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How Mathematics Can Make Smart People Dumb - Ben O'Neill

How Mathematics Can Make Smart People Dumb - Ben O'Neill
Mathematics can sometimes make smart people dumb. Let me explain what I mean by this. I don't mean that it is dumb not to be good at mathematics. After all, mathematics is a highly abstract and challenging discipline requiring many years (decades even) of study, and there are plenty of very smart people who have little understanding of it, and little ability to use it. What I mean is that mathematics quite often bamboozles people into accepting very silly arguments — arguments that are so silly that if you stated them without draping them in mathematical negligee, you would instantly become an object of ridicule to all those people who flunked out at basic algebra back in high school. The danger of mathematical arguments is that a person can sometimes follow an absurd path of reasoning without being alerted to its absurdity, due to the fact that their mind is so lost in the verbiage of mathematical equations that their common sense fails to penetrate it. But wait a minute. Notes Related:  Critical Thinking

Game Theory 101: Game Theory Made Easy The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) Recently, someone asked Reddit for a list of the best science fiction books of all time. Being a fan of sci-fi, and wanting to expand my own reading list, I thought it would be helpful to tally the results and preserve them here for future reference. I've also included selected quotes from the comments, as well as my own notes on the books I've already read. PS: All book images in this post are copyright Amazon, and were retrieved using my Big Book Search Engine. So, without further ado, here are the Greatest Sci-Fi Books of All Time, ordered by upvote count: Dune Frank Herbert - 1965 "There's a reason it's the global top selling science fiction book of all time." - NibblyPig If you have a chance, track down the excellent full cast audiobook (unabridged!) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams - 1979 "I really love the cool combination of humor, philosophy, and sheer nuttiness of the entire series." - Scarbrow Ender's Game Orson Scott Card - 1985 Foundation Trilogy Isaac Asimov - 1942

Five Editor-Approved Tips for Media Literacy in Any Class In 2015, a year before murmurs of “fake news” became omnipresent, textbook publisher McGraw-Hill was under fire for a World Geography book illustration. The section, on patterns of immigration throughout American history, referred to a wave of “immigration” in which African “workers” arrived in the United States. Parents, students and teachers were outraged by the sugarcoated and outright false history of slavery being shared in classrooms across Texas. Clickbait headlines and polarizing politics have made it a daunting challenge for teachers to find factual, reliable information inside and outside of the classroom. Fact-checking and looking for bias are no longer just skills needed in journalism class or at the school paper. Here are 5 editor-approved tips for teaching these skills to students across curriculum and subjects: Rule #1: Check Your Own Bias First This is something journalists often have to think about. What do you hope the text you’re reading will say?

Should we erase painful memories? One of the most tenacious themes of 20th-century memory research was the idea that people tormented by the memories of terrible experiences could benefit from remembering them, and from remembering them better. The assumption — broadly indebted to psychoanalysis — was that psychological records of traumatic events often failed to be fully “integrated” into conscious memories. As long as these records remained “dissociated,” the sufferer was compelled to “relive” them instead of benignly remembering them. The more fully and appropriately one remembered terrible events, the more attenuated would be their emotional power. But in the 1990s — a time when psychoanalytic assumptions were being challenged as never before — neuroscience researchers developed a new framework for thinking about remembering, forgetting, and the mind’s record of past events. One result was a highly controversial new paradigm for treating traumatic memories.

A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers Imaginary numbers always confused me. Like understanding e, most explanations fell into one of two categories: It’s a mathematical abstraction, and the equations work out. Deal with it.It’s used in advanced physics, trust us. Just wait until college. Gee, what a great way to encourage math in kids! Focusing on relationships, not mechanical formulas.Seeing complex numbers as an upgrade to our number system, just like zero, decimals and negatives were.Using visual diagrams, not just text, to understand the idea. And our secret weapon: learning by analogy. It doesn’t make sense yet, but hang in there. Video Walkthrough: Really Understanding Negative Numbers Negative numbers aren’t easy. But what about 3-4? Negatives were considered absurd, something that “darkened the very whole doctrines of the equations” (Francis Maseres, 1759). What happened? Rather than saying “I owe you 30” and reading words to see if I’m up or down, I can write “-30” and know it means I’m in the hole. Uh oh. Wrong. or

11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek. Click on any image to see it enlarged. 1. Aerogel Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. Aerogel isn't just neat, it's useful. Price: $35 2. Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. EcoSpheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. Price: $80 3. NASA has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from Mars for a while now. Every once in a while, a meteorite smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around the sun. Price: $70+ 4. Price: $150 5. Price: $110 6. Price: $80 7. Price: $15 8.

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is Scanning Electron Micrographs of Diatoms Title: John von Neumann Iberian Peninsula Iberian Peninsula ISS030-E-010008 (4 Dec. 2011) --- One of the Expedition 30 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station photographed this night time scene of the Iberian Peninsula on Dec. 4, 2011. The city lights of Spain and Portugal define the peninsula. Books that will induce a mindfuck Here is the list of books that will officially induce mindfucks, sorted alphabetically by author. Those authors in bold have been recommended by one or more people as being generally mindfucking - any books listed under their names are particularly odd. You're welcome to /msg me to make an addition to this list. And finally, although he's way down at the bottom, my personal recommendation is definitely Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as it turns the ultimate mindfuck: inverting the world-view of our entire culture, and it is non-fiction.

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