Sunday, September 12, 2010
Science News Article About the Status of P not equal to NP
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
HP Labs Mathematician Claims P not equal to NP
Saturday, August 7, 2010
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
From the article, "the OEIS ... provides a sequence’s full 'life story.' Along with listing the numbers that form the beginning of a sequence (sometimes hundreds of thousands of them), it gives all the different known ways to generate the sequence, lists references to the sequence in the scientific literature, links to any sites with information about it, cross-references related sequences, provides a graph of the sequence, and even offers a way to listen to the sequence."
It is very easy to lose yourself for hours in the OEIS so be careful ;-).
Friday, August 6, 2010
Stephen Wolfram on TED
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
New Math Standards?
In a letter to the editor published on July 28, I pointed out the real problem and the real difference between the US and "high-performing foreign countries" is the length of both the school day and school year:
Fix class time, not standards
Re: "State should adopt U.S. math standards" (Editorials, July 24) and "Proposed math standards unteachable" (Viewpoints, July 24): Both the editorial and op-ed column miss the point.
California's current curriculum is indeed "mile wide, inch deep." The reason it is an "inch deep" is because the school day and school year are too short and because students are not required to take mathematics through 12th grade.
"High-performing foreign countries" teach the same breadth of material, but they can teach it better because the school day and school year are longer and students have more years of mathematics instruction.
The state's current system is not a "successful" program, it is just broken differently.
No amount of changed standards or national commission reports will catch us up with the many countries ahead of us in math education; only the realization that, like learning to play well some musical instrument, learning mathematics requires many hours and years of study and practice.
- John Burke, Sacramento