Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

From the Atlantic, Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing.

Several interesting take-aways from this article. Particularly the idea, which I agree with, that any large group (214 schools, over 131,000 students) would be better served with Big Data, for logistical reasons.

However the thesis of the article, that standardized testing is standardized only to the textbooks the test publishers write, is damning to testing everywhere, not just to large school districts.

In the meantime, there are a few things the district—and other flailing school districts in America—can do. Stop giving standardized tests that are inextricably tied to specific sets of books. At the very least, stop using test scores to evaluate teacher performance without providing the items each teacher needs to do his or her job. Most of all, avoid basing an entire education system on materials so costly that big, urban districts can’t afford to buy them. Until these things change, it will be impossible to raise standardized test scores—despite the best efforts of the teachers and students who will return to school this fall and find no new books waiting for them.

The eternal questions

For the philosophically minded we have the following from Terry.

pi day

As Terry reminds us this is pi day.

the cat

Pi Day

So this is Pi day.  March 14 AKA 3.14 which is not a bad approximation of pi.

You may think that I'm joking, but over at the math department they are celebrating. 

Prodigies

I am told that there are only three areas of human endeavor in which prodigies arise and those are music, mathematics, and chess.

The three activities which have been the loves of my life have been music, mathematics, and chess.

Why could I not even have approached being a prodigy in any of them?

Oh, well.  

Mathematical note

“Mathematics is a language which, when spoken correctly, is always true.” 

Pi day

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So it is pi day!!

Is it a day when math departments around the world offer visitors a cornucopia of bacchanalian delights?

No, but it is a day to celebrate pi!

What is pi?

I'm glad you asked that. I used to ask that question to my students in college math classes.
It never bothered me that they would usually say 3.14 or add on some more decimals.
They were taught to focus first on the numerical value of things, not their meaning. Therefore, one shouldn't fault them for having their first reaction be to offer a value for, rather than a definition of, pi.

So I would clarify my question. No, not the decimal approximation of the value of pi, I am asking you for the definition of pi. What does it mean?

Some knew, some didn't, and some could figure it out.

But some did not believe that something like pi needed a definition.
In their mind it had always been there, sitting on the left hand of God.
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best statistics question ever

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By way of Raymond Johnson, the best statistics multiple choice question ever written on a chalkboard. Try not to think too hard.

If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct?

a) 25%

b) 50%

c) 60%

d) 25%


To see it on the blackboard go to best-statistics-question-ever .
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geek joke

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A physicist represents the scientific link between the operational perspective of an engineer and the theoretical inclination of the mathematician. This is illustrated by the following story (which makes fun of mathematicians, if not all three) that I have heard for as long as I have been in mathematics.

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician each notices (in separate places) a fire.

The engineer immediately runs a large bucket of water and pours it on the fire extinguishing it completely.

The physicist examines the fire, does some calculations, measures a precise amount of water, and pours it on the fire extinguishing it without a drop to spare.

The mathematician looks at the fire and says, "There exists a solution." and walks on.
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Pragmatic Chaos

Hi. I'm Diogenes. I will be the psuedonym for all of the people who don't want to put up things on their own but, instead, send things to Wayne that he thinks that you might like.

Try this

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

B Russell 1872-1970

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Bertrand Russell was born this day in 1872.

At one point he was so despondent that he considered suicide. He spared himself in order to study mathematics.

During WWI Dr. Russell was an antiwar activist. For this he was sent to jail.
As he was being processed into the facility, one of the questions the lady asked him was: religion?
He replied: Agnostic.
The lady then said, "Oh, there are so many new religions these days, but I suppose they all worship the same God."

Russell said that that encounter kept him amused during his confinement.

Russell's Parodox is one of those exquisitely delightful moments in mathematics.

The barber's paradox is a layman's variation and the simplest version I've ever seen is Tom's handicapped parking paradox.
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Welcome to a new contributor - emptyset

Emptyset
You are welcome. However I feel that I should tell you that my major professor seriously doubted your existence on the the grounds that a set is a collection of things and, therefore, could not be empty.

Pi Day incomplete

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Today is pi day, when all of us math types say a little thank you for Pi.

What is pi?

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Just a couple of YouTube things from the math club:

The Zero Matrix

A little math ditty
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Amazing Grace

 I have always liked the fact that (in addition to being very touching) this hymn contains a clear and simple description of what it means to be an infinite set (in this case an infinite set of days):

“When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing his praise, than when we'd first begun.”

Aspirations

“To look where all have looked and see what none have seen.”
This is the holy grail of mathematics.
The pinnacle of achievement for the research mathematician or scientist.

Those who actually achieve it are often among its more modest practitioners.
I think that the most beutiful of these statements of modesty originated with Bernard of Chartres in the 12th century.
The best version of it that I know is Isaac Newton's tribute to Galileo Galilei and others.
"If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

Another famous statement of Newton's is:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."