Speaking Fees

It's always been a scam. Ex-President gets $400,000 for delivering a 45-minute speech (which is equivalent to his Presidential yearly salary) or travels around the country speaking for $150,000 a pop. Schools try to garner the best people they can: diplomats, statesmen, artists, people who think and deliver the goods. The goal of landing a big speaker is usually to boost alumni donations and add to the university's endowments. The criteria usually include a lifetime of work and achievement, like what Bill Cosby has done or any number of Presidents.

And then you have Snooki, famous for a different kind of endowment, willing to donate pretty much anything to pretty much anyone.

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - The pouf is mightier than the pen when it comes to speaking fees at New Jersey's largest university. The Rutgers University Programming Association paid Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of the reality TV show "Jersey Shore" $32,000 Thursday to dish on her hairstyle, fist pumps, as well as the GTL — gym, tanning, laundry — lifestyle. That's $2,000 more than the $30,000 the university is paying Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison to deliver Rutgers' commencement address in May. Money for Polizzi's appearance came from the mandatory student activity fee.

Public University. Mandatory student activity fee. GTL lifestyle. More money than the commencement speaker, Toni Morrison. I guess it's okay if your purpose is to emphasize the role of women in today's society.

OMG indeed.

Some people just have different priorities.

I find it amazing that this article had to be written ... then I remember times in class when I reference basic historical knowledge and I understand.

While fans of the "Harry Potter" series headed to the Web on Thursday to catch the London red carpet premiere of the latest movie, others wondered why the actors wore matching red poppy boutonnieres. Stars Daniel Radcliffe, 21, Emma Watson, 20, and Rupert Grint, 22, who play Harry Potter and his best friends, Hermione and Ron, all donned the red blooms. They were joined by attendees Tom Felton and Ralph Fiennes and none other than J.K. Rowling herself -- and not just because they looked dapper. The flowers have a special meaning in Britain. 

"A special meaning" indeed.

Just because YOU don't know what it is ...

doesn't mean it's aliens. Just because your feeble brain is stuck on something and can't come up with a reasonable answer, doesn't mean there isn't one.

So here's the moron who's convinced that he sees a cellphone using time-traveler in an outtake from a Charlie Chaplin film.


When faced with two or more conclusions, the simplest one is usually the truth. In this case, the simplest explanation is that this is an alien. No wait, it's a secret plot by time travelers. No wait, she's holding her hand over her ear because it's cold out. No wait, it's DVD distortion. No wait, it's a cellphone. No wait, it's photoshop.

Look, if we can make the entire friggin' Lord of the Ring Trilogy of Monsters, why is "time travel" the first thing this so-called intelligent filmmaker can come up with?

Okay, let's run with a time traveler: Why would someone with the technology to do time travel be wandering around Hollywood with a cellphone that has to be held against the ear and is going to buzz or ringtone at really inopportune times (like that wouldn't be noticed?)? Why not a subdermal subvocalization mic w/ bluetooth connected to a satellite phone to the geosynchronously orbiting time travel pod and the bevy of space-studs dressed in leather thongs? Because that would be ridiculous?

All that technology that I just mentioned is currently available. Even the studs dressed in leather thongs. Cellphones in the form the Irishman witnessed have only been around for 5-6 years. Previously, they were differently shaped and would have required a cellphone tower every three miles. Phones are even now beginning to look different from "this" one - smartphone, bluetooth, etc.

Why would technology from the current, and narrow, 5-6 year window be the one seen? Because this is a self-delusionary fool who has a little imagination and sees what he wants to see.

Or this is a stunt by the Irishman - maybe he wants to get himself a little exposure as an idiot, thinking he'll somehow get more "award-winning" film jobs.

Or this is a stunt by the DVD compiler, trying to sell copies of a boxed set to gullible idiots or people who want to "prove that Irishman wrong," i.e., gullible idiots.

Or this is a misinterpretation of 6 seconds of footage culled from millions of hours of Hollywood video. At this rate, even monkeys can randomly type a line or two of Shakespeare.

Facebook lost my data - so what?

This is creepy.

I've been reading the "Facebook data got stolen" story and I thought back to discussions with students over Facebook privacy settings. Chime in with any you've told students along the way.

1. Change your name and information. Your friends know you are "Vlad the Imposter", living in Pennsylvania and no one else needs to know. If they know you, then you can be found. Otherwise, who the hell cares? Make up stuff for the fields. My personal religion, apparently, is Viking and I am a Scot. If all your information is an inside joke, then your future is a little more secure. None of the "About Me" fields needs to be filled out. Anyone who knows you already knows it. Anyone who doesn't doesn't need to.
2. Set every privacy rating to "friends only" ... not "friends of friends." That way, you control who sees it by controlling who your friends are, instead of handing that power to friends who "friend" everyone in sight.
3. Starting "un-friending" people, beginning with any teachers in this building. Teachers can have a class page or something but there is no valid reason for teachers and students to be "friends." A whole bunch of kids at my school were "friends" with the assistant principal -- WTF? That ended quickly when that same AP busted some "friends" for photos which the kids say weren't what she thought they were. Week-long suspensions, lost trust, bad feelings, anger at the school were the start.
4. I am a mandatory reporter. I explain that at the beginning of school. Information seen on Facebook is included.
5. Facebook is a data business, fueled by your data. Why are you giving away everything for no return? Do you realize how easy it is for stupid people in power to ruin your life, or at the least make it miserable for a while?
6. Make a second account for the public and keep it clean, professional and basically friendless. That's the one that people at work can see. The other one? No comment.
7. Make a third account, just for the hell of it. Invent a person and give him one, too. Don't attack or slander anyone with it, though.

Some folks might ask why Facebook is set up to be so open about everyone's information and I think it's a generational thing. Mark Zuckerberg is a college kid still. He thinks that everyone should be able to see everything about everyone -- it's the norm for college and no one ever gets hurt. If I were still in college, I'd probably agree.

But I'm not in college and I have to play by different rules. Grownup rules. I live in a world where everything you say and post "can and will be held against you" and will probably be misinterpreted to my detriment.

Everything my friends say (even if it nothing to do with me) will be used against me as well. I don't want my friends (outside of school) to be writing things on my wall that my students can read. My friends don't have the same understanding of 'Things That Will Get You Fired' (h/t Richie!) and I don't expect them to vet their posts accordingly. Why should students be able to read that my friends are planning a whiskey-soaked bash prior to going off to war?

Remember the teacher who got fired for attending a bachlorette party at which someone she had no control over did something stupid? Remember the college professor who was reprimanded for appearing in a post-championship celebratory photo - holding a beer? Everyone was. It was a celebration. Only the female professor got the reprimand. She's fighting, of course, but who wants that hassle?

In the other direction, I don't want my students (or their parents) to know things about some of my friends either -- too many "guilt by association" things happen when parents get information.

"None of your business" should be the Facebook motto but it isn't.

Kids deserve the same privacy because they are still feeling out their world. Kids brag and bullshit and should be able to continue to do so online without repercussion.

Educcrats tend to forget the grain of salt.

Books, Part Deux

Yesterday, I mentioned the books that I have, Part One. Those were the easy-to-read books. I got class sets of those.

The books below are harder to read, with a more limited audience so I only got 3 or 6 of each of them. They are the books a serious math student should have read, so I encourage them to try.

The "Biographies"
These biographies are written for the serious and capable 12th grade student or college student. The writing is very clear and the topic is fascinating for me. My students, not so much. An Imaginary Tale; The Story of i. A funny thing about this one was when I tried to type up the order to present it to the decider-person -- I couldn't type "i" without Word getting all angry at me.
e: The Story of a Number. Maior is a good writer, but not for the faint of brain. Also, try Zero; A Biography of a Dangerous Idea and The The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number .

Of course, there's John Allen Poulos:
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, as well as Mathematician Plays the Stockmarket and the inservice classics: Innumeracy and Beyond Innumeracy. He has some others. Try them if these do good things for you.

Damn Near Impossible for High School Students. (If that's not a challenge, I don't know what is ...)
A Brief History of Time by Hawking. You gotta throw down the gauntlet.

Math Quiz for Presidential Candidates

Darren writes that the President has become innumerate. This immediately brought to mind Paulos's proposed "Math Quiz for Presidential Candidates."

I agree completely. I think students should know most of these, too, so I gave the quiz to some of my classes when I was sick. I told the sub to try it as well, but she refused!

I think 6 is my favorite. (Below the fold)

Since ABC is constantly fiddling with those links, I reposted it here:

The Quiz
Below are just 10 of the many politically neutral questions that might be asked. The answers follow.

1. A crucial number to know is the population of the country of which you want to be president. What is the approximate population of the United States? of the world? What percentage of the latter is the former?

2. A news article claims that 15 percent of all strokes occur sometime between noon and midnight on either Friday or Saturday, perhaps because of increased celebrating on the weekends. Do you check with the Centers for Disease Control? Do you stop campaigning on weekends? What's your reaction to this statistic?

3. You must understand the electoral process, of course, so given the way the Electoral College is set up, what is the theoretically smallest number of actual votes (not electoral votes) a candidate can receive and still be elected president?

4. Approximately how many Americans died in the attacks on 9/11? There's no moral comparison, of course, but approximately how many die in auto accidents annually? from heart disease annually?

5. You're campaigning in a state in which the percentage of employees who subscribe to a particular drug plan has risen 1 percentage point, from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent. By what percent has this figure risen? By what percent must it fall to return to its former level?

6. In Disproportia, a small Midwestern town, the average tax cut per household is $2,200, but the median tax cut is $150. What does this say about the distribution of taxable incomes in the town? If the founder of a high-tech company were to move into the community, which is more likely to rise, the mean or the median tax cut?

7. Roughly how big is the federal budget? What fraction of it is discretionary and non-military? By contrast, what is the gross domestic product (to the nearest trillion dollars)?

8. If the government spends $1,000 per second, it will take approximately 17 minutes to spend $1 million. At this rate, about how long will it take to spend $1 billion? How long to spend $1 trillion? One comparison: The $87 billion supplementary budget for Iraq is approximately how many times the annual U.S. contribution to the U.N.?

9. An ace pollster on your staff claims that 63.86 percent of 100 Americans surveyed support your foreign policy. What's your reaction to these numbers?

10. If FAWUA, the federal agency with an unpronounceable acronym, deposits $1 billion in an escrow fund at 7 percent, how long until the deposit is worth $2 billion? $4 billion? Alternatively, if the agency borrows $1 billion at 7 percent and makes no payments on it, how long until it owes $2 billion? $4 billion?
The bottom line: A president should be able to put 2 and 2 together, both numerically (the easy part) and otherwise.

The Answers
1. About 290 million. A bit more than 6 billion. A little less than 5 percent.
2. By itself that's not very impressive evidence. The time period after 12 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays constitutes 1/7 or 14.3 percent of the week so, as a first approximation, you'd expect roughly that percentage of strokes over any two days after 12 p.m.
3. Candidate X could receive as few as 11 votes and his opponent, candidate Y, tens of millions. Specifically, if California, New York, Texas, Florida, and the 7 other states with the most electoral votes each had a turnout of 1 voter who voted for X, and the other 39 states voted unanimously in the millions for Y, X would win.
4. Approximately 3,000, 40,000, and 700,000, respectively.
5. It's risen by 67 percent, but must be cut by only 40 percent to reach its former level.
6. By the definition of "median," half the households receive less than $150 in tax cuts, half more, so there are some very wealthy people in town. These people, like the new company founder, drag up the average tax cut much more than they do the median cut.
7. About $2 trillion, 20%, and a bit more than $11 trillion, respectively.
8. About 11.5 days for $1 billion, 32 years for $1 trillion, and roughly 250 times as much, respectively.
9. The question at issue is impossibly vague, the number surveyed is relatively small, and the precision of the figure is entirely bogus. Fire the pollster.
10. About 10 years and 20 years, respectively. It's important to know that the length of time it takes money to double at an annual interest rate of r percent is roughly 70/r. In this case 70/7 equals 10 years, and a second doubling requires another 10 years.

Professor of mathematics at Temple University and adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, John Allen Paulos is the author of several best-selling books, including Innumeracy, and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. His Who's Counting? column on ABCNEWS.com appears the first weekend of every month.

Books on the Shelf.

What's in my classroom? Well, I like books and there was money in the budget, so ... someone had to do it. I ordered with this philosophy: if the book was an easy read, I tried to get a class set which could be lent around the department. If not, I got maybe 3 or 6 which I could lend to individual students.

Here are a couple of the easy reads:

Short Circuits.
One-Minute Mysteries: These are really easy but a good way to while away a few minutes of TA or homeroom. They are one- or two-paragraph mini-mysteries in which the criminal makes one mistake or one misstatement that shows his guilt. "How could he have known the victim was killed with a potato peeler if he wasn't there?" A similar book is Two Minute Mysteries, which is more of those "outside the box thinking" or "lateral thinking" puzzles. These can take a while because the kids have to come up with reasons that aren't readily seen or intuited. Some reasons fall into the category of "WTF? How are we supposed to know that?"

Statistics:
Huff's How to Lie with Statistics is a classic. I use at least some of the ideas in every class from consumer math through Pre-calculus. I also make the speech before the students start their science fair projects. See also "How to Lie with Maps."

From the guys who brought you Klutz's Guide to Juggling comes Cartoon Guide to Statistics. It's great. In fact, when I unpacked the books, the other math teacher instantly borrowed it. Gotta be a good sign! Witty and fun, it's still got the STUFF. The cartoons are quite descriptive and the math is all there, even if the 'toon of Galileo is goofy.

If you haven't read it ... Freakonomics (and the sequel, Super Freakonomics) is a really good collection of statistical stories and case studies. Leavitt is a good writer and he analyses his work in engaging and easy-to-read chapters. "Why Do Drug Dealers Live with Their Mothers?" and "Why is the KuKluxKlan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" You'll want an entire Saturday for it.

Theory:
The Number Devil is a good book for starting kids reading about math topics without slapping them silly. Easy to read but not pandering either. Probably the best explanation for the Fibonacci sequence I've seen.

Trivia:
Loosely organized book of trivia and generally "neat stuff" is Brain Fuel. Engaging reads of one or two pages each that aren't particularly mathematical but I was able to buy them, so there! Kind of "Ripley Believe it or Not".

Geometry:
If it's a math class, it has to have Flatland & Sphereland in it. Misogynistic? Yes. Satire? Yes. Still, it's an exploration of geometry you shouldn't be without. Available online for free (long out of copyright), but you'll want tangible books. Fortunately, they're cheap.

SAT Prep
For my SAT Review class, I was able to score some $3 versions of Prince by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu's Art of War. These are used as essay topics. I'll take a paragraph almost at random (they're that good for this kind of thing) and make a question about it. Instant Essay topics.

For the same course, I got - and this is no shit - a copy of Specerian Penmanship. The students are fascinated by my ability to write cursive. Probably 50% can write poorly in cursive, the other half not at all. I, of course, had Mrs. R. to teach me this some 50ish years ago. So I lend out the workbooks with the stern instruction to use a piece of paper placed over top. SO far, no writing in the books. A couple girls have really worked on it. So funny. One texted this fact to her friend - proud she was teaching herself to write cursive. The irony escaped her.

Drafting is important.
How to Read/make Mechanical Drawings and Popular Science's The Art of Mechanical Drawing are good source books for orthographic projections and for general work. I feel it very important that students learn the basics of drafting. The art department is getting swamped and stamped and cut these days and the technical centers are becoming more exclusively for "tech kids" - where's the generally good student to learn this stuff? ME!

I can't say anything yet about 100 essential things because it's backordered.

That's a part. I'll talk about some of the rest tomorrow: the tough reads, the ones that I bought only 3 or 6 copies of.

caio for now.

Colleges makes kids Liberal apparently.

The Chronicle quotes a study that college makes students more liberal but not smarter about civics.

I have so many questions, starting with basic methodology, below the fold:

1. Does A cause B, does B cause A or is it C causing both, or nothing?
2. Does the change in liberalism follow the change in civics knowledge or vice versa?
3. Is there a confounding factor, like the changing male-female ratio? or the changing attitude that "All students must go to college" - are we seeing the results of increased perception of need for a college education to make a good living?
4. Are younger people more likely to be liberal anyway, regardless of college?
5. Is civics something colleges deal with, or is this a K-12 thing?
6. Did the researchers control for age and SES? A PhD might have taken HS civics in 1975 and the HS graduate two years ago. Education has changed in the HS setting. (no shit).
7. Does ALL higher education make graduates more liberal or is the choice of college or major an issue?
8. Did the researchers bias their own study by excluding the military academies (like yours truly) and the religious schools like Brigham Young? (by asking 2500 random people that's what they essentially did)
9. Wealthier people take more college - was wealth a factor rather than the years in school?
10. The institute has a "tradition-minded view of issues" - was this the only study they did?& Or did they throw away data that would have changed their results?

I don't like this study. Results seem too pat, too simplistic. Too Glenn Beck-ian.

The survey contained 118 questions: 33 on civic knowledge, 39 on public philosophy, 29 on civic behavior, 16 on demographics, and 1 on popular culture.

Many questions are worded strangely or have answer choices that "guide" the respondent, while some are just odd. "Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that: ... " -- Maybe it's that I'm not a civics teacher. They were chosen from previous ISI tests, Immigration, and NAEP tests. This makes them perfect survey instruments?

I did find the 33 questions pretty easy - but I was able to read them and consider the answers. A typical telephone survey doesn't allow for consideration or for nuance. How would you respond if you were asked this one over the phone?

Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:
a. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
b. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law
c. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise
d. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system
e. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers’ money

The numbers are weird for a random survey, too: this "random telephone survey" of 2508 managed to include 240 people who self-identified as college professors. Really? 10% is very high. And a random telephone survey with all the quits, drops, and lying?

And then, the conclusions. They used regression to determine the effect of more education instead of just measuring it. More civics education meant more disagreement with phrases such as "The Bible is the Word of God," "The Ten Commandments are irrelevant today." "America corrupts otherwise good people." "Public school teachers should be allowed to lead prayers in school." "Homeschooling families neglect their community obligations." "Religion and science typically conflict." None of these correlates with conservative or liberal views and all of them are of the "We'll tell you the good answer" variety - bias built right in.

Oh well. Gotta get back to work.

Here's the article if it gets hidden in archives:

---

College Makes Students More Liberal, but Not Smarter About Civics, Study Finds

By Jill Laster
While many graduates of American colleges cannot answer basic civics questions, a higher education does make their opinions more liberal on controversial social issues, according to a new report issued on Friday by an academic think tank.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an independent group with a tradition-minded view of issues, asked about 2,500 randomly selected people more than 100 questions to gauge their civic knowledge, public philosophy, civic behavior, and demographics.

"The Shaping of the American Mind," the fourth report from the institute on civic literacy, will be formally released on Wednesday.

Richard A. Brake, a co-author of the report, said he and his colleagues had sought to see what civic or social lessons students were learning in college.
The institute found that people who had attained at least a bachelor's degree were more likely than Americans whose formal education ended with a high-school diploma to take a liberal stance on certain controversial social issues. For example, 39 percent of people whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree supported same-sex marriage, compared with 25 percent with a high-school diploma. The trend continued with advanced degrees: About 46 percent of people with master's degrees supported same-sex marriage, as did 43 percent of people with Ph.D.'s.

Previous surveys have found that, in general, college does not bring students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to the Institute's 2008 report, based on a survey of 2,500, people whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor's degree correctly answered 57 percent of the questions, on average. That is three percentage points lower than a passing grade, according to the survey's authors. (This needed to be said? and quoted? and the reporter scored what? - Mr. C.)

Even earlier surveys showed that years in college were only slightly correlated to civics expertise. For a 2006 report the institute surveyed 14,000 college freshmen and seniors on basic civics questions. It found seniors answered an average of 53 percent of the questions correctly, just 1.5 percent higher than freshmen. (After the 2006 report was released, some experts questioned the study's methodology and focus on a small range of facts.) (And they will again.- Mr. C.)

Mr. Brake said results of the studies in the last four years showed that many universities do not place enough emphasis on civics or the basics of American history. He also called for universities to adopt better-balanced curricula.

"College graduates, whether it be current or graduated in the past, seem to have difficulty knowing basic things about our government and our history," Mr. Brake said. "Does college share all the blame? Of course not — this is a systemic problem, from K through 12 and all the way up. But universities train our teachers and train our leaders, so they play a role." (And newspapers play a role, too. As well as demographics. - Mr.C.)

Civics curricula have drawn concern recently from other critics, such as Bob Graham, the former U.S. senator from Florida who is now based at the University of Florida. He suggested, in an interview last summer with The Chronicle, that colleges be measured based on the number of their current students or graduates who participate in community-service or civic organizations.

Trivia for Friday the 17th

Dance

It has been said that she performed all of the same steps as her partner, Fred Astaire, only she danced hers backwards and in high heels. Who was she?

Answer from Thursday
Knight of the British Empire
Sir Rudolph, indeed.

Trivia for Thursday the 16th

Culture

Although he is not entitled to call himself "Sir Rudolph," New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was honored by Britain's Prince Andrew to be able to include the letters "KBE" following his name. What does the KBE mean?

Answers from Wednesday:
Franklin on the $100
Hamilton on the $10