Posts Tagged education
Kitchen pantry science – fun experiments to do at home
Several months ago I watched a neat demonstration by kitchen-pantry scientist Liz Heinecke on how to write secret messages. All you need are cranberries, water, baking soda and some paper as detailed here. Liz, a mother of three, provides many fun experiments (“simple recipes for real science”) to try at home. I think it’s a great way to get kids interested in science. However, be forewarned, she’s got a masters degree in bacteriology so some of her ideas might grow on you. ; )
This reminded me of a parent who worked as a microbiologist for the FDA. She did a show-and-tell for a Cub Scout den that I led 20 years ago. One of her items collected from FDA was a can of vichyssoise (leek-potato-onion soup traditionally served cold). It had been tested positive for botulism. We were told that if opened, this container of bacteria could sicken all of the inhabitants of New York City. After hearing this, I vowed to always boil canned soup.
Science can be as easy as baking. I want to encourage parents to open up their kitchen cabinets, stir up some science with their kids, and feed those hungry minds.
— Liz Heinecke, kitchen-pantry scientist
A fruit fly by any other name is still a fruit fly
A good example of what South Korean educational system produces (see my previous blog) is their first astronaut, bioengineer Yi So-yeon, who was featured in this article Tuesday by The Korea Herald . During her mission at the International Space Station she completed a number of experiments, including one that involved the assistance of 1000 fruit flies.
If I were an astronaut going up with so many flies, I’d shake the container just before lift-off to get them up in the air and lighten the load. I heard about this trick from my next-door neighbor – a bee-keeper. He loaded up too many hives in his truck and it went over-weight, but he beat the inspectors by banging on the side with a hammer as he drove onto the scale.
Having segued to bees, here’s a heads-up about a study done by a group of 8- to 10-year-old British school children from Blackawton Primary School. They trained a bunch of bees to go to specific-colored and/or patterned targets by selectively rewarding them with sugar. This experiment met the standards of the Royal Society, which published the results in this Biology Letter. Also see these kind comments. Wired Science provides a ‘dumbed-down’ version with photos, that is, an executive summary 😉 here.
“We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before.”
– Children from Blackawton
PS. Some folks think that drosophila melanogaster is a misnomer for this little critter that mysteriously spring up from discarded apples and the like. “The fruit fly’s name is likely to change to Sophophora melanogaster if results of a new evolutionary analysis are accepted” according to this April 2010 bulletin from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Who made them lords of the fruit fly?
South Korea achieves top ranking for education
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math on December 21, 2010
Based on testing of nearly half a million 15-year-old students worldwide, South Korea ranks as the number 1 country overall for education. It’s laid out beautifully in the graphical illustration by Paul Scruton for this article by UK’s Guardian on which country does best at reading, science and maths. This breaking news is timely for me because I will be in Seoul Thursday giving a presentation hosted by the Department of Statistics at Chung-Ang University. The USA fell far down the list in math, so I suppose I am a bit out of line trying to explain new tools of design of experiments to anyone in this country. ; )
I spoke today to a resident of Busan with a daughter in high school. She said the school runs from 8 in the morning to 8 at night Monday through Friday and a half day every other Saturday. No wonder South Korean teenagers test so highly relative to the USA!
Prof applies stats to flush out widespread cheating
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on November 24, 2010
See this recent ABC News report on how perhaps as many as 200 University of Central Florida (UCF) students cheated on an exam. The YouTube video of them being accused by the teacher, armed with supporting statistical detail and an actual confession, can be seen here.
“This is what’s called a bimodial distribution… [which].. exists when an external force has been applied… that creates a systematic bias.”
– Professor Richard Quinn describing a histogram of scores from his mid-term test for University of Central Florida Strategic Management 4720
For some alarming stats on percent of students cheating (mostly reported to be well over half!), see this summary of surveys on exam-beaters compiled by a test-security firm (but consider the probability of them being a bit biased!).
Getting back to Professor Quinn, I am amazed at how many commentors blame him for not updating his exams. Evidently students cannot be held accountable for cheating when it is so easy to accomplish. 🙁
“This is college. Everyone cheats, everyone cheats in life in general.”
– CSU student Konstantin Ravvin
Harvard economist advises students of all ages to learn some statistics
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math on September 5, 2010
In this Sunday New York Times “Economic View” column, Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw advises that those who wish to pursue this “dismal science” take one or more courses in statistics while in college. He sees a dearth of knowledge on this subject in his first year students.
“High school mathematics curriculums spend too much time on traditional topics like Euclidean geometry and trigonometry. For a typical person, these are useful intellectual exercises but have little applicability to daily life. Students would be better served by learning more about probability and statistics.”
— N. Gregory Mankiw
I’m with him on learning more about stats but not at the expense of less geometry and trig, which come in very handy for anyone pursuing an engineering career. Also, budding economists could benefit from a little knowledge of period functions such as sine waves. It seems to me that what goes around comes around.
Kindergarteners pointing fingers for good (math) or bad (gunning for teacher)
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on May 2, 2010
On the one hand, I see this report of a kindergartner suspended for making a gun with his pointer-finger. That’s discouraging. But on the other hand, I come across this news from New York Times writer Benedict Carey of a program called “Building Blocks,” developed by the School of Education at the University of Buffalo, that teaches preschoolers fundamental math skills, so when they point a finger, it’s a one, not a gun. 😉
My wife teaches preschool. She tells me that her kids learn how to count to 100, recognize numbers up to 20, and enumerate physical objects. In his article on “Building Blocks” Carey refers to this as the “numeric trinity” – crucial to “fuse” kindergarteners for learning math.
Previously educators viewed training on math as being developmentally inappropriate for young children. This created an inertia that many kids could never overcome.
“ ‘I’m not a math person,’ they say – and pretty soon the school agrees.”
– Doug Clements, Distinguished Professor of Learning and Instruction at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo
But now “research has demonstrated that virtually all young children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics.”* One can only hope that in future kids coming into kindergarten will be pre-charged for math and school in general, so there will be less finger-pointing (gunning) at teachers.
*Source: Description for Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity a report published in July, 2009 by the National Academies Press, which calls for a national initiative to improve mathematics education for preschoolers. See this press release leading to the full report.