The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block,” by Dennis Upper, Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, 1974 Fall; 7(3): 497. (Hat-tip to the good people at Backreaction.) (This post first appeared at my other (now deleted) blog, and was transferred to this blog on 25 January 2021.)
Seth Godin has a fantastic blog, and today’s post makes pointed comments about education, although it is more generally intended to discuss how to help people get things done. Check it out here. (This post first appeared at my other (now deleted) blog, and was transferred to this blog on 25 January 2021.)
Let’s continue the story in the previous post about Newtonian mechanics. In Newton’s theory of gravity, two objects that have mass attract each other with a gravitational force simply by virtue of their mass. The strength of the force is proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of … Read more
Science has revolutionized the way we live thanks to its influence on technology, but it’s perhaps less well-known how science has utterly transformed the way we think about the world. For example, in ancient times it was thought that the earthly realm was separate from the heavenly realm. God, or the gods (depending on belief) … Read more
Scott Aaronson has a delightful blog, where he discusses quantum computation and computational complexity in a very light-hearted style. He’s a great writer and very instructive. A good example of his satire is his classic creation, doofusino theory. (This post first appeared at my other (now deleted) blog, and was transferred to this blog on … Read more
One of the traditional purposes of culture is to educate. Before books were common, the spoken word was the essential tool for teaching. Stories are memorable, and so telling stories was an effective way to pass on life lessons, particularly moral lessons. But in recent times, “information media” have been used overwhelmingly often only for … Read more
One of my beloved professors told me a story about 30 years ago that has stuck with me, and has informed (not enough, alas) my own teaching practice. He was taking a full-year graduate course in C*-algebras with (I believe) Israel Halperin. By the end of the course they had covered 16 pages (!) of … Read more
A great line from Gretchen Rubin’s delightful blog (The Happiness Project): If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. It’s similar to a basketball truism about playing defense (“If you commit no fouls at all, you’re not trying hard enough.”), and just as true. She has a book by the same name, which I … Read more
Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Karen Armstrong (her recent book is 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life; for reviews see here, here, and here, for example) yesterday on Q, and she made the point that the major religions have largely failed at training their members to be compassionate, instead emphasizing doctrine, and rigid adherence to rules of … Read more
For four consecutive years I taught a fourth-semester course called “Introduction to Analysis,” in which we looked at differential calculus for a second time, stressing the foundations, the logical structure, and proving all the key theorems. We used Stephen Abbott’s excellent book, Understanding Analysis. The course was intended primarily for math majors, although we had … Read more