Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the […]
Prez Candidates’ Page Costs (Updated)
Investigator by Paul E. Greenberg writes: In an earlier posting on this website (Cost Per Page of Books by U.S. Presidential Candidates, Jan. 28, 2008), I reported on the vast disparity in the cost per page of the memoirs written by 11 different U.S. Presidential candidates. Now that the field has narrowed and the Democrats’ […]
Being Carmen Miranda
More than 50 years after she last wore a pile of fruit on her head, Carmen Miranda inspired a psychological test. Emily Balcetis, of Ohio University, and David Dunning, of Cornell University, published a study, in the journal Psychological Science, called Cognitive Dissonance and the Perception of Natural Environments. Balcetis and Dunning describe an experiment […]
Improbable Research TV episode 107
Here’s episode 107 (“Swallowing, and storage”) of the Improbable Research TV series. To see it, click on the image at right, and you will be whisked to YouTube (where you can subscribe, if you like, to the Improbable Research channel). Improbable TV can also be seen on MySpace and elsewhere. These are three-minute videos about […]