Civil political debate helps student see through a new lens | Vanderbilt University News

Amy Wolf, Vanderbilt News | Vanderbilt University observes, An American Studies seminar is exploring the complex relationship between religion and partisan politics in the United States by putting an emphasis on civility, mutual respect and robust dialogue.

Photo: Vanderbilt News

When first-year student Kurt Urban came to Vanderbilt, he arrived with a retro Polaroid camera, hoping to capture campus sights from a new perspective.

But as the College of Arts and Science student became involved in an American Studies class amid a heated election season, he started seeing through what he considers a surprising new lens: one of dynamic and respectful political discourse.

Urban said he’s learning this philosophy of showing mutual respect even when you disagree in a course titled “Faith, Politics and Polarization” led by the Rev. Dr. Clay Stauffer, adjunct assistant professor of American studies...

Stauffer has a set of class ground rules, which include completing all of the readings, having open and honest dialogue where students listen as much as they talk, and respecting the opinions and beliefs of others.

“We need to model in the classroom what we’re trying to do in greater society and understand that people are coming from very different backgrounds and moral foundations,” Stauffer said.

Read more... 

Source: Vanderbilt University News

The Classification of Humankind, and the Birth of Population Science | Science & Technology - The MIT Press Reader

This article is adapted from Thomas Moynihan’s book “X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction.”

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Only after new methods emerged for assessing statistics did the previously invisible entity now called ‘population’ become a target for objective investigation, argues Thomas Moynihan, writer from the U.K., currently working with Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.

The Classification of Humankind, and the Birth of Population Science
Photo: MIT Press Reader

It was Thomas Malthus — the British cleric and political economist, often railed against, rarely actually read — who cast a long shadow over thinking about our future. Writing around the turn of the 1800s, Malthus suggested starkly that “the power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence to man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”

He was talking not about extinction, but the natural paring back of populations. Indeed, Malthus remained unconcerned about outright extermination because he was so convinced of the natural tendency of populations to expand explosively, leading to poverty and starvation. A population tends to overshoot its means of subsistence, he noted, precisely because it grows in a nonlinear or exponential fashion (while growth in the availability of sustenance, he thought, tends to grow in a linear or arithmetic fashion)...

Before the appropriate mathematical tools of abstraction were in place, no one had consistently thought of humanity in this way, at the level of an aggregated population or as a global mass. Only after these first steps in new methods for assessing statistics did the previously invisible entity now called ‘population’ solidify as a target for objective investigation. And this meant, of course, that its dynamics were suddenly capable of being mathematically retrodicted and predicted...

But how many future generations could there be? Remember that Malthus himself acknowledged that it is within the power of population to “fill millions of worlds.” Experts today now think of this (and much more) as achievable. This means there could be unimaginable amounts of future people, leading highly valuable lives. And this gives us some sense of just what’s at stake in our survival.

Read more... 

Recommended Reading

X-Risk:
How Humanity Discovered
Its Own Extinction

Source: The MIT Press Reader

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Naveen Garg, professor of computer science in IIT Delhi, say ..

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Naveen Garg, professor of computer science in IIT Delhi, say ..

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Naveen Garg, professor of computer science in IIT Delhi, say ..

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Naveen Garg, professor of computer science in IIT Delhi, say ..

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Naveen Garg, professor of computer science in IIT Delhi, say ..

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Secrets behind 'Game of Thrones' unveiled by data science and network theory | Mathematics - Phys.org

What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? by University of Warwick.

What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? How has a story as complex as "Game of Thrones" enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives? Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland came together to unravel "A Song of Ice and Fire", the books on which the TV series is based.
Photo: Coventry University

How has a story as complex as "Game of Thrones" enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives?

Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland came together to unravel "A Song of Ice and Fire", the books on which the TV series is based.

In a paper that has just been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of physicists, mathematicians and psychologists from Coventry, Warwick, Limerick, Cambridge and Oxford universities have used data science and network theory to analyse the acclaimed book series by George R.R. Martin.

The study shows the way the interactions between the characters are arranged is similar to how humans maintain relationships and interact in the real world...

Thomas Gessey-Jones, from the University of Cambridge, commented: "The methods developed in the paper excitingly allow us to test in a quantitative manner many of the observations made by readers of the series, such as the books famous habit of seemingly killing off characters at random."

Read more...  

Additional resources
Thomas Gessey-Jones el al., "Narrative structure of A Song of Ice and Fire creates a fictional world with realistic measures of social complexity," PNAS (2020).
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006465117 

Source: Phys.org

Stop hiding UMD’s diversity failures behind convenient statistics | Statistics - The Diamondback

Jake Foley-Keene, The Diamondback insist, UMD obfuscates the truth of its low minority enrollment. 

The administration building.
Photo: Joe Ryan/The Diamondback

If there’s a recurring theme throughout my columns, it’s that the University of Maryland prioritizes prestige over all else. Prestige fuels the university’s decision-making process, whether it’s in deciding to overfund STEM and athletics, to take money from unethical-but-wealthy donors, to continue in-person classes or to generally refuse to acknowledge any errors it has made or problems it has. This is particularly salient regarding issues of race, as this university cares more about appearing as a safe, diverse and unified school than actually being one. This was the case when it released data about spiking freshman enrollment for Hispanic and Black or African American students.

Compared to many other colleges around the country, this university is fairly diverse. In fact, of over 3,500 schools ranked for diversity on College Factual, this university checked in at 132. But it’s no secret that higher education is a bastion for entrenched privilege. Even the freshman class, as diverse as the university claims it to be, is still only about 11 percent Black or African American and about 8 percent Hispanic, compared to the greater college age population, which as of 2017 was 14 percent Black and 22 percent Hispanic. 

To be clear, a lack of racial diversity is a problem at many major colleges. Because of the system of entrenched wealth and education, I can’t entirely blame the university for lagging behind national population averages...

And Black or African American students are better represented in the state school system: From 2017 to 2019, the proportion of Black or African American students in Maryland public schools never dipped below one-third. But in the same time period at this university, that figure was never more than one in eight.

Read more... 

Source: The Diamondback

Femmeact: vital support for women in actuarial science | University - University of Cape Town News

Helen Swingler, Senior writer at University of Cape Town emphasiz, Gender disparity in actuarial science at universities and in the workplace is a larger issue than number parity. 

From left: Final-year actuarial science student Ciara Madella, the former head of the actuarial science department Shivani Ranchod and third-year actuarial science student Cara Geduld are the drivers of the relaunched Femmeact, an initiative to support women in the actuarial science space.
Photo: Lerato Maduna

 

 

Women are essential role models in a field lagging in representation. They also offer vital perspectives in a world where bias often undermines women in the design of everything – from healthcare products to pension benefits.

But the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) student-led Femmeact is working to change that.

Femmeact is an initiative to support women in the field, both at university and the workplace. It was relaunched recently in the actuarial science section of the commerce faculty after a hiatus of several years. Thanks to the UCT Actuarial Science House Committee’s Ciara Madella, a final-year student; third-year student Cara Geduld; and the former head of the actuarial science department Shivani Ranchod, Femmeact is back on the map.

The numbers of women students and professional actuaries are starting to shift, but Ranchod said that they’re a long way away from a 50/50 representation...

Invisible women

What do women bring to the workplace?

“Our lived experiences or things that men donʼt think about,” said Geduld.

Read more... 

Source: University of Cape Town News 

How to Love Mathematics | Mathematics - Medium

In September 2013, the New York Times had a wonderful op-ed piece entitled “How I Fell in Love With Math.”, by Hazel Clementine, published in However Mathematics…

Love of Mathematics?
Photo: MilagrosR27 via Flickr

Unfortunately, I saw it today, and I got goosebumps because I have always loved math.

Every person is a product of his or her childhood experiences. I remember sitting in the back of a church when I was 12. I didn’t want to be there in the middle of the week. My parents allowed me to have my math book. If I could do the math, I would be happy. I had M&Ms in one hand and math in the other.

When I was young, I wanted to have a good education. I wouldn’t say I liked the fact that we knew we were in schools that were not as good that did not have the resources. I hated the idea of having to use tedious textbooks and long lectures. I always wondered why the school was like that.

I was determined to major in mathematics in college. I did. I went through school, always loving math. But I always noticed that most kids did not like math. Today, I am still trying to figure out what we could do to help more children like math.

How many of you love mathematics?...

We should tell our students, “You can be excellent in math, or you can be excellent in literature, but you can be the best that there is.”

What we need in education, what we need in STEM is the belief in self. It’s in the empowering of our children.

Read more... 

Recommended Reading

The Math Gene:
How Mathematical Thinking
Evolved And Why Numbers Are Like Gossip

Source: Medium

Book Review – The Book of Two Ways | Book - Central Coast Community News

Check out this book.

Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Dawn is married to Brian and has a teenage daughter, Meret.

They live in Boston.

Brian is a professor of physics at Harvard and Dawn works as a death doula.

I am not sure if that is a position in real life, but it should be...

The actual Book of Two Ways was found in certain coffins in Egypt and was a guidebook, a map, to assist the deceased with the afterlife, by either land or water routes.

Read more... 

Source: Central Coast Community News

Should You Self-Publish Your Book? | Forbes

Many authors spend a lot of time investigating how to publish their book. Here's a quick crash course in how self-publishing and commercial publishing differ, as Elaine Pofeldt, Journalist, content strategist, blogger and ghost writer reports.

Both self-publishing and commercial publishing can be profitable for entrepreneurs turned authors. But it's important to know how they differ before you come up with a plan of action.
Photo: GETTY

As a ghostwriter, I often hear from prospective authors who would like to write a book but are on the fence about whether to self-publish it or try to find a commercial publisher.

Many of these budding writers are entrepreneurs—whether solo professionals or founders of scalable companies—who want to raise the profile of their business to bring in more clients or speaking engagements, or who want to establish themselves as thought leaders.

These days, this is a tougher choice than it was in the days of "vanity" publishing houses. Self-publishing has come a long way since then, and you can earn money and build your reputation with both types of publishing. However, the experience of commercially publishing versus self-publishing is very different. It’s important to have a general sense of how they differ before you start your book, because commercial publishing requires some extra steps up front. Here’s a look at how they compare in some key areas.

Read more... 

Source: Forbes

Course Hero Acquires Israeli AI-Powered Math Edtech Developer Symbolab | Technology - NoCamels - Israeli Innovation News

US firm Course Hero, an online learning platform for course-specific study resources, has acquired Israeli edtech company Symbolab, an AI-powered developer to help students study math, the companies announced on Tuesday by NoCamels Team.

 

A mathematics formula.
Photo:  Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2011 by mathematicians and computer scientists, Symbolab, a Tel Aviv-based company that is considered a pioneer in the development and use of artificial intelligence to solve math challenges, has been used by over 50 million students in 2020 alone...

Course Hero’s online learning platform offers over 40 million course-specific study resources created by and for students and educators, as well as 24/7 tutor help. The range of learning materials include practice problems, study guides, textbook solutions, videos, class notes, and step-by-step explanations for every subject. More than 50,000 faculty across the U.S. and Canada use Course Hero to share their resources with the community, collaborate with other faculty, and hone new strategies for instruction.

Read more... 

Source: NoCamels - Israeli Innovation News 

AI teachers must be effective and communicate well to be accepted | Artificial Intelligence - Science Daily

Summary:    
The increase in online education has allowed a new type of teacher to emerge -- an artificial one. But just how accepting students are of an artificial instructor remains to be seen. That's why researchers are working to examine student perceptions of artificial intelligence-based teachers. 

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The increase in online education has allowed a new type of teacher to emerge an artificial one. But just how accepting students are of an artificial instructor remains to be seen.

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AI teaching assistants can help ease a teacher’s workload, such as by responding to commonly asked questions by students.  
Photo credit: Photo: Adobe Stock

That's why researchers at the University of Central Florida's Nicholson School of Communication and Media are working to examine student perceptions of artificial intelligence-based teachers.

Some of their findings, published recently in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, indicate that for students to accept an AI teaching assistant, it needs to be effective and easy to talk to.

The hope is that by understanding how students relate to AI-teachers, engineers and computer scientists can design them to easily integrate into the education experience, says Jihyun Kim, an associate professor in the school and lead author of the study...

An example of an AI teaching assistant is one named Jill Watson that was created by a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jill was fed the thousands of questions and answers commonly asked in the researcher's online class that he'd taught over the years. With some additional learning and tweaks, Jill was eventually able to answer the students' commonly asked questions accurately without any human assistance as if she was one of the researcher's human teaching assistants.

Read more...

Additional resources

Journal Reference:

1. Jihyun Kim, Kelly Merrill Jr., Kun Xu, Deanna D. Sellnow. My Teacher Is a Machine: Understanding Students’ Perceptions of AI Teaching Assistants in Online Education. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2020.1801227

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Central Florida. Original written by Robert Wells, Science Writer at University of Central Florida.

Source: Science Daily