The "Education" Thread

[CiG]

I'm tired of being distracted by untermensch calling me ugly and whatnot at school. I need to pass, I can't deal with these asshole trying to talk to me in class. I wonder if I should talk to the office about this.

 

[Dak]

"Psychobabble" is a vapid characterization.

We'll just agree to disagree.

Edit:

http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-consciousness-fractal

Our fractal fluency begins with the movement of our eyes. When we look at a fractal, our eyes trace a fractal trajectory with a dimension of around 1.4 —no matter what the fractal’s dimension is. Nature’s most prevalent fractals share this dimension, falling within a range of 1.3 to 1.5. “If we lived on a planet where 1.8 was prevalent, we would have ended up with an eye trajectory of 1.8,” Taylor says. “Clearly what’s happened is our visual system has evolved.”

And we feel good when we do what we’ve evolved to do. In another set of studies, Taylor used skin conductance and EEG measurements to measure test subject’s reactions to viewing the mid-dimension fractals found most often in nature. He and his colleagues found the images reduced the mind and body’s physiological stress by as much as 60 percent, “an enormous amount for a non-pharmacological approach.”
.........................

In this view, it was quite natural for Pollock’s drip paintings to become more and more fractal as he grew older. They may simply have been mirroring the increasingly fractal nature of his own self. As he said himself, “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”

 

[rms]

http://www.ubspectrum.com/article/2017/05/ub-black-faculty

man

 

[Einherjar86]

http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-consciousness-fractal

This is very cool. My dissertation advisor used to be a math BA before switching to literature in grad study. He has a thing for fractals, haha.

The research is pretty awesome, and it makes sense. A lot of this suggests that the aesthetic pleasure of fractals is mostly unconscious, since Mandelbrot didn't coin the term until 1975; but I think a certain awareness of them was still around, especially when we talk about writers like Joyce. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was published in 1973, and there's a certain fractal quality to that narrative in general (mathematics is also an occasional theme).

N. Katherine Hayles has written about this more in terms of literature, in a book called Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science.

 

[rms]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article150488822.html

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Is it cool to discuss employment training, etc here or is this just student/professor territory?

I'm being given a new project at work I'm very excited about, they want me to rebuild their Faciliworks database and integrate more of the logistics components. So fuckin pumped, it's a prestigious skill in this industry, especially if you're involved from the ground up. Anyone have experience? What's the layout like? Can it interface with other SAP ERP software's easily? What if I convert data from one program into Excel, is there a way to easily dump into the other? Or even skip the middleman?

I give a shit about my career, and I'm having a maniac day, tell me all about your exciting projects!

 

[Dak]

I figure this is basically education/career. Into the summer semester now, which is basically no classes but clinical training and catching up on research projects. Still probably putting in 40hrs but it's a more chill 40 hrs and that's still a drop from whatever insane hours I was doing during the Fall/Spring.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Calculus agrees with me, but I'm in a beginning trigonometry class now and totally stumped by the unit circle and determining reference points for nonstandard numbers.

For nice even denominators or anything that is easily converted to an existing reference point I get it. It's just a matter of making the established guide match t. But something such as -9pi/7 is really stumping me, and I've watched probably a dozen YouTube videos that couldn't assist.

Am I stupid? How stupid am I? I've been contemplating this for hours.

 

[Dak]

So far this semester is looking way too chill in comparison to last Spring. I'm expecting a rude shock at some point, or a welcome to reality moment in the upcoming Spring.

 

[Baroque]

Calculus agrees with me, but I'm in a beginning trigonometry class now and totally stumped by the unit circle and determining reference points for nonstandard numbers.

For nice even denominators or anything that is easily converted to an existing reference point I get it. It's just a matter of making the established guide match t. But something such as -9pi/7 is really stumping me, and I've watched probably a dozen YouTube videos that couldn't assist.

Am I stupid? How stupid am I? I've been contemplating this for hours.

Short answer: If you are trying to find something like sin(-9pi/7) and you're in a basic trig class just use a calculator.

Long answer: typically for nonstandard angles as you called them you would first try and convert them to standard angles by using things like the half angle and double angle identities, or convert to another trig function again using identities. If there is more information about the triangle in the problem such as a side length or other angles you may be able to puzzle out the trig function using the Pythagorean theorem or law of sines or law of cosines. Other than that: if you are simply asked to find something like sin(-9pi/7) and there's no other information or way to convert it, unfortunately you have to make use of an infinite series or approximate using a computer algorithm. Infinite series for trig functions are taught in Calculus courses usually 2 or 3. Computer algorithms for approximating the series are taught in a Computer science for calculus course ( course names vary by school). So what you've encountered is a problem you're unlikely able to solve yet given your current toolbox, thus it makes sense that you're stumped. Use a calculator, it will have the algorithms built in for you.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Thanks for the explanation. That is all the information I get, find reference number of t. I feel like there's just gotta be a way to determine reference number without a calculator though, using the basic unit circle. This isn't the only question of that nature in my homework or I would just chalk it up to an irrelevant challenge for my level.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Hopefully this very broken website stops being a dick soon so I can access said homework and try out a few answers I've come up with. Circling around and converting to decimals first then subtracting, etc.

 

[Baroque]

Thanks for the explanation. That is all the information I get, find reference number of t. I feel like there's just gotta be a way to determine reference number without a calculator though, using the basic unit circle. This isn't the only question of that nature in my homework or I would just chalk it up to an irrelevant challenge for my level.

Can you take a picture of the exact problem or write it out? If it's asking for a reference angle, you can do that.

A reference angle is typically just the smallest angle formed with the x axis and your angle. So for example the reference angle for -9pi/7 would be 2pi/7, since that angle is formed between your angle and the x-axis in quadrant II.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Good that's one of the answers I came up with. I think I was over analyzing at first, getting stuck on a weird decreasing radial idea. But now I'm trying to determine the terminal point. There's no direct 2pi/7 in the reference quadrant so I can't just change signs around. Question didn't ask for it but I'll probably get asked eventually.

It's nice to see some math discussion here for once. Granted it's me, a mediocre student, and a professor, but it's better than nobody.

 

[Baroque]

Good that's one of the answers I came up with. I think I was over analyzing at first, getting stuck on a weird decreasing radial idea. But now I'm trying to determine the terminal point. There's no direct 2pi/7 in the reference quadrant so I can't just change signs around. Question didn't ask for it but I'll probably get asked eventually.

It's nice to see some math discussion here for once. Granted it's me, a mediocre student, and a professor, but it's better than nobody.

The terminal reference point is (cos(2pi/7),sin(2pi/7)) and the best way to find those is with a calculator for now. Then as you said change the sign of the x coordinate for the terminal point.

In general the terminal point is (x,y)=(rcos(theta),rsin(theta)), but on the unit circle r=1.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Fuck a calculator, son. I'm making my professor do it by hand in front of me tonight. No half ass mathing in my lecture notes.

 

[Baroque]

Finite lecture notes are for the weak?

 

[crimsonfloyd]

I'm so excited for my philosophy class this year. This is by far the most talented group of students I've ever taught. This year about half of the class are top tier in both math and English, including some of the most gifted students I've ever had. Most of the rest are at or above grade level in both subjects. As a whole, the students are super enthusiastic about the subject from the get-go (Which is not always the case. In the past I've had a lot kids that were intimidated by the openness and complexity of the subject, at least for the first few months). They were picking up on philosophical problems on day one that took previous classes much longer to get to. It's also nice because I've had all but three of these students before, so next to no time needs to be spent on routines, norms, management etc.

My general goal for all my classes this year is to make them more student-led and inquiry based, but with this class I can take this to a very deep level. There is some stuff that will need to be delivered through lecture, but its looking like the majority of the class can be posing them with text-based philosophical problems and letting them resolve it for themselves. I can basically serve as the "safety net" if they misinterpret the text.

 

[rms]

making my 1 elective this semester a history seminar that for some reason has been merged with graduate students. the history department at UB is such a joke but it'll at least be interesting to see what 'professional students' offer. one dude has word salad and all apparently lack the conviction to have an opinion based off our first day. a damn shame

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Here solve this. For fun! BTW ratio of a direct area formula for the second triangle is apparently not the answer, that would be too logical.