If you aren’t familiar with the process by which a textbook is created, I highly recommend this “Confessions of a Textbook Editor” article from a couple of years ago. It’s a short snapshot of the considerations that come into play, and the degree to which content is selected in order to avoid controversy from anyone. If you are interested in the topic, I recommend What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbook Censorship in America by Joan Delfattore which I reviewed back in 2002, the book itself being even older than that. It seems the textbook industry has been pretty consistent over the past decade.
Cross-Curricular Mathematics
Moebius Stripper asks an interesting question, in discussing a social-justice mathematics text:
No, what bothers is this: is anyone familiar with a movement among social studies educators in secondary schools to use math in their courses, or does the movement toward interdisciplinary studies of social justice only go in the other direction?
Coming from the math-and-science side of the spectrum myself (not to mention the post-secondary world), I can’t speak directly to what is happening in social science classrooms, but it is definitely the case that students are not graduating from high school with sufficient awareness of the connections between the subjects they study. I have gotten surprise in the classroom both on the side that algebra would be expected, and that well-organized, grammatical written arguments would be expected. Not hostility – just not an assumption that, in a course about technology, either of those topics would come into play.
But there does seem to be a problematic assumption, if the generality suggested is accurate, that knowing mathematics is sufficient to equip one to speak intelligently about social science issues whereas knowing social science is not sufficient to equip one to speak intelligently about mathematics. And that should upset both the mathematicians and the social scientists.
Recipe History
Feeding America is a collection of historic American cookbooks, a section of the Michigan State University’s wider collection of historic cookbooks. Their website includes images of the page scans as well as text versions and downloadable pdf reproductions of the cookbooks. While the collection is of cookbooks, the content of these books is more than just recipes. There is also content about the knowledge of that time about how to prevent or treat illnesses, and on homemaking topics in general. For an example, check out The Frugal Housewife published in 1830. Also interesting is Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide, which is described as the “second major Black-authored culinary work in America”. I’d highly recommend even just browsing the introductions written to accompany each text, highlighting its historical significance, or watch their video tour of the collection.
LEGO Computer
I am in awe of this LEGO Technic Difference Engine, a scaled down but fully functional version of Babbage’s Difference Engine built entirely out of LEGO. Besides being an amazing feat of LEGO engineering, the web page itself has a great description of the Difference Engine and how it computes. Absolutely wonderful!
Local Color
A faithful reader mailed me the photo below last night, demonstrating the perfect merging of Pittsburgh’s fanaticism about the Steelers and Pittsburgh’s utter lack of interest in helping people get around the city who do not already know what they are doing. Be assured, this is not an off-duty bus, and the over-door route number signs have been replaced with the same message. I’m not sure if this exceeds the insanity of Washington, er, that is, Steeler, PA (damn – was I supposed to change my business cards?). Flipping channels last night, an advertisement showing that a local channel’s entire news team has relocated to Detriot for the week was followed by a story opening with the solumn statement “Ben Rothlesberger likes milk.” Frankly, it seems that the entire region has shut down for the weekend; I’m a bit frightened to see what my class turnout looks like Monday morning….
What makes a good recommendation?
I have been using the personalized on-line radio service Pandora for the past few weeks and enjoying it, but only heard about Last.fm while reading this wonderful weblog post contrasting the recommendation algorithms behind the two systems. The post as a whole is a great read, but I particularly like its discussion of how context is relevant to selecting the superior technology. I would love to see a study that actually considered whether a collaborative filter or an attribute analysis approach was more effective in the context of music. Anecdotally, I’m going to try Last.fm out for a week or two and see what seems to work better for me. Krause found that for him, Last.fm was better, but suggested that Pandora holds more promise for incorporating some of the advantages of Last.fm and continuing to improve.
Of course, Krause makes the key point early in his post: “better algorithms are nice, but better data is nicer”. For music recommendations, the system that heppens to know more about the music you happen to like will probably be the best system for you.
Homemade, Semi-Fabulous
I was IMing with a friend last night and we decided that I am the anti-Sandra Lee.
Sandra Lee is the frightening person behind the Semi-Homemade trademark, and host of the self-titled Food Network show in which she illustrates how to live the Semi-Homemade life. Every meal in Semi-Homemade world is garnished just so, served at a color-coordinated “tablescape” that usually seems to involve using one’s extensive collection of cake plates as pedestals for the dinner plates, and is accompanied by an also color-coordinated cocktail (but don’t worry – Sandra always shows how to serve out virgin portions for the kids before finishing them up). Underneath this veneer of gracious homemaking is a collection of short-cut recipes heavy with prepared foods which are then cleverly doctored up to hide the fact that no real ingredients went into the making of the meal.
My identity as the anti-Sandra Lee become apparant to me when describing my version of a quick homemade meal out of stuff in my cupboard – tuna spinach casserole – and noting to my friend that while it looks like a mess, it only takes 15 minutes and the key is to use fresh spinach and whatever homemade vinaigrette you of course have on hand in your fridge. My recommended tablescape – books and newspapers covering less than 50% of the table.
Sandra can’t even put together a risotto recipe without turning to Uncle Ben’s garlic and butter flavored rice and a can of cream of mushroom soup. And that is part of the insanity – every recipe requires some specific packaged food one must make sure to have on hand. Contrast with this simple mushroom risotto recipe that requires: mushrooms, rice, olive oil, butter, a stock cube, and grated cheese. Except for the mushrooms, these are all fairly basic items. Don’t have a stock cube? Maybe you have a can of stock in the cupboard, or could substitute some herbs to make up for the loss of flavor. Have an onion or fresh garlic on hand – chop it up and cook it with the mushrooms. Don’t look now – you made a homemade recipe, in a comparable amount of time, using higher quality ingredients you likely already had on hand, often at a lower cost, and with clearer options for substitutions.
Sandra is clearly tapping into some women’s guilt over not having the time to be “perfect” homemakers, but instead of suggesting ways to efficiently get healthy meals on the table (which, while I’ve got my issues with Rachel Ray always washing her produce in advance, she at least uses real ingredients and is honest about sometimes substituting money for time without compromising quality), Sandra suggests that so long as you maintain the illusion that everything is “fun and fabulous”, you can sacrifice the substance. So that, in the end, Sandra Lee is no friend to those women at all.
Think like Google
Here’s an internet game that you can really only play online: What Did I Search For?. You’re shown the Google results page for a one-word search, with all occurences of the search term omitted, and have to guess the search term. Yeah, you could cheat, type in the URL of a returned page, and find the elided term from the blurb, but that really misses the point. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but now I’m well hooked. And, as a bonus, as you keep playing you are “rewarded” with links to pretty pictures or, eventually, other games on the site – I just won the featured bonus game of Frogger!
Elegant Science
Besides being a good selection, this list of science’s ten most beautiful experiments is also a really good presentation of the methodology and implications of the experiments, in brief form. The presentation as a whole also gives some insight, though not in explicit statements, of what it is that make an experiment “beautiful”. I suspect this is as hard a concept to communicate to students as the notion of an elegant proof or algorithm.
Media Errors
I’ve added the new-to-me weblog Regret The Error to my daily websurf. It’s a collection of links to errata corrections in a number of major US newspapers, but it’s the accompanying commentary that is particularly good.
Reading through the recent entries, there’s a fair bit of discussion of how much news sources rely on each other to be accurate, so that an error in one publication can spread throughout them all without much background checking being done. Obviously, the misreporting about the recent mining accident is a tragic example of this.
What I particularly like about the site is the way it discusses both media errors and plagiarism in the media. While not all instances of “facts” being copied from one article to the next are plagiarism, in a lot of cases it is. It is definitely interesting to learn where those lines are in journalism. I’ve read news stories that have quoted individuals that I knew had not actually spoken to the reporter writing the story, because I had seen the same word-for-word quote elsewhere in the media. This, to me, crosses the line from sharing a fact to using the work someone else did to collect and select the best quote to support a particular piece of writing. I’m curious what a journalist would say about that practice.