The proof required the piecing together of principles from multiple areas within mathematics. The major effort in constructing this proof was uncovering a chain of conceptual links between various fields and viewing them through a common lens.”
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Debate Over P vs. NP Proof Highlights Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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“At this point the consensus is that there are large holes in the alleged proof — in fact, large enough that people do not consider the alleged proof to be a proof,” Dr. Vardi said. “I think Deolalikar got his 15 minutes of fame, but at this point the excitement has subsided and the skepticism is turning into negative conviction.”
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This kind of collaboration has emerged only in recent years in the math and computer science communities. In the past, intense discussions like the one that surrounded the proof of the Poincaré conjecture were carried about via private e-mail and distribution lists as well as in the pages of traditional paper-based science journals.
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Clay Shirky, a professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University, argues that the emergence of these new collaborative tools is paving the way for a second scientific revolution in the same way the printing press created a demarcation between the age of alchemy and the age of chemistry.
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Passions have run high. A computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scott Aaronson, literally bet his house last week — $200,000 — that the Deolalikar paper would be proved incorrect: “If Vinay Deolalikar is awarded the $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize for his proof of P-NP, then I, Scott Aaronson, will personally supplement his prize by the amount of $200,000.”
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Wanted - Baby Sitters With Foreign Language Skills - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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“Once you are trilingual,” she said, “your brain can break down new languages that make it so much easier to learn your fourth, fifth and sixth languages.”
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In fact, research shows that learning a second language makes it easier to learn additional languages. In recent years, a number of neuroscientists and psychologists have tried to untangle the impact of bilingualism on brain development. “It doesn’t make kids smarter,” said Ellen Bialystok, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto and the author of “Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy and Cognition.” “There are documented cognitive developments,” she said, “but whatever smarter means, it isn’t true.”
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Ms. Bialystok’s research shows that bilingual children tend to have smaller vocabularies in English than their monolingual counterparts, and that the limited vocabulary tends to be words used at home (spatula and squash) rather than words used at school (astronaut, rectangle). The measurement of vocabulary is always in one language: a bilingual child’s collective vocabulary from both languages will probably be larger.
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“Bilingualism carries a cost, and the cost is rapid access to words,” Ms. Bialystok said. In other words, children have to work harder to access the right word in the right language, which can slow them down — by milliseconds, but slower nonetheless.
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At the same time, bilingual children do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways. In one test researchers frequently use, words like “red” and “green” flash across a screen, but the words actually appear in purple and yellow. Bilingual children are faster at identifying what color the word is written in, a fact researchers attribute to a more developed prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive decision-making, like which language to use with certain people). Ms. D’Souza said that both of her sons lagged their peers by almost a year in verbal development. Her pediatrician recommended speech therapy, and one son’s preschool teacher expressed concern that he did not know the alphabet. But when both started speaking, at around 3 years old, they were able to move fluidly among three languages. She said that her older son tested in the 99th percentile for the city’s gifted and talented program. “The flexibility of their thinking helps them in nonlinguistic abilities like science and math,” she said, speaking of her children. “But at the same time the normal things — the alphabet — they have trouble with that.”
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George P. Davison, head of school at Grace Church School, a competitive downtown school, said that bilingualism tended to suppress verbal and reading comprehension test scores by 20 to 30 percent for children younger than 12. “If anything, it can have a negative effect on admissions,” he said.
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Parenting sites indicate many New York City parents want caregivers to teach their children a language.
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Some interesting questions as to whether parents can "know" it's a good thing or a bad thing to have their children learn a second language. There are clearly cognitive and social costs and benefits that must be weighed.
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shared by anonymous on 30 Aug 10
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Plato's Pop Culture Problem, and Ours - NYTimes.com - 1 views
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...s-pop-culture-problem-and-ours
Plato media television correlation-causation reality violence
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To answer these questions, we can no longer investigate only the length of our exposure to the mass media; we must focus on its quality: are we passive consumers or active participants? Do we realize that our reaction to representations need not determine our behavior in life? If so, the influence of the mass media will turn out to be considerably less harmful that many suppose. If not, instead of limiting access to or reforming the content of the mass media, we should ensure that we, and especially our children, learn to interact intelligently and sensibly with them. Here, again, philosophy, which questions the relation between representation and life, will have something to say.
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This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato. The case in question is the 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a California law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005, that imposed fines on stores that sell video games featuring “sexual and heinous violence” to minors. The issue is an old one: one side argues that video games shouldn’t receive First Amendment protection since exposure to violence in the media is likely to cause increased aggression or violence in real life. The other side counters that the evidence shows nothing more than a correlation between the games and actual violence.
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In their book “Grand Theft Childhood,” the authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson of Harvard Medical School argue that this causal claim is only the result of “bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports,.”
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And while philosophy doesn’t always provide clear answers to our questions, it often reveals what exactly it is that we are asking.
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To begin with, he accuses it of conflating the authentic and the fake. Its heroes appear genuinely admirable, and so worth emulating, although they are at best flawed and at worst vicious. In addition, characters of that sort are necessary because drama requires conflict — good characters are hardly as engaging as bad ones. Poetry’s subjects are therefore inevitably vulgar and repulsive — sex and violence. Finally, worst of all, by allowing us to enjoy depravity in our imagination, poetry condemns us to a depraved life. Both Plato and Arnheim ignored the medium of representation, which interposes itself between the viewer and what is represented. This very same reasoning is at the heart of today’s denunciations of mass media. Scratch the surface of any attack on the popular arts — the early Christians against the Roman circus, the Puritans against Shakespeare, Coleridge against the novel, the various assaults on photography, film, jazz, television, pop music, the Internet, or video games — and you will find Plato’s criticisms of poetry. For the fact is that the works of both Homer and Aeschylus, whatever else they were in classical Athens, were, first and foremost, popular entertainment.
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In 1935, Rudolf Arnheim called television “a mere instrument of transmission, which does not offer any new means for the artistic representation of reality.” He was repeating, unawares, Plato’s ancient charge that, without a “craft” or an art of his own, Homer merely reproduces “imitations,” “images,” or “appearances” of virtue and, worse, images of vice masquerading as virtue. Both Plato and Arnheim ignored the medium of representation, which interposes itself between the viewer and what is represented.
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But what about us? Do we, as Plato thought, move immediately from representation to reality? If we do, we should be really worried about the effects of television or video games. Or are we aware that many features of each medium belong to its conventions and do not represent real life?
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Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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Wow!!!! If true, this is fascinating!!! Your brain is linking the Marshall Plan or Endocrine Systems to the shades of light in your bedroom or the smell of your couch.
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It is interesting how you came across this article and liked it. My orchestra teacher Ms. Pipkin also showed the orchestra about this article and I liked it a lot and decided to do it for my blogging assignment. Ivan coincidentally also has the same article. I believe that this article is very TOK in form because it discusses the flaws of study habits, something we perceive as always right. Many believe that studying in a quiet place for a long time and focusing on subject by subject are the keys to success and getting the most out of each study period. However, through cognitive science studies, it is interesting how many scientists argue that a person should be in a room where the outside world can be sen (to have some distraction but not too much) and that a person should expose him or herself with many areas during one study sitting. So the whole argument boils down to "what is the right way to study?" and whether or not studying really helps. -max
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“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
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Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
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they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
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“The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
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“We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,”
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psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
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The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
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shared by anonymous on 30 Sep 10
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'Pre-crime' Comes to the HR Dept. - Datamation.com - 0 views
itmanagement.earthweb.com/...crime-Comes-to-the-HR-Dept.htm
technology privacy crime ethics human science predictive analytics Facebook social networking
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"A Santa Barbara, Calif., startup called Social Intelligence data-mines the social networks to help companies decide if they really want to hire you. While background checks, which mainly look for a criminal record, and even credit checks have become more common, Social Intelligence is the first company that I'm aware of that systematically trolls social networks for evidence of bad character. Using automation software that slogs through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, and "thousands of other sources," the company develops a report on the "real you" -- not the carefully crafted you in your resume. The service is called Social Intelligence Hiring. The company promises a 48-hour turn-around. Because it's illegal to consider race, religion, age, sexual orientation and other factors, the company doesn't include that information in its reports. Humans review the reports to eliminate false positives. And the company uses only publically shared data -- it doesn't "friend" targets to get private posts, for example. The reports feature a visual snapshot of what kind of person you are, evaluating you in categories like "Poor Judgment," "Gangs," "Drugs and Drug Lingo" and "Demonstrating Potentially Violent Behavior." The company mines for rich nuggets of raw sewage in the form of racy photos, unguarded commentary about drugs and alcohol and much more. "
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shared by anonymous on 07 Jan 11
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Searching for Robert Johnson | Culture | Vanity Fair - 0 views
www.vanityfair.com/...johnson200811
emotion sense perception evidence methodology history photography Robert Johnson music
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"In the seven decades since his mysterious death, bluesman Robert Johnson's legend has grown-the tragically short life, the "crossroads" tale of supernatural talent, the genuine gift that inspired Dylan, Clapton, and other greats-but his image remains elusive: only two photos of Johnson have ever been seen by the public. In 2005, on eBay, guitar maven Zeke Schein thought he'd found a third. Schein's quest to authenticate the picture only led to more questions, both about Johnson himself and about who controls his valuable legacy. "
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shared by anonymous on 14 Jan 11
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For Law School Graduates, Debts if Not Job Offers - NYTimes.com - 1 views
www.nytimes.com/...09law.html
law school education college university graduate students debt statistics data evidence
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"IF there is ever a class in how to remain calm while trapped beneath $250,000 in loans, Michael Wallerstein ought to teach it. Here he is, sitting one afternoon at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a tall, sandy-haired, 27-year-old radiating a kind of surfer-dude serenity. His secret, if that's the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash. "And I don't open the e-mail alerts with my credit score," he adds. "I can't look at my credit score any more." Mr. Wallerstein, who can't afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can't foreclose on him because he didn't spend the money on a house. "
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shared by anonymous on 09 Jan 11
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Don't change your worldview based on one study « The Invisible Gorilla - 1 views
theinvisiblegorilla.com/...r-worldview-based-on-one-study
emotion evidence methodology science human science psychology placebo
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"In the past few weeks, the blogosphere has been abuzz about the dangers of non-replication and the "decline" effect, triggered by Jonah Lehrer's interesting piece in the New Yorker (mostly behind a firewall). The central claim in the piece is that initially strong or provocative findings diminish in strength over time. The decline might well come from more stringent methodology or better experimental controls rather than via mysterious forces, but that's not what concerns me today. My concern is about media reporting and even blogging about new and provocative scientific findings, the very findings that tend to decline. Following a murder, the arrest of a suspect is broadcast on the front pages, but when that suspect is exonerated, the correction ends up on the back of the local section months later (if it appears at all). The same problem holds for flawed scientific claims. The thoroughly debunked Mozart Effect still receives media coverage, just as other unsupported findings remain part of the popular consciousness despite a lack of replicability."
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