Links for 2010-11-30

What correlates with problem solving skill? | Casting Out Nines “About a year ago, I started partitioning up my Calculus tests into three sections: Concepts, Mechanics, and Problem Solving. The point values for each are 25, 25, and 50 respectively. […] I did this to stress to students that the main goal of taking a […]

Over-Ruled

I’m a big fan of (American) football, but a lot of people are surprised to learn that I never played organized football. It was largely a matter of timing– the coaches when I was in junior high were not people I’d’ve been interested in playing for, and when they hired a good guy to run […]

Links for 2010-11-29

Our Boring Future | Mother Jones A variant on Joe Fitzsimon’s comment on Twitter: “How to be a futurist in 1 easy step: confuse logistic curves for unbounded exponential growth.” (tags: society social-science politics blogs kevin-drum) Making Light: “We live underground. We speak with our hands.” “Somewhere in our brave new century, somebody actually pays […]

Links for 2010-11-28

TopatoCo: Dinosaur Comics Dry Erase Whiteboard (Temporarily Out of Stock) Something to get for that person who has always wanted to write their own dinosaur comics, but is too lazy to PhotoShop their own text in. (tags: comics internet silly gadgets) Surviving the World – Lesson 813 – One View Of The Afterlife Know your […]

Links for 2010-11-27

Why hasn’t the war against terrorism produced any great First Amendment cases? – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine “There seems to be no one answer to why there hasn’t been a single important First Amendment protest case in the last decade. It’s certainly not that the court is reluctant to rule on First Amendment […]

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, Black Friday Edition

Today is “Black Friday,” the semi-ironic name given to the day after Thanksgiving when major retailers roll out Incredible! Deals! to draw shoppers in at an ungodly early hour. Personally, I don’t plan to come within a mile of a mall today, but if that’s what floats your boat… Of course, if you’re thinking of […]

Short Story Club Wrap-Up

The first rule of Short Story Club is that you must talk about Short Story Club… So, the Short Story Club run by Niall Harrison over at Torque Control is finished, and Niall’s asking for concluding thoughts. I meant to write this up last night, but SteelyKid had a major meltdown just before bedtime, so […]

Links for 2010-11-26

Gender gap in physics exams reduced by simple writing exercises, says CU-Boulder study “Women are underrepresented and on average perform more poorly than men in introductory physics. But a recent study finds that this gap arises predominantly from differential preparation prior to college and psychological factors, rather than differences in ability. And the effects of […]