New degree programs approved | Top Stories - Basement Medicine

In December, the NVU-Johnson Faculty Assembly approved three new degree programs for fall 2020, following an endorsement in fall 2019 by the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees, according to Magnificent Schmidl, Staff Reporter at Basement Medicine.

Photo: Greg Petrics

Two of the programs, Professional Writing, Editing, and Publishing – which was featured in the Dec. 12 issue of Basement Medicine– and Performance Arts and Technology, will be NVU-Johnson specific while the third, Data Sciences, will be offered on both campuses.

Data Sciences will be directed by Gregory Petrics, associate professor in mathematics and Bradley Beth, assistant professor in computer sciences. From afar, the major looks similar to a Statistics major, but Petrics, says that there are some fundamental differences.

The degree will have a foundation of computer programming and use Java throughout the program...

Some classes will be added to the department to complete the curriculum for the program.
 
Among them is Statistical Computing and R, which will be the sequel to the Stats course already offered, but will be using a different program than your average TI calculator or Excel. The program is called R and it uses computing language to do data analysis. Some students are currently in a trial run of the course.
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Source: Basement Medicine

Don’t ‘just Google it’: 3 ways students can get the most from searching online | Digital age - The Conversation AU

Photo: Renee Morrison

Most students think they know how to use the internet to search for information, and teachers agree. But this isn't always the case, says Renee Morrison, Lecturer in Curriculum Studies, University of Tasmania.

Photo: Brooke Cagle/Unsplash

Searching online has many educational benefits. For instance, one study found students who used advanced online search strategies also had higher grades at university.

But spending more time online does not guarantee better online skills. Instead, a student’s ability to successfully search online increases with guidance and explicit instruction.

Young people tend to assume they are already competent searchers. Their teachers and parents often assume this too. This assumption, and the misguided belief that searching always results in learning, means much classroom practice focuses on searching to learn, rarely on learning to search. 

Many teachers don’t explictly teach students how to search online. Instead, students often teach themselves and are reluctant to ask for assistance. This does not result in students obtaining the skills they need...

Here are three things young people should keep in mind to get the full benefits of searching online.
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Source: The Conversation AU

The Council on Higher Education’s review of PhD degrees reveals worrying trends | Daily Maverick

The Council on Higher Education’s ‘National Review of Doctoral Qualifications in South Africa’ begs the age-old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – who will guard the guards themselves? Quality research can take time and it would be unfortunate if universities were, in future, to feel the need to safeguard their interests by encouraging doctoral students to tackle what is easily ‘doable’ rather than what is intriguing, continues Daily Maverick.

 The doctoral review is on course for an outcome that is likely to subvert its own noble intentions of assuring – and developing – quality, says the writer.
Photo: YWAD / ya-webdesign.com

The website of the statutory quality assurance body for higher education, the Council on Higher Education (CHE), records that: “On the 2nd of February 2017, the Council on Higher Education launched the National Reviews [sic] of Doctoral Studies, it held its first ‘Stakeholder Consultative Forum’ at the National Research Foundation (NRF) in Pretoria.”

This announcement was followed by two years of planning for the review of all doctoral qualifications across all universities. As the review was originally scheduled for completion in April 2020, universities can expect lots of review activity this year.

The story that follows tracks developments to the present. It’s a troubling story, as we shall see. At the outset though, to the credit of the CHE, the doctoral review process in fact got off to a good start. In line with the principle of peer review, the “Qualification Standard for Doctoral Degrees, November 2018” (the qualification standard), was compiled with the input of a reference group of 19 eminent professors from a representative range of universities. An earlier draft had also gone out for public comment. We thus have credible benchmarks for the review, established through a legitimate process.

In providing benchmarks for assessing quality, the qualification standard follows a clear logic comprising:

• Purpose of the doctoral qualification;
• Graduate attributes that manifest that purpose; and
• The contexts and conditions for the assessment of those attributes.

The qualification standard was followed by the CHE’s “Institutional Self-Evaluation Report Template, April” (the SER template)...

In conclusion, at this stage we don’t yet know what sense universities will make of all this; and whether the CHE will then have sufficient common understanding across institutions to enable it to draw valid conclusions across the sector. A lot depends on the peer reviewers who will do the site visit rounds later this year. Let’s hope that scholarship and good professional judgement can mitigate the CHE’s shortcomings.
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Source: Daily Maverick 

Texas A&M Mathematics And Statistics Fair Set For Feb. 22 | Campus Life - Texas A&M University

The annual event features games, arts and crafts, problem-solving skills and card tricks that aim to help students of all ages have fun while enjoying math and numbers by Shana Hutchins, Texas A&M University College of Science.

Photo: Courtesy of J.D. Kim

Texas A&M University will recognize the importance of mathematics and statistics with the 17th annual Texas A&M Mathematics and Statistics Fair set for Saturday, Feb. 22 at 9 a.m. in the John R. Blocker Building.
 
The event will feature the inclusion of statistics in keeping with April’s more broadly focused Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month, said Texas A&M mathematician and event coordinator Tamara Carter. Co-hosted by the Texas A&M Department of Mathematics and the Texas A&M Department of Statistics, the Math and Stat Fair is the annual highlight of an expanded series of spring outreach events designed to increase public understanding and appreciation of both disciplines.
 
Free and open to all ages, the fair will feature mentored problem-solving, games, mathematical arts and crafts, card tricks and lectures. All activities will be held on the first and second floors of Blocker.
 
“Mathematics and statistics are extremely valuable in many careers and various aspects of everyday life, but they are also fun,” Carter said. “We are very excited to share that fun with guests of all ages.”...

An 11 a.m. public lecture will be followed by a prize raffle and remarks at noon. The event will conclude with advanced lectures from 1 to 3 p.m.
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Source: Texas A&M University

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

The skills you bring to an organization are more valuable when you collaborate with people with different skillsets, according to a recent Harvard study, suggest Zoë Kelse, Learning Supporter at Linked.

New Skills You Can Now Learn on LinkedIn Learning
 Photo:  Learning Blog - LinkedIn Learning

Or in the words of Shane Snow, journalist and co-author of Contently, “You can’t make a cake with eight types of flour, no matter how great the flour is, you need different ingredients.” You need different people to combine their ideas perspectives, heuristics, if you want to get better, solve problems, and make breakthroughs and be innovative.

It’s no surprise that collaboration is on the list of skills companies need most in 2020.

Learn more about the skills of your colleagues and hone your own ability to be more collaborative with one of the 33 new courses now available on LinkedIn Learning:
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Source: The Learning Blog

Why Does Mathematics Interpret Reality? | Mathematics - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

In the latest issue of Communications of the Blyth Institute, Gordon Mullings presents his account of why mathematics and physics are connected by Jonathan Bartlett, Director of Technology at New Medio.
 

Photo: Flickr

The amazing applicability of mathematics to the real world has caused many mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists to pause throughout history. How can something as abstract and ideal as mathematics apply to the real world?  

In 1960, Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) (right) wrote an essay, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” It meanders widely through a multitude of observations. But he touches on several essential, surprising observations about the relationship between physics and mathematics:

1. That humans can engage in the process of mathematics and develop extensive mathematical ideas which are free from contradiction
2. That the same mathematics applies to physical theories
3. That the human mind can extract mathematical relationships from such a small sampling of data which correctly model the data
4. That when the same mathematics tells us something we did not expect about physics, we can often run an experiment and find that the mathematics was correct in its description of the physics

Observations 1 & 3 are actually more about the surprising abilities of humans than about mathematics. In fact, 1 & 3 are major reasons why most contributors to Mind Matters News do not consider humans to be mere machines. It’s not that humans are quantitatively better than machines (they often outperform us on specific tasks), but rather that we are qualitatively different from machines (there is an entire set of tasks that humans can do that machines are incapable of performing).

Observations 2 & 4 are about the relationship between mathematics and reality. It is best expressed by the conclusion of Wigner’s essay, which states, “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.”...

According to Mullings, the reason for the association between mathematics and physics is not that the mathematics is causative but rather that mathematics studies the logical structure of possibility and constraint. As a result, if the mathematics successfully captures the possibilities and constraints in the real world, it will provide a tool for further analysis of potential possibilities.
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Source: Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Five Questions with Professor Thomas Barrett on Music and Philosophy | Science & Tech - The Bottom Line

Noe Padilla, News Editor at The Bottom Line Newspaper inform, Thomas Barrett is a new assistant professor in the philosophy department at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB). 

Photo: Esther Liu

He’s only been teaching at the school for a year at this point in time, and he specializes in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, epistemology, and logic. In an interview with The Bottom Line conducted over email, Professor Barrett answered a few questions about his life and study of philosophy.


Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

What got you into philosophy of science?
“When I was in high school I wanted to be a professional musician. I was in a lot of bands. We ‘gigged’ around Southern California and I did a lot of home recording. My dad was (and still is) a professor at UC Irvine in the department of logic and philosophy of science. His graduate students would always be over hanging out at our house, and I got to know many of them very well. A bunch of them played music too, so in the course of hanging around them I somehow got the impression that graduate school gave you a ton of free time and flexibility to play music. This meant that my plan upon entering college was: Go to graduate school (in something — who knows what) so that I would have enough free time to pursue the music thing.
 
I ended up taking a philosophy of physics class from Craig Callender during the fall of my sophomore year at UC San Diego, and I loved it.
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Source: The Bottom Line

7 surprising subjects you can study at home | Business - Augusta Free Press

Studying at home has a lot of advantages, and for many people who have work and family commitments, it may be their only option to get the career they want by Augusta Free Press.

Photo: © fizkes – stock.adobe.com

In the past, there was only a limited number of subjects you could study online, but nowadays, there are many different subjects you could study from home.

Here are some degrees and courses you can do online that you may not have known about.
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Source: Augusta Free Press

Four women in science share career tips on International Day of Women and Girls in Science | Leadership - Women's Agenda

Jessie Tu, journalist with Women's Agenda writes, Make lots of mistakes, check your attitude and quit trying to be perfect were just some of the career tips shared this morning at an event co hosted by RMIT and Science and Technology Australia’s SuperStars of STEM, to mark the 4th Annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Photo: Women's Agenda

The event was held in Melbourne aiming to encourage high school students who identify as female to pursue careers in STEM. 

The event speakers included MC Jacqueline Tate, along with Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability Dr Gillian Sparkes, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at RMIT University Dr Asha Rao, Senior Lecturer of Environmental Engineering at Deakin University Dr Ellen Moon and Dr Amanda Caple, Victoria’s Lead Scientist, who works across the Victorian Government to foster linkages and identify opportunities for economic outcomes through business, research and government connections.

Each speaker had the chance to share their top three tips for making it in the STEM world, as well as providing students with a valuable insight into their world of STEM.
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Source: Women's Agenda

Maligned, Misunderstood, But Brilliantly Mathematical — That’s Why You Must Study Brahmagupta | Ideas - Swarajya

Take a closer look at this article by R Gopu, delivers lectures on astronomy, history, sculpture, Sanskrit, and Tamil, and is part of the Tamil Heritage Trust. He blogs here.

Snapshot If there is one severely neglected, least translated, often maligned, and barely known mathematician, or perhaps, mathematician, in Indian history, it must be Brahmagupta.

Photo: Brahmagupta

India’s greatest Mathematician by 
If there were a contest for who was India’s greatest mathematician, who would win? But first, who would be the candidates? Srinivasa Ramanujan? Aryabhata? How about Bhaskaracharya? Why not reach far back into Vedic times? Do Baudhayana or Apastamaba qualify? Should it be a public opinion poll? Does one have to be a great mathematician himself to judge?

Did any Indian jyotisha ever raise this question? Yes! Bhaskara, the 12th century mathematician famous for Lilavati and Siddhanta Shironmani, himself considered the greatest by some mathematicians, gave such a title – Ganaka Chakra Chudamani. Not to Aryabhata or Baudhayana, but to Brahmagupta.

Brahmagupta, who? What did he do? When and where did he live? Does he have an ISRO satellite named after him? Or even a bus stand?...

Brahmagupta’s Innovations
But his innovations in mathematics are what evoked Bhaskara’s admiration. Brahmagupta gave us the mathematics of zero, its addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He explained negative numbers (which were written with a dot over them) and their properties. God may have created integers; Brahmagupta explained them...

Historical perspective
Indian mathematicians were using irrational square roots for a thousand years and sines and cosines for several centuries before discovering negative numbers. The inspiration for negative numbers comes from commerce and the notion of debt, not any religious philosophy.
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Source: Swarajya