Maths myths

Grumble, grumble we can't do maths so I shared these myths with them

It did not remove all the grumbles, but it made them think a bit

The genius myth - This myth involves the belief that people who are successful in math are smarter (and maybe "better") than the rest of us.

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Somehow mathematical ability is viewed as higher or more enlightened than other abilities. .

For example, musicians may be embarrassed to be low in math skills, but mathematicians may not be embarrassed if they have low music ability.

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It is important to place math ability on the same level as other abilities.

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There is no proof that one type of skill is better than another.

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The it should be easy myth - Some people believe that those who do well in math find it easy and that if it is difficult, one simply doesn’t have a "math mind."

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The fact of the matter is that difficult math solutions do not come quickly or easily. .

Having difficulty in solving problems is not unusual

The only problems mathematicians do quickly are those they have done before.

Speed is not a measure of ability. It is the result of experience and practice

The good memory myth - This myth implies that a phenomenal ability to recall formulas is necessary for the mastery of math.

Learning math, however, does not require an exceptional memory.

Instead, knowing math means that concepts make sense to you, and rules and formulas are understood

The using tools is cheating myth - This myth indicates that we’re not supposed to use our fingers or calculators or computers to do math.

Since when is using tools to make a task simpler cheating?

Without these tools, math really could become drudgery.

And there is nothing wrong with counting on fingers as an aid to doing arithmetic.

This process actually indicates an understanding of arithmetic — more understanding than if everything were memorized.

The gender myth - The Gender Myth is based on the faulty belief that men are better in math than women.

Research has failed to show any difference between men and women in mathematical ability.

There are, however, cultural pressures on women "to be less interested" in mathematical careers.

There are also subtle pressures on women not to be smarter than men in math.

As a result of this social conditioning, men are often reluctant to admit they have problems; so, they express difficulty with math by saying "I could do it if I tried."

Women are often too ready to admit inadequacy and say, "I just can’t do math."

The who needs it anyway myth - Finding math difficult, some people rationalize that only a few fields — like engineering — require math skills.

Certainly, this myth is not true if we think about all the everyday math skills we use.

And, of course, many career fields — from Agriculture to Zoology — use quite a lot of math.

Additionally, in studying math, we learn a way of thinking that is a valuable transferable skill.

The magic key myth - This myth maintains that there is a magic key or general insight into understanding all math problems.

There is, however, no formula, rule, or general guideline which will suddenly unlock the mysteries of math.

If there is a key to doing math, it is in overcoming anxiety about the subject, dispelling restrictive myths, and applying the same effort and skills you use to do everything else.

They lie, their power wanes

They lie about the dangers of high voltage power lines and mobile phones

They lie about the effects of genetically modified seeds and foods

They lie about the dangers of multiple vaccinations

They lie about the economy

They lie about global warming

About climate change

And so the list goes on and yet something is changing

What is changing is that there are so many lies on so many subjects that people are no longer listening

The liars are ever more strident

Swine flu is a pandemic and will kill millions

Maybe in will but so far has been less dangerous than a typical seasonal influenza

Has anyone apologised?

Has anyone said we might be wrong?

And now we are hearing that there might be dangers with the Government recommended vaccinations

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From all of these endless stories of doom and despair we see that life goes on

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Indeed many are fed up with this endless stream of doom

Finally coming home to more and more is that we do not need to listen

And that is what has been happening fewer and fewer people are listening

Less people watch the news

Less people pay attention

When you cannot alter

When you cannot change

When it is the same lie after lie with endless contradictions

We turn off

We go elsewhere

We no longer feel the same way

We do not need to live in fear

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Lift your head enjoy beauty turn to the light

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Find pleasure in life

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Find pleasure in everything you do

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Let the liars rant on

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Let them talk to themselves

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And if they ask you then tell them they are full of sh*t

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The change is happening we do not need to buy into their lies

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Life is amazing

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Live it as such

Blinking

A study of eighteen volunteers found they synchronized their blinks while watching video clips taken from the comedy TV show Mr Bean.

But the same phenomenon did not occur when they viewed a background video or listened to an audio recording of a Harry Potter book.

Dr Tamami Nakano, of Tokyo University, said: We seem to be unconsciously searching for a good timing for a blink to minimize the chance of losing critical information during the blink

A blink lasts for between 100 and 150 milliseconds., with automatically blinks 10 to 15 times a minute to moisten and oxygenate the cornea.

During a blink, there is no visual input and no light, but people do not consciously recognise everything has momentarily gone dark.

Dr Nakano, whose findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said: Spontaneous eyeblinks were synchronized both within and across subjects when they viewed the same video stories

This blink synchronization was not observed when they viewed background videos that did not contain any story or when they listened to a narrated story.

Thus, the synchronization required a story, but the need to follow a storyline per se was not the cause of synchronization.

The blink synchrony occurred only when subjects had to follow a storyline by extracting information from a stream of visual events

The participants were aged between 22 and 31 with nine men and nine women.

They each sat through three experiments in which a video story taken from Mr Bean, a background video and a narration of a story taken from Harry Potter were presented.

Dr Nakano said Rowan Atkinson's character was selected because the stories, which showed him driving a car in the street or in a parking garage, were easy to understand without sound.

The background videos featured schools of tropical fish and landscapes surrounding the Aegean Sea and the audio stories were taken from narrations of an actor reading the novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Japanese

Telegraph

Growing teeth

The bioengineered tooth, which was grown in place of a lost molar, has the same properties of the old tooth and is strong enough to allow the mouse to chew food normally.

To create the new tooth, the researchers — led by Tokyo University of Science professor Takashi Tsuji — took epithelial cells and mesenchymal cells (about 50,000 each) from a mouse embryo and cultivated them together in a collagen-based medium to create a tiny tooth bud — a mass of tissue that has the potential to develop into a tooth.

They then implanted the 0.5-mm tooth bud into the jawbone of an adult mouse in place of a lost tooth.

After 37 days, a new tooth sprouted, and after 50 days, it had grown to the same height as the adjacent teeth.

The bioengineered tooth has the same hardness as ordinary teeth and it contains blood vessels and nerves, making it sensitive to external stimuli and pain, according to the researchers.

This research is expected to advance the development of “tooth regenerative therapy,” which may one day allow doctors to replace diseased or damaged teeth with bioengineered teeth grown from stem cells such as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

This type of treatment could ultimately eliminate the need for dentures and false teeth.

The Russian emancipation of 1861

The peasant emancipation of 1861 was accompanied by a series of reforms of a number of important aspects of Russian life.

In addition to the proprietary serfs, state peasants, crown peasants assigned peasants and household serfs were also emancipated.

The terms of emancipation were particularly hard on household serfs, who got their liberty and nothing else, and often on assigned serfs, those who had formerly worked in mines and factories

Proprietary serfs and assigned serfs had under serfdom been governed by their owners.

Now, however, they became citizens and fell under the jurisdiction of the state.

The sudden creation of millions of new citizens required a whole new means to govern the country.

In the next few years the government created new institutions of rural self-government, a new and progressive judicial system, an education reform, a new governing structure for cities and a reformed armed forces.

Taken altogether these reforms rightly earned the name of the Great Reforms.

The Great Reforms over the next fifty years fundamentally altered Russian political and social life and changed the attitude of many Russians towards politics

And today where is there emancipation?

And now for another scare

Ever tried asking a mobile phone salesman how his phones damage your brain?

You might as well try buying condoms in the Vatican

But in fact what you want to know should be the most important thing about the phone you will press to your ear.

Evidence is increasing that radiation from handsets presents a cancer hazard, particularly to children and to those who use their phones for more than a decade.

Later in September, a long-awaited 13-nation study should be published.

The official European Environment Agency (EEA) is sounding a discreet alarm.

And the French government is so concerned that it is developing measures to ban the devices from primary schools, stop their promotion to children under 12, and prevent them being sold without a headset to heavily reduce radiation exposure.

Early studies found no sign of cancer – causing blanket reassurances from ministers and the industry.

But they were largely irrelevant, because few, if any, of the people they examined had been using the phones for as much as a decade, and cancers normally take at least 10 years to develop.

More recent studies – especially in Sweden, where mobile phones took off early – have included such “long-term” users.

They have found, on average, that they are about twice as likely to get malignant gliomas – an incurable brain cancer – on the side of the head where they held the handset.

As the latency period for cancers is usually 20 to 30 years, this may indicate a much bigger toll to come.

Worse, more Swedish research – limited, but believed to be the only work on the effects on children and teenagers – found that people who started using the phones before the age of 20 were five times more likely to contract the cancers, and eight times more prone to get them on the appropriate side of the head.

If these studies are right, we could be in a lot of trouble.

There are more than two billion mobile phones in use worldwide.

In Britain – where there are now nearly two per person – at least 90 per cent of 16-year-olds have their own handsets, as do more than 40 per cent of primary pupils.

Prof David Carpenter, dean of the school of Public Health at the State University of New York, predicts an “epidemic of brain cancers” among today’s children as they grow up.

Ministers, however, have done little to implement measures to reduce exposures recommended nine years ago by an official inquiry headed by Sir William Stewart, a former government chief scientist.

Like others, they have been waiting for the results of a massive $30 million, 13-nation study being carried out by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Largely financed by the industry, the study has been hotly criticised for features that would seem to underestimate the risk, such as including few long-term users and excluding children and young adults.

Even so, some of the research has found increased cancer, and publication of the study has been held up for years while the scientists have argued about how it should be interpreted.

Now, after pressure from the EEA and others, a version is finally to see the light of day.

Mobile phones have brought huge benefits, not least in improving safety by keeping parents and children in touch and alerting emergency and security services to accidents.

It would make no sense to ban them, even if it were possible.

But radiation levels can be brought down fairly easily: they already vary about eightfold between handsets.

Another simple measure – proposed by Stewart, and now being seriously examined in San Francisco – would be to display the radiation level of each phone prominently.

Then people could chose whether to buy a low radiation one or not

Again industry pressure has delayed these findings, which could affect hundreds of millions of our children

Sad thing is or is it criminal?

Once this becomes an issue the industry will find ways to lower if not remove the danger
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What a world

More on CO2

CO2 properties

It is a sign of the prevailing climate of ignorance that the public has been led to believe that carbon dioxide is a ‘pollutant’

There are certainly plenty of harmful pollutants in the atmosphere (e.g. particulates, and nitrogen and sulphur oxides), and local and regional measures are needed to combat such emissions.

But while carbon particles (soot) are a pollutant, CO2 is not – it is a benign, nontoxic gas that is food for plants, a vital ingredient of photosynthesis and therefore of the food chain, and essential to life on earth.

It has been called the ‘molecule of life’.

As a greenhouse gas, CO2 traps heat by absorbing and reemitting infrared radiation emitted from or reflected by the earth’s surface.

Other greenhouse gases include methane and nitrous oxides, but by far the most important one is water vapour.

The pre-industrial concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is said to have been about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), whereas the current concentration is 385 ppm – i.e. just under four hundredths of 1% of the atmosphere.

By contrast, the concentration of water vapour in the air ranges from 0 to 5% by volume, with an average value of about 1%.

Water vapour and clouds are responsible for about 90% of the greenhouse effect.

This is not just due to water vapour’s higher concentration, but also because it is far more efficient than CO2 at absorbing infrared (IR) radiation, as the following diagram shows.

Fig. 7.1 The top panel shows the incoming solar radiation in red, and outgoing radiation in blue, the rest being absorbed or scattered. The lower panels show the wavelengths of the radiation absorbed by the main greenhouse gases. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation in only three narrow bands of frequencies, and only the one corresponding to a wavelength of 15 micrometres (µm) has much significance. Even if the atmosphere consisted of nothing but CO2, it would still only be able to absorb no more than 8%, and perhaps as little as 4%, of the heat radiating from the earth.
Where the grey shading extends to the top of a panel, it indicates that the energy at that wavelength is fully absorbed. This means that adding more of the gas in question will not absorb any more energy as that wavelength is fully saturated. Parts of the CO2 spectrum are already fully saturated, and adding more CO2 will result in ever diminishing effects as more of the available wavelengths become saturated. (http://www.globalwarmingart.com/)

As atmospheric CO2 increases, plants grow faster, and are also able to grow under drier conditions since leaves transpire less, i.e. lose less water.

Commercial growers deliberately increase CO2 levels in agricultural greenhouses to between 700 and 1000 ppm to raise productivity and improve the water efficiency of food crops.

The increase in atmospheric CO2 since the beginning of industrialization is said to have increased the average plant growth rate by about 15%.

Experiments indicate that if the present atmospheric CO2 concentration were to increase by about 300 ppm, the productivity of earth’s herbaceous plants would rise by around 30% while the productivity of its woody plants would rise by around 50% (Idso & Idso, 2007).

Increases in both water temperature and atmospheric CO2 enhance marine biological productivity, leading to increased production of dimethylsulfide and various iodocarbons.

These are known to be instrumental in creating more, brighter, and longer-lasting clouds, which reflect more incoming solar radiation back to space (Idso & Idso, 2007).

This negative (mitigating) feedback is one of the factors contributing to the self-regulation of the earth’s climate and biosphere.

CO2 and temperature

CO2’s current atmospheric concentration is close to the lowest level during the past half a billion years.

Back in the Eocene, when many of our plant families evolved, the concentration was five times higher than today.

About 450 million years ago CO2 concentrations were more than 10 times present levels, yet the earth was in the throes of a severe ice age.

David Pratt

So when you read or see Hanson, Mann and others talking about this subject at Copenhagen in a few weeks time wonder why they are manipulating the evidence in the way they are

What we do understand clearly though is that their stories fly in the face of scientific evidence

So how can so few bullshit so many?

Apathy

Laziness

The need to sustain fear

The need to sustain anxiety levels

Vested interests

.........................And the little boy cried the Emperor is naked

Are we all really so gullible today that we cannot think for ourselves?

More light

I am not fanatical about bees however they are indicative of some really unpleasant behaviour by industry lobbies intent on selling their products at all costs

Question how do these men and women who have children of their own look in the mirror when they support, no actually push, products they know to be dangerous to the life we all depend on?

How do scientists agree to work for organisations which clearly have no moral or ethical values?

Could the answer to both questions be greed?

Selfishness maybe?

Lack of understanding about what they are doing to destroy the world their own children must live in?

Humanity is not apart from nature we are a part of it

We depend on it for our very survival

I mention here two clear situations one the hype and nonsense of global warming the other bee problems

The climate has always changed and will continue to do so

The ongoing hysteria about global emissions of carbon dioxide are a minor issue compared to others we need to face

The science supporting it is dubious at best and simply criminal in it's half truths

And yet global warming receives unthinking support from most of the media, resulting in unthinking governments agreeing to spend billions of taxpayers money unwisely

Watch the upcoming conference at Copenhagen in a few weeks time for a gala performance

Climate change is a function of the sun and it's sunspots, and yet we still know relatively little about how this affects our weather and climate change

Is this receiving billions?

No

So let's look at something simple like bees and an article written by Simon Barnes

Little money or media interest is being spent on bees who pollinate the very foods we survive on and a lot more besides

Take the attack of the bee killers — a real-life disaster

Just take the UK

Pesticides are threatening bees, and therefore, us

It does seem a rather eccentric way to run a country: chuck out as much poison as you like, and if it does any harm, well, no doubt we’ll hear about it soon enough.

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Our gung-ho approach to pesticides came close to wiping out birds of prey in the Sixties, and now, all but 50 years on, we are still recklessly splashing the stuff about.

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This is the policy, it seems, that is at the heart of the problem of the disappearing bees.

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The UK is notorious for taking the most relaxed approach to pesticide safety in the the EU,” says Peter Melchett, of the Soil Association.

This is in response to a meticulous piece of research from the invertebrate charity Buglife, which names a pesticide as a contributory factor — perhaps the key one — in the collapse of the population of bees.

It is true that there is something faintly comic about all this.

But the fact is that bees have a direct effect on our lives, because they pollinate plants, and without the plants pollinated by bees, humans will starve.

So it does rather matter.

There’s even a figure to represent the value of the bees’ services: £12.4 billion a year in the UK alone.

The name of the villain is neonicotinoid pesticide.

These are pesticides based on nicotine.

You don’t spray them; you can dress seeds with them, or treat the soil with them.

They work; the seeds don’t get eaten.

But they affect other things as they go about their business.

They make their way through a plant, and reach the bees when they come to do their work

The bees’ problem is called colony collapse disorder: the ending of bee civilisation as they know it.

The current indications are that it is caused because the poisons stress colonies beyond their ability to cope.

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It doesn’t actually kill them — that’s why the poison was approved — but its sub-lethal effects are now making themselves plain.

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Bee colonies affected by the poison forage less, and produce fewer offspring, and so eventually the colony collapses.

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Thank you for that article Simon Barnes and where is the media interest?

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His article describes what has been happening, and have the companies concerned stopped pushing these products?

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They have not

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Have the government rushed in to change legislation?

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They have not

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Mad mad world

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Sick, silly people

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Oh and wherever you are living in the world the same game is being played out one way or another this is not just a UK problem

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Become involved, inform yourself

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You eat food bees pollinate

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You live in a world pollinated by bees

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Simply put if they all die so do we

Bees ready for the winter

The two kilos of sugar in the form of sticky syrup that I fed to the bees last week has disappeared and I'll be filling the trough again in a few moments.

Right now, though, I am having a last look through the frames to make sure everything is in order as this will probably be my last visit to the hive this autumn.

The plants have moved on from flowers to berries and the honey flow has all but dried up, even in the warm southern gardens of leafy Hampstead.

There are a few bees flying, gathering what they can from late-flowering exotica, but the allotment path is freer of buzzing and arm-waving than it has been since June when I moved the first colony in.

Everything is in order, with a huge number of bees placidly pacing from frame to frame.

It's dusk now so details are difficult to see, but there is movement and the frames are heavy with winter stores so I am optimistic about the colony's chances of surviving the cold months to come.

I bought myself a Dartington Long Deep hive on the internet, a beautiful thing designed by Robin Dartington, columnist at Kitchen Garden magazine, with lone hobbyist beekeepers in mind, and installed it at the edge of some allotments in Hampstead along with a spare colony from Buzzworks, a community bee garden in Hitchin that teaches schoolchildren about beekeeping, honey and the honeybee's place in ecology.

The allotment holders have been very happy to share their space with a box or two of bees in exchange for pollination duties and the bees, in turn, have had plenty to do.

The idyllic setting didn't stop the first colony from producing as many queens as they could and swarming away at the first opportunity, unfortunately, so I'm now left with a colony I bought later on from Thornes, the beekeeping supplies mail-order service.

They've been busy, calm, industrious and reasonably productive, but as they were put in place so late I can't blame them for failing to produce a surplus of honey.

The frames in the hive are full of white-capped honey cells, ready to sustain the bees through the winter. As the temperature cools they will form into a ball with the queen at the centre tensing and relaxing their wing muscles, shivering to generate heat.

To keep the queen alive and the honey liquid the centre of the ball will be maintained at a steady temperature in the low thirties in Celsius, 92 degrees Fahrenheit, whether it's sunny or snowing outside.

As the months go on all of their 15 kilos of honey stores will be converted into this shivering motion and heat generation.

The bees at the outside of the ball will slowly die off and the cluster will get smaller and smaller.

As long as they make it to spring and the queen can go on her mating flight with a few workers on hand and some drones nearby to mate with, the whole cycle will begin again and I can call myself a beekeeper next summer too.

Ian Douglas

Girls and boys

So the latest study of adolescent behaviour, purporting to show that girls from single-sex schools are more competitive and less risk averse than their counterparts attending co-ed schools, will no doubt fuel a new wave of tongue-lashing on mumsnet and bouts of private angst among the rest, anxious that their teenage daughters are not flinging themselves into every adventure playground with gusto.

Today’s research by Alison Booth and Patrick Nolen of the University of Essex took 260 girls and boys, with the average age of 15, from eight state schools in Essex and Suffolk and split them into 65 random groups of four.

Four of the schools were single sex, including grammar schools.

Although the boys and girls at grammar schools often had university-educated parents and were likely to be influenced by ability as well as by the choices of their parents and teachers, the researchers tried to balance out any differences by picking the brightest from the other co-ed schools.

The study, which focused on students being asked to solve as many mazes as possible in five minutes, involving a gamble on winning more money if choosing one option over another, found that that the school environment made no difference to boys.

Girls from single-sex schools were on the other hand much more likely to take risks.

However after half an hour of being in a single-sex group, girls from co-ed schools were also liable to become much more confident and competitive than before.

The result, said the authors, showed that women are no less risk averse when they band together, but are liable to be more cowed when in the company of boys.

As such, they say, it might explain why women lag behind men in competing for higher pay and promotions.

So women are competitive and risk-takers, they simply cannot face competing with men.

Professors Booth and Dr Nolen conclude that being in a co-ed environment may force women in particular to conform to gender stereotypes, whereas in single-sex schools they are not burdened by such pressures and will be as great risk-takers as boys.

The results will be trumpeted, no doubt, by the Girls School Association and other proponents of single-sex schooling.

For years, they have argued that girls in single-sex schools are more likely to study the sciences than those in co-ed schools and that single-sex schooling allows girls in particular to develop at their own pace, without worrying about how they might appear to the opposite sex.

However, the authors insist that they are not urging all parents to enrol their daughters at once into single-sex schools.

And how could they?

The number of single-sex state schools in England has dropped from 2,500 in the 1960s to around 400 today.

In the independent sector, ever fewer parents can afford to send their children to single sex schools in these recession hit days and many are being forced to merge, turn co-ed or close.

So what’s the answer?

Parallel education, is one suggestion favoured by the Australian educational psychologist, Steve Biddulph, where co-ed schools adopt single-sex classes, particularly for teenagers.

In 2005 studies by academics at Cambridge found that schools who did adopt this approach saw grades rise rapidly and both boys and girls become more confident.

But will that really equalise the pay gap between men and women?

Probably not.

Easy as it might sound, there is the small issue of women having children, going on maternity leave and inadequate childcare arrangements meaning that few can or even want to do more than part-time work.

Also frankly, why should women have to compete like men all the time?

Surely that will only give rise to more fights breaking out over who controls the TV or CD player, which is thankfully still a uniquely male reserve.

Times