March 10, 2004

• a = b a^2 = a*b a^2-b^2 = a*b-b^2 (a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b) (a+b) = b a+a = a 2a = a 2 = 1
• 2x0=1x0
• 99=100 98=100 (Eye Opener Series) Even in mathemmatics, anarchy.
• i love the smell of division by zero in the morning.
• This is so good! [banana]
• This site is good.
• Zemat I'm not so sure. The kid was smart, but not smart enough to realize that the tester expected the conventional answer. All he ended up doing was impressing the two professors, but I doubt there was any real change affected in teaching (which was the focus of his complaint). Since he knew that he could solve it multiple ways, alongwith the conventional way, he should have kept it to himself or gone to the professor anyway and told him about it. His complaint was that physics(or education in general) is taught rigidly (as facts) and "structure" is not taught. But the reasons behind this state of affairs aren't due to some weird malice or overlooked analysis of the effectiveness of the style of teaching. Rather, simply put, there are 30+ students in a class, of varying abilities (sometimes wildly so), whom the teacher has to attempt to render competent in the chosen subject, within 16 weeks. Given the huge difference in how differently each student learns or approachs a subject, the structure method won't work. That's because each person has to explore the subject and grasp the essence of it. A teacher can observe a student for some time and then figure out how to impart structure of further topics, but doing that for 30 students within 16 weeks would render the system even more ineffective. Besides, a teacher can't necessarily correlate with how each student learns, which makes this technique suspect.
• I don't know. From the perspective of the narrating professor, the student was having fun from the beginning with them and knew all along what was the conventional answer (c'mon, it's almost impossible not to realize what a test question expects from you unless you skipped the full semester). I agree with you that the teaching system is made so it can teach 30+ students and probably using less rigid teaching methods could bring all learning to a halt for the whole class. Yet there are ways this problem can be handled. I must use an example from my own undergraduate courses. There, although all engineering mayors had to take three general physics courses there was for each level a special class defined as "advanced physics" that anyone could take. Those courses comprehended the same thematics as the normal physics classes. But they were given by the best professors and with a focus on "structure", not "facts". On the first weekends of each course students were warned about the way the class would be handled and were given the opportunity to change to a normal course. And most of them did. Leaving few willingly students in the class that really loved physics.
• I don't know. From the perspective of the narrating professor, the student was having fun from the beginning with them and knew all along what was the conventional answer (c'mon, it's almost impossible not to realize what a test question expects from you unless you skipped the full semester). WHat do you suppose the student was actually trying to accomplish? I just see him being fed up of the system and this was a protest. He should have known it was a futile one.
• It was not futile, we are seeing the results materialized in a webpage. This was a highly inventive protest that didn't went unheard.
• I've heard that story before, though, and each time its attributed to a different professor in a different country. I'm beginning to think it might be an urban legend. Although this does include references, so I'll have to check them out. The following piece by Alexander Calandra appeared first in The Saturday Review (December 21, 1968, p 60) I have discovered it in a collection More Random Walks in Science by R.L.Weber, The Institute of Physics, 1982.
• Fifty bucks says it's an urban legend -- or, more specifically, a classroom legend. It has all the earmarks: no names ("a colleague," "a student"), no other specifics, just a little sermon a bored professor might come up with on a rainy day to show how clever he could be. This was actually amusing, so I'll spare it the wrath I usually reserve for Kids Say the Darndest Things compilations.
• OMG, how gullible I am. Here's the snopes page on this urban legend. I think that when you learn something that rings true withing your belief system you take it as the truth without questioning.