California's university system is doing away with math and English placement exams for incoming freshman.

But is it for honorable reasons, or just to maintain having bodies in school?

According to the Los Angeles Times, every year 25,000 incoming freshman to the California university system take a remedial math or English class. These courses are required after a placement exam suggested the student wasn't prepared enough in high school and isn't ready for a college-level workload. As one might imagine, this means 25,000 students aren't thrilled.

In a turn of events, Cal State's chancellor, Timothy P. White, issued an executive order to the 23 campus presidents that from now on incoming students should be judged on high school grades, SAT and ACT scores, and "previous classroom performance." After all, vague "performance" clauses are always a highlight of any directive.

The motivation--says White, campus presidents, and various officials--is that currently only 19% of students graduate from one of their colleges within four years. Likewise, many students required to take a remedial class (which costs tuition and fees, even if it doesn't count) tend to drop out of school altogether, as they feel alienated from the rest of the college environment. If that sounds dire all-around, it is.

Officials say one motivation behind eliminating placement exams is they want to lessen the financial burden on students for taking a remedial class. Sounds noble! Strangely, though, these same officials ignore the financial tsunami these students take on if they finish a degree. It doesn't take an economist to suggest four years of tuition costs more than one remedial class. Sounds not-so-noble!

Colleges and universities are the non-profit equivalents of Fortune 500 companies wearing humble rags for clothing. If the vast majority of 25,000 students drop out of school because of alienation and annoyance, that's a loss of revenue. But making the road a little easier so the students remain for four years? A consistent revenue stream is born.

Honorable or not, someone loses regardless.

NFL player earning his Ph.D. at M.I.T. is NFL player no longer.

John Urschel is a math genius. He is also a very large man who can play football quite well. These are two things few people can be at the same time in life.

Urschel has already earned his master's degree in mathematics and is now pursuing his Ph.D. in the same field while attending M.I.T. while writing papers like he posted in this tweet:

New(-ish) solo authored paper on centroidal Voronoi tessellations accepted by SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis!! https://t.co/ocBpjOPkTi pic.twitter.com/cbVaafydig

— John Urschel (@JohnCUrschel) April 28, 2017

That good ol' centroidal Voronoi tessellations! How many nights have I lost to the whimsical joys of deciphering that myself!

While Urschel is only 26-years old, in the prime of his football career, today he decided to retire from the sport and devote his life to math.

Urschel, like some other younger players, is concerned about CTE (the trauma the brain undertakes from concussions) and how a recent study by Boston University showed that 110 out of 111 brains from former players showed signs of CTE. It's an issue that's bothered Urschel since he had a concussion in 2015. As Bleacher Report quotes him as saying:

"I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically. It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back."

With his brain still intact, Urschel can get back to tweeting cryptic mathematics like this:

One of the most interesting open problems in discrete math to me right now is the tree packing conjecture. If you solve this, you're my hero pic.twitter.com/SQRbcPwL8C

— John Urschel (@JohnCUrschel) May 17, 2017

Tree packing something something something. All I'm envisioning right now is someone shipping a bonsai in a UPS box.

I'm going to go with nutmeg and cumin words myself.

We all have vocal and writing ticks, whether we choose to believe it or not. Listen to your friends talk, those who always say something is amazing or super--two popular words that people rely on like a crutch these days for lack of having any other way to express something is wonderful or surprising.

Famous writers throughout history have had ticks as well, words and phrases they constantly rely on, which data journalist Ben Blatt found out by examining the numbers. Blatt calls them "cinnamon words," a hat tip to Ray Bradbury who once said his favorite word to use in writing was cinnamon.

In his new book, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing, Blatt says he found the cinnamon words of many famous writers, as he tells PRI in the interview below.





Jane Austen, for example, leans on civility, fancying and imprudence consistently. Dan Brown? Grail, masonic and pyramid. Other quirks were found by Blatt, like how the word she is used only once in the entirety of The Hobbit, or that James Patterson seemingly uses 160 clichés per 100,000 words in his famed Alex Cross detective novels. (Of course, Patterson really doesn't write his books, so much as his collaborator, so I'm not sure who's to blame there.)

160 clichés, though--that's amazing. That takes a super effort.

GQ writer offers tips on how to read at least one book every week.

Motoring through another book. And world domination.

Kevin Nguyen is a renaissance man of sorts, writing for GQ about books, video games, Wrestlemania, Drake's music, and shilling $130 trash cans sold through Amazon.* He's like that annoying friend you have that has 679 Yelp reviews to their name, including visits to CVS and the local 7/11.

Nguyen's latest article is about how anyone can read at least one book a week.

His obvious hot tips?

Uhh, to squeeze in reading whenever and wherever.

Including:

1.) Read during your train commute to work!

"A half-hour commute can easily turn into five hours of dedicated reading time every week..."

Wait--the math--an hour a day round trip--times five--oh, the math is hard...


2.) Read on your phone while using the bathroom!

"...[Read in] the bathroom because you drank too much coffee. Those pages add up fast."

Just think how all that caffeine and a loose bladder will lead to speed reading!



3.) Stop reading books you don't like!

"...[I]f it’s going to be another four or five painful hours to finish it, you can afford to put it down."

So, wait, wait, wait--I have free will?



4.) Try the library!

"Free shit rules."

Which is what I also say to myself when I dumpster dive and play Freddy Fast Fingers at friends' homes.



5.) Multitask and read during commercial breaks during your favorite show!

"Watching live TV? Just sneak in a little reading."

Which works perfectly when you're watching a commercial-free show live, like 'Game of Thrones' or 'Downton Abbey'.



6.) Read when you wake up, not before bed!

"Even if you’re not an early riser, use the time you spend checking Instagram in bed to read a couple chapters."

But Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Imgur, Linkedn, Google Plus, and Reddit called dibs, I guess.

_________________________

I'm sure Nguyen means well, or just wants to fill a weekly quota for stories posted on the GQ website. One or the other.

My tip to you?

Read because you want to. Read because you need to. Read because it is you.






*Regarding the $130 trash can, Nguyen writes, "I know what you’re thinking: $130 for a trash can?! I get it—that’s expensive! But it's a quiet life upgrade that’ll change your relationship to the kitchen."

No, $130 of delicious, fattening food is the quiet life upgrade that will change my relationship to the kitchen.

Wooden book requires you to solve complex puzzles before you can turn the page.

Made of laser-cut wood, the Codex Silenda is a five page book telling the short story of Leonardo Da Vinci's apprentice in the master's workshop.

While such a brief book, the real interest isn't so much a gripping narrative. The book's appeal is that it refuses to let you turn one of the five wooden pages until you decipher an intricate and complex moving puzzle. And this isn't your grandma's Rubik's Cube either.

Created by Brady Whitney, an industrial designer--who began a Kickstarter drive that was almost immediately funded--the initial goal was to sell 500 books, each handmade. The books sold out rapidly. Whitney hopes to create more since the demand is high.

As for how the book's plot works with the puzzles themselves, Whitney tells the site Dornob, "[I]n the story the Codex acts as a trap set by Da Vinci to capture any would be spies/snoopy apprentices in order to protect his work. The only way to escape is to solve each of the puzzles before the master returns from his trip."

Well, Leonardo's going to kill me then, because there's not a chance I'm solving any of these puzzles.



photos: Codex Silenda

Tired of math homework? A new app can read your handwriting and solve equations for you.

According to the company's website, "Mathpix is the world's first technology that can read pictures of your handwritten math. Simply take a photo, crop your equation of interest, and you instantly get solutions and plots." And, as the app's lead developer told the website Motherboard, the app's "algorithms get smarter over time as we get data from users."

This is crippling news to math nerds everywhere who for years have run illicit black market homework "help" in the shady corners of high schools and your lesser known Panera Bread locations. How will the geek shakedown continue if math illiterates can turn to an app now?

Sure, jocks and drama club enthusiasts alike will still fail their math finals when all technology has to be put away. But let's focus on the positive here! The math nerd monopoly has been broken!

NFL offensive lineman going for his PhD in mathematics at MIT.

If this doesn't remind you of those six seasons Albert Einstein played linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, nothing will.

Starting my PhD in math at MIT this offseason!!! pic.twitter.com/vjcSctVx9i

— John Urschel (@JohnCUrschel) January 26, 2016

In other news, Johnny Manziel is one Jägermeister-fueled bad night away from a career at Safeway. We all have paths in life.

The largest known prime number has been discovered.

It's that big.

Mathematicians are an exciting bunch. Nothing thrills them like numbers, decaffeinated green tea, and moss. So finding the biggest known prime number raises the hair on the back of their necks.

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS...yes) is a computer collective from around the world that has sought out uninterruptedly (for over 20 years!) the largest known prime numbers.

Dr. Curtis Cooper of  the University of Central Missouri has announced GIMPS's newest find.

It's the number 274,207,281– 1. Also known as some number that's 22 million digits long (really) that will never affect your everyday life (really).

This new finding is so important that it was actually discovered in September by the computers, but no one noticed until recently when routine maintenance was performed.

I don't know about you, but I haven't been this excited since I last blinked my eyes about 2.67 seconds ago. The chills!

The highest score possible on an IQ test was just achieved by an 11-year old.

This guy only had an IQ of 160.

For people under the age of 18, that's a score of 162. (Over 18? 161 is perfect. Don't ask why. ONLY GENIUSES KNOW WHY!!)

Kashmea Wahi is an 11-year old in the UK whose parents are both IT management consultants at Deutsche Bank in London. They apparently badger her to study constantly (love with a lash!), but an annoyed Kashmea knows what's up. And what's up is her IQ.

She stumbled upon the Mensa website, felt inspired, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know Wahi scored a 162, the youngest to ever score so high.

In case you were worried that Wahi might grow cocky, not all in her life is flawless. She was part of her junior school's team at the Oxford Maths challenge. They came in third place.

There's always a career as a writer, kid.

2,500 people got tattoos to write out the entirety of 'Alice in Wonderland.'

Temporary tattoos, though. It sounds a lot more dedicated when you think 2,500 people are all lined up outside some shady, back alley joint named The Stinky Ink just waiting for a fragment sentence to be forever etched onto their body.

But it's all a promotion from a company called Lithographs, which was looking to advertise their new line of--yes--temporary tattoos. It's like when you were six years old and got some temporary ink of a turtle or narwhal while at some birthday party, except more literary.

Lithographs started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $7,500 to fund the stunt, where 2,500 people who signed up were paid $1 and mailed a temporary tattoo with a fragment of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Contributor's were then asked to send back a photo of the fragment plastered somewhere on their body. And, of course, people got creative, or just made sure we knew they needed a proper manicure.

As a side note, professional hand modeling pays anywhere from $300 a day to thousands per hour. And you don't even need to be literate.



photos: Lithographs

The term "computer bug" was coined because of reasons you expect.

Try it on a MacBook, pal.

So the story goes, Grace Murray Hopper----a Naval Reservist, a distinguished mathematician, designer of the first compiler (picture computer programming that allows systems to talk one another), and the writer of the 561-page manual on the Mark 1, an early computer that was a neat and tidy 51ft long and 5 tons in weight----found a moth physically inside her computer, which I can only assume was roughly the size of most baby grand pianos.

Mathematicians are pretty literal when coining phrases. Let's leave it at that.

Website: "Expand Career Options With a Graduate Degree in Math"

Good lord, why would you torture yourself?














Logically speaking, that is a ridiculous--and lazy--headline to a story. You could technically expand your career options with any graduate degree. Did you complete a grad degree in 13th century southern Norwegian art? It might be slim pickings, but guess what? Technically you expanded your career opportunities. Finish a graduate degree in 19th century Bolivian literature? You expanded your career opportunities there as well.

Maybe the person who wrote the headline should narrow their career opportunities and quit writing them.

Japan universities eliminating humanities and social science departments.

Freeeeaky.

In a speech, Japan's education minister, Hakuban Shimomura, stated that the country's colleges and universities should eliminate their humanities and social science departments. The focus, said Shimomura, should be on "more practical, vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society." If this was America, that would mean a greater focus on bacon.

This follows in the steps of Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, suggesting that in order to place Japan back amongst the world's elite (wait, what the--, they're not?), it must focus higher education more on the STEM subject areas (science, technology, engineering, math). Those freaky, life-like robots coming out of Tokyo aren't going to build themselves, people!

Apparently bowing to pressure, 50 universities and institutes of higher learning across the country are taking Shimomura's advice and are shuttering their humanities and social science departments. In return, these universities are focusing their financial means on the aforementioned STEM departments.

So, in essence, everyone in Japan will be able to do math, they just won't be able to read the directions.



photo: BBC

The way you spell Berenstain Bears might suggest you're from an alternate universe.

Somehow, there's a mess going on regarding the Berenstain Bears, and an internet belief over how you spell their name. Do you spell it Berenstain or Berenstein? A or E?

In the end, it might mean you came from a parallel universe some believe.

According to one, the spelling of our beloved Berenstain Bears is actually more complex than you realize (Feel free to skip ahead of the passage, because I'm not sure what the hell he's saying--except the Berenstain Bears are from another dimension, or you are, or me, or I'm not sure--am I sniffing glue?)(Try to stay awake.):
______________________

I propose that the universe is a 4-dimensional complex manifold.  If you don't se habla math jargon, that means I propose the 3 space dimensions and the 1 time dimensions are actually in themselves complex, meaning they take values of the form a+ib, part "real" and part "imaginary".  Within this 4D manifold, there are sixteen hexadectants (like quadrants, but 16 of them), corresponding to whether we consider only the real or imaginary part of each of the four dimensions.  In our particular hexadectant, the three space dimensions are real, and the time dimension is imaginary.

If the above sounds weird to you, please remember that the original proposal of special relativity by Einstein and Minkowski (and others) explicitly treated time as a strictly imaginary coordinate in pseudo-Euclidean space.  It is only modern formulations that have turned to Minkowski space with signed metric tensors.  Also, imaginary time dimensions show up again in quantum field theory to relate quantum path integrals to statistical mechanical path integrals, this done by means of a Wick rotation.

So the concept isn't foreign to physics, was used early on to help get special relativity started, and has shown up since to help quantum field theory to calculate things.

Within this complex spacetime, all mass is shared, and also wave functions of particles are shared, so that effects can leak between them.  This may account for dark matter and dark energy.  Because the imaginary coordinates in a plane wave will turn it in to a decaying function (e^ik(ix) = e^(-kx), which goes to zero as x increases), mostly particles hang out in their own hexadectant and don't leak out.

I further propose that the stEin and the stAin universes are actually just different hexadectants of the same universe: in the stEin universe, all three spatial dimensions are real and time is imaginary; in the stAin universe, all three spatial dimensions are imaginary and time is real.  Of course, from the standpoint of stEin/stAin this won't produce any mathematically significant difference; it's the same as choosing (+++-) or (---+) convention for Minkowski space, which at the end doesn't alter predictions or measurements.  We'd never know if we did swap.

__________________________

"Se habla math jargon."

If things didn't sound confusing before, he just amped it up by 150%.

Jesus, my head hurts. He lost me by the first paragraph.

Stop cutting cake in wedges and start cutting it length-wise, says British author.

Author Alex Bellos, who writes a math blog for The Guardian, claims that our habit for cutting cake in wedges is scientifically detrimental to the quality of that very cake we eat.

As Bellos explains, he discovered a 1906 letter from British eugenics promoter, Francis Galton, who fancied a new way (albeit from 1906) of cutting cakes to minimize dryness. (Unrelated fun fact: Galton created the term eugenics, as well as the phrase 'nature versus nurture.')

Galton's 108-year old method for preserving moist cake deliciousness? Cut the dessert length-wise down the diameter and push the remaining cake together, sealing it together, thus creating a fairly moderate defense against air attacking exposed sides. After all, wedge slices disallow any chance of shielding the exposed sides from air's destructive force.

Yes, in essence we're talking about cake eugenics.





photo: Su Good Sweets

Study: Number of children and teens reading for pleasure has dropped in the past 30-years. And that's the good news.

...and this was the last time he ever read.

A study collecting statistics of reading habits by Common Sense Media finds that reading for pleasure drops off precipitously as children age. 53% of children 9-years old report reading daily, but that falls to only 19% of 17-year olds.

More disconcerting are children and teenagers who respond they "never" or "hardly ever" read. In 1984, studies showed 8% of 13-year olds and 9% of 17-year olds responded as such. Today, those numbers leap to disturbing levels. In 2014, those numbers grew to 22% and 24%, respectively.

And the news keeps getting worse. Only 35% of 4th graders rank as proficient at reading, while 32% grade as "below basic."

Thank goodness our society promotes science and math at every cost though. We'll be able to write up a neat-o engineering design, it's just that no one will be able to read it.

Aquinas College students prank professor for April Fool's Day, and he actually likes it.

Aquinas College (MI) macroeconomics professor, Stephen Barrows, has a way with dealing with cellphones going off in his classroom. If your phone rings, you have to answer it--on speakerphone.

On April Fool's Day, his students decided to get back at him for his policy. Student Taylor Nefcy received a call on her phone, and per the professor's rule, answered it on her speaker. The news from that call? That she was pregnant with a deadbeat father's child. Congratulations!

Barrows mildly panics. "Okay, you might want to, ummm...shut that down."

Pi Day. Not as good as Pie Day.

Today is National Pi Day, celebrating everything wonderful about the mathematical constant of 3.14.

It originated in 1988 when a gentleman named Larry Shaw from San Francisco's Exploratorium used March 14th as a day to create homages to pi. Because chatting about 3.14 gets dry pretty quickly, even the Wikipedia page regarding Pi Day mentions celebrations including pie eating, with a photo of Shaw standing beside an array of baked goods.

The idea gained steam (the holiday, not the tasty deliciousness), as scientists and mathematicians--professional, aspiring, and amateur alike--held celebrations around the country. This culminated in 2009 with the U.S. House of Representatives passing a non-binding resolution (H.RES 224) recognizing March 14th as National Pi Day.

The bill's actual language states at one point:

[...] Whereas, according to the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) survey done by the National Center for Education Statistics, American children in the 4th and 8th grade were outperformed by students in other countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, England, South Korea, Latvia, and Japan;[...]

Japan is acceptable. But Latvia? That's when Congress takes note.

High school algebra teacher leaves school to become backup quarterback for one NFL game.

Granted, Jon Kitna used to be an NFL quarterback a few years ago before he retired. Now, after seamlessly transitioning into an algebra teacher career, he's leaving his teaching job briefly to go back to the NFL, if only for one game.

Why?

The starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, Tony Romo, injured his back and is out for the last game of the season. The Cowboys' backup will start this week in Romo's place. That means there's no backup to the backup should the backup become injured this week. You follow?

Cue Jon Kitna, who once played for the Cowboys a few years ago and vaguely remembers the playbook. Should a worst-case scenario happen this week, the now 41-year old algebra teacher can step in and play quarterback.

Kitna will earn $53,000 acting as the backup for one week, a salary he says he'll donate to the school he works at.

In case you're wondering, the minimum salary a Texas teacher can earn with 20-years of teaching experience is $44,270.

Jon Kitna will earn nearly $9,000 more than that for 3 hours work on Sunday.

University of Iowa TA accidentally emails homemade porn instead of math problem answers.

The University of Iowa math TA emailed the class the solutions for two problems that were assigned for homework.

Except she didn't attach the solutions. The TA accidentally attached a homemade porn she created online with her long distance boyfriend. Because a 7,110K file size for two math problem answers wasn't a heads-up apparently. Quantum physics offers shorter answers.

Forget the porn. The real story here is how old school our valiant TA is by still using WinZip. She might be using AOL for all we know.





"I attach"? Is she giving a present tense play-by-play of her life in the email? And why the lack of a comma after "Best"? And don't get me started on grad students and their jonesing to use "Best" habitually in emails...