that our parents failed, not merely to unite the earth, but to spread ourselves out to the rest of the universe.

First post, some thoughts, overall plan.

I am a crappy writer. In fact, the only thing I do worse than writing is blogging (possibly extreme spelunking). So, I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I suck at this very thing, which, incidentally, is why I'm doing it, so that i can suck just one iota less. Seriously, did you read that sentence? (of course you didn't, you don't exist, I mean who actually reads this type of blog anyway?) It was terrible.

Okay, okay enough bitching, its time to get down to brass tax. I'm using this blog as a place to think about various things, for example, why the baby boomers fucked everything up. what the fuck is wrong with the world, what the fuck we, the children of the baby boomers can do to fix it, (as if we can, i mean they really screwed the pooch on that one. and lets be honest, we suck something hard too). why we cant live in the retro-future, no matter how awesome it would be. the lack of any new frontier (god what i would do to go off to a little country in the middle of nowhere and oppress the natives. Daniel Dravot is the one true god). Morality, Logic, and the fall of the American empire.