Albert Einstein managed to reveal some of the most fundamental properties of the universe by visualizing the problem in his head, so clearly there must be alternative ways to beautiful science (other than Current Latin).

It’s time to make an appeal to every genius out there for a new comprehensible mathematical language; MISC (Mathematician’s Interpreted Symbolic Code) that works instantly both on paper and computers!!

But here’s the innovation I found most interesting: For physics, the Dean instituted a tutor system designed to help students with difficult course content. He recruited high school physics teachers to advise on the introductory course content to ensure a good transition from high school. These teachers were available to tutor students if needed. They also provided feedback to professors on their teaching methods. They attended lectures, evaluated the teaching, and gave profs feedback on how to improve! You can imagine how the profs liked that! The Dean got a great deal of push back from the profs. They recruit new profs based on research excellence, not teaching excellence. They warned him that the university would gain a mickey mouse reputation and lose lots of its research funding. End of story: the Dean persisted, the profs came around (albeit grudgingly), research funding went up, enrolments went up, drop out rates declined.

If you’re interested in the OECD conference and studies, see their final report at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/30/36645825.pdf

On Sean and girls in science. I attended an OECD conference in Amsterdam last fall on “Declining Youth Interest in Science Studies”. It reported on a study in which 22 countries looked at enrolment and graduation rates in science discplines. Physics, chemistry and math are in trouble – OECD-wide. In particular, girls shun these subjects increasingly. (Female participation in higher education is increasing faster than that of males, but in the science subjects, the rate of increase is slower. In physics, there’s a decline in many countries).

Another part of the study looked at ways in which different countries are tackling the problem. Many of the techniques involve working with younger girls in grade school to encourage them. At these age-levels, girls love science as much as boys, though often in different ways and for different reasons (vive la difference!). The drop-off starts to occur in junior high school. For boys and girls, partly to keep grade point averages up (i.e. science is hard). For girls, partly because of what some of the responders to this blog allude to – the way in which science is presented in school and in texts. One woman at the conference responded to a discussion of some very innovative promotional activities targeted to young females to encourage them to pursue science at university. She said: “You can do all the promotion you want and you’ll probably succeed in getting more girls to enrol in university science. But if the universities keep teaching science the way they do now, the girls will drop out!” We have to face facts, folks. We have a real problem – and its a cultural one.

If you’re interested I’ll tell you about a Dutch university that solved the problem… (I’m a Canadian so there’s no nationalistic promotion here.)

Sean has spent some time investigating Dark Matter. Perhaps this last confusion is due to the fact that Sean can’t decide if he believes in WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) or MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects)…? :-}

More info on WIMPs and MACHOs:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101matter.html

-Rob

Sean earlier this summer wrote on the subject What I Would Do If I Could: “If I could propose one thing, it would be to do everything in our power to encourage young girls to get excited about science, math, and technology.”

Suddenly this week Sean has become a rude sexist, according to some alert observers. Spending time and energy to humiliate girls with a sexist comment, alternative bad sexist joke: “…seems to me, if we start encouraging girls to become scientists, pretty soon they’ll be replacing equations with hugs and instead of performing experiments we’ll just talk about our feelings or some such thing. That can’t be right.”

The explanation for this perplexity could be:

1) Sean has unexpectedly been stricken by mental illness and his personality has split in two.

2) Sean is living a double life. Most of the time he is pro women/girls, and then for a minute or two his real nature pop up in a sexist comment/joke.

3) Cosmic Variance has been attacked by a computer virus that alters the original text.

4) Stephen Hawking is right after all – information can be destroyed and lost forever. What happened yesterday has nothing to do with what we see today. The world has gone screwy.

5) The observers have misinterpreted the information, and they did not contact the source to get more data.

I’m not the man too propose the right answer at this moment. Maybe it could be smart to see what the accused has to say, and how he feels etc.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon. — Albert Einstein

todays society is so damned senitive… we need a good desensitivity move in this nation. if it bothers you don’t bother with it

its that simple if something seems offensive ignore it, don’t rake the muck…

Even feminists (male and female) who spend their lives dedicated to stamping out sexism have to be called out on their sexist behaviors and are expected to correct themsleves. I’m with the original comment that if it’s a joke, it’s not funny.

But it’s okay, I’m prepared to not laugh and move on.

To get a better idea of Sean’s views in particular, I would especially recommend this post (and the posts linked therein), and this one.

I would recommend that Tammy and Adrian, in particular, read these posts before commenting further on Sean’s comments in the current post…

First, it’s important to understand that, in a spatially infinite universe, anything that can happen, will. So out there somewhere, there *is* a precise copy of you which has just fluctuated into existence, complete with memories etc. It is also possible that the world around us has really existed for billions of years, but that what we call the “laws” of nature are just a series of coincidences which will come to an end tomorrow, thus belatedly confirming all of Hume’s suspicions about causation. Basically, an infinite universe allows you to get away with anything, as certain advocates of the wackier versions of Inflation have amply demonstrated. ["Yes, it may *seem* that I have been checkmated, but in an infinite universe..." -- sometimes known as the Linde-Vilenkin gambit, after two famous grandmasters.]

Second, Sean’s point was that he has an alternative to the Humean nightmare — in the late stages of a deSitter expansion, the total entropy may be large, but its *density* is small, so when a baby universe nucleates, its small size means that it automatically has very low entropy. Assuming that the process of nucleation does not itself greatly increase the entropy I guess….anyway, it seems possible that this kind of thing *is* more likely than just having the whole universe fluctuate into existence. Or something like that — I have been arguing about this with my advisor, and have suffered brain damage as a result….

Chinmaya Sheth – you can’t change the presentation (and thus the methodology of) physics just because it doesn’t appeal to someone.

Who knows, I watched a program about a genius (more or less savant) who could do extremely advanced calculations in his head, and even ‘feel’ if a number was prime or not. How did he do that? Well, every number (in his head) has a different 3-dimensional shape, size and color. When you for example want to add two numbers you put them together, and the shape between represent the new number, which is the correct sum! Smart and weird…

My point is can we be sure that the ‘male’ representation of equations, math and physics is the only one…? Is it maybe not even the best one? For sure – math is a fundamental part of nature, or vice versa, but is the strange and ‘mysterious doodles’ really the ultimate tools for understanding?

I have a slight feeling that (some) people who understand complex mathematics ‘protect’ the complexity from the ‘ordinary mob’.

Let me give you an example: Sean currently wrote the article Dark Matter Exists in this blog (as you all probably know), and in a brilliant way explained how the scientists came to the conclusion. And what’s the reaction from an ‘insider’:

“I was disappointed to find this article much more personal and informal than I am used to. It read more like a teenager’s diary than a scientific examination. Unfortunately in cosmology, pictures arent enough no matter how much they’ve been photoshopped.”

I do put my hope to smart women and smart computer programming (it’s only C and Perl who allow doodling around ) to break the wall of advanced math and physics. Let’s face it – soon or later as the human knowledge grows there must be a limit for what one human brain can hold in form of data and knowledge. One solution is to have narrow specialist working in teams, but there must be a limit even for a narrow specialist when she/he go completely bananas. (maybe that’s the case today? )

I think computers are the solution – let them do much much more of the dull work – so humans can spend all time on true creativity, which should appeal to both girls and boys. And I really hope it’s not necessary to become a ‘Cyborg’ to make this work.