The 41 New Skills You Can Now Learn on LinkedIn Learning | New Courses - LinkedIn Learning

Paul Petrone, Editor - LinkedIn Learning writes, Each week presents a new opportunity for you and your team to learn the skills necessary to take on the next big challenge.

Photo:  Learning Blog - LinkedIn Learning

And, at LinkedIn Learning, we want to do everything we can to help make that happen.

So, each week, we add to our 13,000+ course library. And this past week was no different, as we added 49 new courses covering everything from AutoCAD to Amazon Web Services to customer service.

The new courses now available on LinkedIn Learning are:
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Source: LinkedIn Learning (Blog)

World’s top statisticians are urging scientists to ditch statistics and stick to mathematics | Statistics - ThePrint

Statistical significance can be misleading because it sets an arbitrary threshold on the level of uncertainty science should be willing to accept, as ThePrint reports.  

Photo: Representational image | Commons

Did you know that gorging on dark chocolate accelerates weight loss? A study published in 2015 found that a group of subjects who followed a low-carbohydrate diet and ate a bar of dark chocolate daily lost more weight than a group that followed the same diet sans chocolate. This discovery was heralded in some quarters as a scientific breakthrough.

If you’re still hesitant about raiding the supermarket chocolate aisle, rest assured: The study’s results are statistically significant. In theory, this means that the results would be improbable if chocolate did not contribute to weight loss, and therefore we can conclude that it does. A successful test of statistical significance has long been the admission ticket into the halls of scientific knowledge.

But not anymore, if statisticians have their way. In a coordinated assault last week, which included a special issue of the American Statistician and commentary in Nature (supported by 800 signatories), some of the discipline’s luminaries urged scientists to ditch the notion of statistical significance.

Critics argue that statistical significance can be misleading because it sets an arbitrary threshold on the level of uncertainty science should be willing to accept. Roughly speaking, uncertainty is expressed as the likelihood of observing an experimental result by chance, assuming the effect being tested doesn’t actually exist...

I agree that the term “statistical significance” is part of the problem; abandoning it is the right thing to do. In its place, statisticians advocate a more nuanced view of uncertainty. For example, scientists can report a range of possible conclusions that are compatible (to different degrees) with the data.

But the problem runs deeper. The broader issue is that the choice of a career in medicine, the life sciences or the social sciences (with some exceptions, like economics) isn’t typically indicative of a passion, or even an aptitude, for mathematics. Yet these sciences are thoroughly infused with statistics, and a shallow understanding of its principles gives rise to numerous fallacies.
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Source: ThePrint

Review: Mathematician Thomas Harriot’s reputation resurrected in new biography | Mathematician - Charleston Post Courier

Lost in the mists of history until comparatively recently was the Elizabethan- and Jacobean-era mathematician Thomas Harriot who, in many respects, anticipated the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and even Newton, by Bill Thompson, Special to The Post and Courier.

Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science

That he was little known to students of the history of science had much to do with his failure to publish his work, a reticence owning to political and religious tensions of the day as well as to circumstance and his own indifference to the limelight.

Robyn Arianrhod, a research fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, adds the latest cornerstone to the edifice of Harriot’s resurrected reputation. Hers is an authoritative, often engrossing marriage of history and science.

At age 24, Oxford graduate Harriot (1560-1621) already had captured the attention of Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh, in the author’s spelling), who served as a navigational theorist on the latter’s first reconnaissance to the New World. Harriot was indispensable to its success, both in his tutoring of pilots and through his open-minded, friendly encounters with native peoples...

Like Raleigh, Harriot retained a life-long interest in the New World. But he “yearned to go deeper into the foundations of pure mathematics and physics — to discover ‘new worlds’ in numbers and the laws of nature rather than through geographical exploration.”

By studying his life and career, Harriot helps us understand how modern mathematics and science began to emerge. Arianrhod’s is a significant achievement.
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Source: Charleston Post Courier

Can A.I. truly be creative? One brilliant Brit makes a compelling case | Emerging Tech - Digital Trends

 This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Marcus du Sautoy is a bestselling author and one of the U.K.’s leading mathematicians. In his latest book, The Creativity Code, he ponders whether A.I. algorithms can ever truly be creative, according to Luke Dormehl, UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. 

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy
Photo: Marcus du Sautoy

The question of whether or not a machine can be creative is one that has caused plenty of ponderous head-scratching among computer scientists and those working in the humanities. While it may seem insignificant next to challenges like robots eating our jobs, killer robots in modern warfare, or the threat of artificial intelligence gaining consciousness and going all Skynet on us, it’s actually pretty darn crucial. Creativity isn’t just about painting pretty pictures or writing a novel; it’s about the ability to come up with new strategies and ways of looking at the world.

The latest thinker to tackle this heady question is Marcus du Sautoy. One of the U.K.’s leading mathematicians, a bestselling author, and science and math popularizer, du Sautoy’s new book is titled The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of A.I.

Its author spoke with Digital Trends about the book and his answer to the question of whether artificial intelligence can be truly creative — and what this means for the future of machine intelligence.

Why is creativity and A.I. a topic deserving of its book? And, more importantly, why now?

For me, the idea of creativity — writing novels or music — is something we viewed as uniquely human. After all, if you’ve got an algorithm, then surely the human coder is the creator because they’ve written the algorithm and it can only do what its creator tells it to do. That’s what Ada Lovelace first said when she thought about the power of the Analytical Engine. She was interested in something that could do more than just computation and suggested that it might even one day write music. However, she always noted that it would never be doing more than what the programmer told it to do.
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Recommended Reading

The Creativity Code:
Art and Innovation in the Age of AI

The award-winning Marcus du Sautoy, author of The Music of the Primes explores the future of creativity and how machine learning will disrupt, enrich, and transform our understanding of what it means to be human. 

Source: Digital Trends

The Importance of Visualization to Effective E-Learning by Ainsley Lawrence

Today I have Ainsley Lawrence guest blogging. Please be sure to check out her unique guest post. Guest posts are always welcome, please contact me.

The Importance of Visualization to Effective E-Learning 

The modern world is filled with technology that makes everything easier. Automated driving assistants, bill payment options online, shopping on Amazon, many new channels of communicating with family and friends — modern tech is constantly streamlining how we do things.

The field of education has been among the most dramatically affected by this evolution. While tech in the classroom — iPads being used for music education, for example — is an obvious manifestation of this reshaping of the educational landscape, perhaps the most transformative shift has been from physical classrooms to e-learning environments.

However, while there is an abundance of tools available to help teachers communicate with students online, one casualty of the shift from classrooms to computers has been the loss of visual feedback. If instructors do not make the effort to provide a visual element, online learners are often left without this critical piece to the learning process. Fortunately, there are several different ways that educators can provide quality visuals throughout the e-learning experience.

PowerPoints, Infographics, and Interactive Textbooks  

Some of the most common forms of online visualization are infographics and charts. Even if using a PowerPoint presentation sounds a bit archaic at this point, the opportunity to provide even basic visuals during an online session or lecture can be invaluable. 

But the advantages of a good visual goes beyond a simple PowerPoint presentation. Infographics — in essence, a visual representation of important information — are an incredible teaching tool that have exploded in popularity in recent years. This comes as no surprise, as 90 percent of the information that our brains receive is visual in nature. Visuals are known to improve both retention and learning by an incredible 400 percent. Thus, an infographic can be very helpful in an e-learning environment.

Textbooks themselves can be brought to life online as well. For example, Brown University student Daniel Kunin created an interactive online textbook of sorts, known as “Seeing Theory,” which basically breaks down many of the most complex elements of the subject of statistics into tangible, understandable visuals.

Not only is the online resource filled with eye-popping information, though — it’s also interactive. It allows visual learners to become active participants in the learning process by giving them information-rich visuals to give context to abstract concepts. Interactive information has an incredible synergy that can facilitate learning in ways that are hard to reproduce in other settings.   

Timelines  

Timelines are an incredible way to promote e-learning as well. Presenting information, such as historical names and events, chronologically in a visual representation is helpful. It allows instructors to lay out when each person or occurrence being studied took place in relation to one another, as well as their connection to the present day. 

Virtual Reality     

Online visualization lends itself perfectly to the concept of simulations of all kinds. Simulations may involve virtual or augmented reality to present learning situations in which students can exercise their knowledge can be one of the best ways to provide hands-on experience with virtually no dangers or risks. 

From going on e-trips to creating virtual classrooms, there are many different ways to utilize this growing medium of information. Take a look at a few examples for how you can use VR in e-learning to spur your imagination.   

Applications 

The plethora of apps available provides a tremendous resource for all teachers to use. The sheer quantity of options at this point allows educators of all different teaching styles to find something that fits their specific approach. 

One excellent example of how simplistic and yet effective an educational application can be comes in the form of The Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Developed by scientist Stephen Wolfram, the project provides a user-friendly way to create interactive visualizations for any level of mathematics. Anything from simple problems to complex algorithms can be turned into sophisticated mini-applications that can be instrumental in helping facilitate learning.

Putting the Students in Control   

Another way to bring a visual element to the online experience is by having students track their own progress. Good record-keeping in the classroom is extremely important for teachers, but when it comes to each student’s individual progress, passing part of the responsibility onto them as well, and in a visual manner no less, can have wonderful effects.

If a student is made aware of their own progress via charts, bars, calendars, and so on, it can stimulate them to strive for success, as well as teach them the importance of things like organization and record-keeping in general.

Another way to include students is to teach them to create mind maps that help them visually keep track of the things they are learning, what they have scheduled, and so on. While a mind map in its essence is simply a collection of organized information, the visual element can be a game changer for visually inclined learners.

Sprucing Up the E-Learning Environment 

From infographics to timelines, simulations, apps, and more, there are many different ways to introduce visuals into the e-learning process. Remember that this visual appeal also extends beyond practical applications. While useful visuals are essential, it can also be beneficial to include aesthetic appeal in your presentations as well. For more tips and tricks regarding designing eLearning visuals, check out the eBook “62 Tips on Graphic Design, UI/UX Design, and Visualization for eLearning.”  

Many thanks to Ainsley Lawrence.

Enjoy your reading!