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National Girls Collaborative Project for STEM

Posted on November 22, 2008 Comments (0)

The National Girls Collaborative Project for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) collaborates with those seeking to increase the participation of girls in STEM feeder activities. The goal is to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Collaboration as a Means to Building Capacity: Results and Future Directions of the National Girls Collaborative Project:

The purpose of the NGCP is to extend the capacity, impact, and sustainability of
existing and evolving girl-serving STEM projects and programs. The NGCP is structured to bring organizations together to compare needs and resources, to share information, and to plan strategically to expand STEM–related opportunities for girls.
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Although we are still refining it, the NGCP collaborative model has shown its effectiveness through increased collaboration and minigrant projects with sustained results. As we have described, the success to date of the NGCP in developing collaborations has been demonstrated via data from the collaboration rubric, mini-grant reports, and metrics that show how collaborative activities have increased over the duration of the NGCP projects. As NGCP expands over the next few years to provide regional collaboratives across the entire United States and Puerto Rico, we will continue our assessment of its impact and hope to be able to report its influence on building capacity to attract and retain girls in STEM.

I support programs encouraging STEM activities for girls – and boys. NSF data shows for 2005 shows women outnumbered men in undergraduate degree in science and engineering. For post-graduate degrees men still outnumbering women but that gap has been reducing and seems like it will continue to. And the representations in the workplace seem poised to continue to show a reducing number of men and increasing number of women. Engineering is an example of an area with far more men than women graduating – the imbalance is equivalent to the imbalance the other way for psychology.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: K-12, Math, Science
Tags: Career, Engineering, Events, girls, k-12 students, Math, science education, women

Problems Programming Math

Posted on October 17, 2008 Comments (2)

Arithmetic Is Hard – To Get Right by Mark Sofroniou

I’ve been working on arithmetic in Mathematica for more than 12 years. You might think that’s silly; after all, how hard can arithmetic be?
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The standard “schoolbook” algorithms are pretty easy. But they’re inefficient and often unnecessarily inaccurate. So people like me have done a huge amount of work to find algorithms that are more efficient and accurate. And the problem is that these algorithms are inevitably more complicated, and one has to be very careful to avoid insidious bugs.

Take multiplying integers, for example. The standard “schoolbook” long-multiplication algorithm uses n^2 multiplications to multiply two n-digit numbers. But many of these multiplications are actually redundant, and we now know clever algorithms that take n^1.58, n log n, or even fewer multiplications for large n. So this means that if one wants to do a million-digit multiplication, Mathematica can do it in a fraction of a second using these algorithms–while it would take at least a few minutes using standard long multiplication.
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It’s not easy to get reliable numerical computation, and it’s not something one can “bolt on” after the fact. It’s something one has to build in from the beginning, as we’ve done in Mathematica for nearly 20 years.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Math, Students
Tags: computer science, Math, programming, software

The Rush to Save Timbuktu’s Crumbling Manuscripts

Posted on October 13, 2008 Comments (1)

The Rush to Save Timbuktu’s Crumbling Manuscripts

Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world’s southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic instutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents.
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The Ahmed Baba Library alone contains more than 20,000 manuscripts, including works on herbal medicine and mathematics, yellowed volumes of poetry, music and Islamic law. Some are adorned with gilded letters, while others are written in the language of the Tuareg tribes. The contents remain a mystery.

Manuscript hunters are now scouring the environs of Timbuktu, descending into dark, clay basements and climbing up into attics. Twenty-four family-owned collections have already been discovered in the area. Most of the works stem from the late Middle Ages, when Timbuktu was an important crossroads for caravans.
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Archaeologists have shown that an incredible system of underground canals up to 20,000 kilometers (12,422 miles) long once existed at Wadi al-Hayat in Libya. Thanks to such hydraulic marvels, the desert blossomed and crops sprouted in the fields of the Tuareg.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Math, Science, Students
Tags: Africa, books, Math, Science

Mathematicians Critique Journal Rankings

Posted on June 16, 2008 Comments (0)

Mathematicians Critique Journal Rankings

Three international math groups joined forces to issue a report last week decrying the use of citation statistics to evaluate scientific journals, research institutions and individual scientists. These statistics, sometimes called “bibliometrics,” measure how frequently a given journal’s articles are cited by other journals.

Read the report on Citation Statistics. This concern is justified. I do have some interest in some of these (and related) statistics but one must always remember their limitations.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Math, Science, Universities
Tags: Math

Shaw Laureates 2008

Posted on June 10, 2008 Comments (0)

Image of the Shaw Prize Medal

The Shaw Prize awards $1 million in each of 3 areas: Astronomy; Life Science and Medicine; and Mathematical Sciences. The award was established in 2002 by Run Run Shaw who was born in China and made his money in the movie industry. The prize is administered in Hong Kong and awards those “who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or application and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.” The 2008 Shaw Laureates have been selected.

Astronomy
Professor Reinhard Genzel, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in recognition of his outstanding contribution in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.

In 1969, Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees suggested that the Milky Way might contain a supermassive black hole. But evidence for such an object was lacking at the time because the centre of the Milky Way is obscured by interstellar dust, and was detected only as a relatively faint radio source. Reinhard Genzel obtained compelling evidence for this conjecture by developing state-of-the-art astronomical instruments and carrying out a persistent programme of observing our Galactic Centre for many years, which ultimately led to the discovery of a black hole with a mass a few million times that of the Sun, in the centre of the Milky Way.

Supermassive black holes are now recognized to account for the luminous sources seen at the nuclei of galaxies and to play a fundamental role in the formation of galaxies.

Mathematical Sciences
Vladimir Arnold, together with Andrei Kolmogorov and Jurgen Moser, made fundamental contributions to the study of stability in dynamical systems, exemplified by the motion of the planets round the sun. This work laid the foundation for all subsequent developments right up to the present time.

Arnold also produced extremely fruitful ideas, relating classical mechanics to questions of topology. This includes the famous Arnold Conjecture which was only recently solved.

In classical hydrodynamics the basic equations of an ideal fluid were derived by Euler in 1757 and major steps towards understanding them were taken by Helmholtz in 1858, and Kelvin in 1869. The next significant breakthrough was made by Arnold a century later and this has provided the basis for more recent work.

Ludwig Faddeev has made many important contributions to quantum physics. Together with Boris Popov he showed the right way to quantize the famous non-Abelian theory which underlies all contemporary work on sub-atomic physics. This led in particular to the work of ′t Hooft and Veltman which was recognized by the Nobel Prize for Physics of 1999.
Continue reading →

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Math, Science
Tags: Berkeley, genes, Math, physics, space

Aztec Math

Posted on April 5, 2008 Comments (1)

Aztec Math Decoded, Reveals Woes of Ancient Tax Time

By reading Aztec records from the city-state of Tepetlaoztoc, a pair of scientists recently figured out the complicated equations and fractions that officials once used to determine the size of land on which tributes were paid. Two ancient codices, written from A.D. 1540 to 1544, survive from Tepetlaoztoc. They record each household and its number of members, the amount of land owned, and soil types such as stony, sandy, or “yellow earth.”

“The ancient texts were extremely detailed and well organized, because landowners often had to pay tribute according to the value of their holdings,” said co-author Maria del Carmen Jorge y Jorge at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City, Mexico. The Aztecs recorded only the total area of each parcel and the length of the four sides of its perimeter, Jorge y Jorge explained. Officials calculated the size of each parcel using a series of five algorithms—including one also employed by the ancient Sumerians—she added.

Aztec math finally adds up

That meant that some of the unknown symbols had to represent fractions of a rod, she said. By trial and error, she decoded the system. A hand equaled 3/5 of a rod, an arrow was 1/2 , a heart was 2/5 , an arm was 1/3 , and a bone was 1/5 .

A set of at least five formulas emerged showing how the Aztec surveyors determined the areas of irregular shapes. In some cases, the Aztecs averaged opposite sides and then multiplied. In others, they bisected the fields into triangles.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Math, Students
Tags: Math, South America

Thompson and Tits share 2008 Abel Prize (Math)

Posted on March 28, 2008 Comments (0)

Thompson and Tits share the Abel Prize for 2008

John Griggs Thompson, Graduate Research Professor, University of Florida, and Jacques Tits, Professor Emeritus, Collège de France, have been awarded the 2008 Abel Prize “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory.” In the prize citation, the Abel Committee writes that “Thompson revolutionized the theory of finite groups by proving extraordinarily deep theorems that laid the foundation for the complete classification of finite simple groups, one of the greatest achievements of twentieth century mathematics.”

In 1963, Thompson and Walter Feit proved that all nonabelian finite simple groups were of even order, work for which they both won the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra from the AMS in 1965. Thompson also won a Fields Medal in 1970. In the Abel citation for Tits, the committee writes that “Tits created a new and highly influential vision of groups as geometric objects. He introduced what is now known as a Tits building, which encodes in geometric terms the algebraic structure of linear groups.” The committee noted the link between the two winners’ work: “Tits’s geometric approach was essential in the study and realization of the sporadic groups, including the Monster.” Tits received the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1976, and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1993.

The Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics. The prize amount is 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (over US$1,000,000).

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Math
Tags: Awards, Europe, Math

Offering Residency to Foreign Engineers and Scientists

Posted on February 24, 2008 Comments (2)

Rep. Lofgren wants residency for foreign engineers

Foreign-born engineering, science, and math students in the United States should be automatically granted legal residency when they get a job in this country, said California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.

Lofgren, a Democrat, spoke to an audience Friday at the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley conference about threats to innovation in the area. She said that about 56 percent of the Ph.D. candidates at the finest schools in the United States are immigrants, and because of the government’s current immigration policy, many of those people leave the country.

I support such legislation. I also think it is only one, of many measure to take to encourage science and engineering excellence (which will in turn help the economy). I have no doubt that other countries are going to be successful establishing their own global centers of excellence and attract scientists and engineers from around the world: including from the USA. The Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog now includes a tag cloud on the right side of our home page, tags for this post include: government and economy.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Career, Economics, Engineering, Math, Universities
Tags: Career, centers of excellence, economy, engineering education, government, legislation, politics, university, USA

The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript

Posted on February 11, 2008 Comments (1)

image from the Voynich manuscript

A fun read – The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript:

Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world’s best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax.
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This study yielded valuable insights into the process of reexamining difficult problems to determine whether any possible solutions have been overlooked. A good example of such a problem is the question of what causes Alzheimer’s disease. We plan to examine whether our approach could be used to reevaluate previous research into this brain disorder. Our questions will include: Have the investigators neglected any field of relevant expertise? Have the key assumptions been tested sufficiently?

Dr Gordon Rugg at the Department of Computer Science Keele University – Replicating the Voynich Manuscript

Related: Scientific Method Man – The medieval Voynich Manuscript – in the language of the angels…. or a hoax? – Ancient Greek Technology 1,000 Years Early – Prayer Book Reveals Lost Archimedes Work Studying Ideas at Heart of Calculus – Seeing Patterns Where None Exists

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Math, Science, Students

Who Killed the Software Engineer?

Posted on January 21, 2008 Comments (6)

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? by Dr. Robert B.K. Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg

Over the last few years we have noticed worrisome trends in CS education. The following represents a summary of those trends:
1. Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
2. The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
3. The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today’s software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals.
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As faculty members at New York University for decades, we have regretted the introduction of Java as a first language of instruction for most computer science majors. We have seen how this choice has weakened the formation of our students, as reflected in their performance in systems and architecture courses.
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Every programmer must be comfortable with functional programming and with the important notion of referential transparency. Even though most programmers find imperative programming more intuitive, they must recognize that in many contexts that a functional, stateless style is clear, natural, easy to understand, and efficient to boot.

An additional benefit of the practice of Lisp is that the program is written in what amounts to abstract syntax, namely the internal representation that most compilers use between parsing and code generation. Knowing Lisp is thus an excellent preparation for any software work that involves language processing.

This is an excellent article: any CS students or those considering careers as programmers definitely should read this. Also read: Computer Science Education.

via: Who Killed the Software Engineer?

Dewar, a professor emeritus of computer science at New York University, believes that U.S. colleges are turning out programmers who are – there’s no nice way to say this – essentially incompetent.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Career, Engineering, Math, Students, Technology, Universities
Tags: Career, computer science, open access paper, programming, software engineering, undergraduate education, university

Bigger Impact: 15 to 18 mpg or 50 to 100 mpg?

Posted on December 23, 2007 Comments (9)

This is a pretty counter-intuitive statement, I believe:

You save more fuel switching from a 15 to 18 mpg car than switching from a 50 to 100 mpg car.

But some simple math shows it is true. If you drive 10,000 miles you would use: 667 gallons, 556 gallons, 200 gallons and 100 gallons. Amazing. I must admit, when I first read the quote I thought that it must be an wrong. But there is the math. You save 111 gallons improving from 15 mpg to 18 mpg and just 100 improving from 50 to 100 mpg. Other than those of you who automatically guess that whatever seems wrong must be the answer when you see a title like this I can’t believe anyone thinks 15 to 18 mpg is the change that has the bigger impact. It is great how a little understanding of math can help you see the errors in your initial beliefs. Via: 18 Is Enough.

It also illustrates that the way the data is presented makes a difference. You can also view 100 mpg as 1/100 gallon per mile, 2/100 gallons per mile, 5.6/100 gpm and 6.7 gpm. That way most everyone sees that the 6.7 to 5.6 gpm saves more fuel than 2 to 1 gpm does. Mathematics and scientific thinking are great – if you are willing to think you can learn to better understand the world we live in every day.