Old Man Posted October 16, 2020 Report Share Posted October 16, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 17, 2020 Report Share Posted October 17, 2020 I was crushed to death at geometry. I saw Cthulhu, I knew he had a connection to math. Though, I think he is less maddening than calculus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted October 17, 2020 Report Share Posted October 17, 2020 I regularly made the Dean's List when I was taking courses that touched on concepts listed in the "Serious Math" section. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted October 20, 2020 Report Share Posted October 20, 2020 Cancer and Lawnmower Boy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted October 20, 2020 Report Share Posted October 20, 2020 Grailknight 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 20, 2020 Report Share Posted October 20, 2020 On a more serious, and somewhat sad note, out of context seems to be the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 20, 2020 Report Share Posted October 20, 2020 1 hour ago, Logan.1179 said: Of course, I'm an astronomer, and once celestial navigation and timekeeping were figured out, that's been true for us, so we're used to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted October 27, 2020 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2020 ...and we're back on two week (at least) dismissal effective tomorrow morning. Shucks and similar comments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted October 27, 2020 Report Share Posted October 27, 2020 1 hour ago, Pariah said: ...and we're back on two week (at least) dismissal effective tomorrow morning. Shucks and similar comments. Just don’t catch the virus. That’s all I ask. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted October 27, 2020 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2020 34 minutes ago, Old Man said: Just don’t catch the virus. That’s all I ask. That's the plan. All teachers are out of the building for the next two days for a thorough deep cleaning*, then we return to our rooms and teach remotely until November 10th. No students are allowed in the building under any circumstances before the 11th. The really entertaining thought in all of this is that Halloween is just a few days away. It is entirely possible that we will see another rash appositives in the wake of parties and such, and have the dismissal extended even beyond the 11th. There was a time when I had toyed with the idea of becoming an online-only teacher. I decided against it because I figured the trying to teach science online would be incredibly boring for me and even more so for my students. Little did I know.... -- * Of the building, not the teachers. Michael Hopcroft 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted October 28, 2020 Report Share Posted October 28, 2020 On 9/30/2020 at 10:49 AM, Pariah said: A couple of years ago I gave an online final exam* consisting of 50 multiple choice questions covering the whole year's material. Just before posting it, I went over it to make sure there were no errors, typos, that kind of thing. It took me about 15 minutes to check it. Lo and behold, I'm looking at the responses a few days later and I see about a dozen students who have perfect or near-perfect scores...and test times of 7 minutes or less. What a smart bunch of students I must have! They completed the test in half the time it took me to do it. And I wrote it! I sent them all notifications of the zeroes they were getting for academic dishonesty. Most of them fessed up, and I gave them an opportunity to take an alternate final exam for most of the credit. But one kid, who was a complete PITA from day one, sent me back an e-mail at 3 in the morning saying, "You can't give me a zero just because you think I may have cheated." When I read it the following morning, I typed, "Oh, I believe you'll find that I can do exactly that" in response. Then I deleted that and replaced it with, "If you have another explanation, I'd love to hear it" before sending off my response. He got a zero. -- *I gave the Final in two parts that year: the multiple choice portion online, and the problem-solving portion in class. That reminds me o the scene in Into the Spider-Verse where Miles Morales is in an urban boarding school he hates (different class of kids than he's used to hanging out with) and turns in a 0% exam in hope that a test score that low will get him expelled. It was a multiple-choice test, but no such luck. The teacher told him that there was no way he could have gotten every single question wrong unless he actually knew all the right answers. She did not stand for this and turned the score into a 100%, telling Miles she would not let him fail. (Of course, soon Miles would have bigger problems than an exam, but academically at least he straightened out and started turning in honest tests.) Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 28, 2020 Report Share Posted October 28, 2020 Copy-pasted from a colleague in my department: Quote Hey all, A friend of mine teaches at USD, and today she discovered rampant cheating on one of her (virtual) exams. A student who took the exam early uploaded photos of their completed exam to Chegg, where several her other students copied the first student's solutions to their own midterm. It sounds like this student lives in a significantly different time zone, and the offer to take the exam early was extended to them since otherwise their exam would have been scheduled after midnight by their local time. No good deed goes unpunished... I figured it was worth passing along a word of warning as we all try to learn how to navigate the virtual environment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted October 28, 2020 Author Report Share Posted October 28, 2020 So, today was the first day of two weeks (or maybe more) of distance learning. I used this as my background image in my Zoom meetings: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted October 28, 2020 Report Share Posted October 28, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted October 28, 2020 Report Share Posted October 28, 2020 Are Cats Liquid. Answering the question that won me the Ig Nobel Prize. A liquid is traditionally defined as a material that adapts its shape to fit a container. Yet under certain conditions, cats seem to fit this definition. Pariah and Lawnmower Boy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted October 29, 2020 Report Share Posted October 29, 2020 10 hours ago, Starlord said: Are Cats Liquid. Answering the question that won me the Ig Nobel Prize. A liquid is traditionally defined as a material that adapts its shape to fit a container. Yet under certain conditions, cats seem to fit this definition. isn't that awarded to the research that spends the greatest amount of money and energy to the least effect? It shouldn't cost that much money to research feline fluidity. What you mostly need are a few cooperative felines and numerous containers, a basic knowledge of feline anatomy, and the brainpower and imagination to reason "We know cats are solids, yet they and other living things that should be solid fit some of the definitions of a liquid. Do we need a more precise definition?" Can any living being truly be called fully solid? Lots of things in my body are liquids. Heck my tissues are some 90% water. So it's only logical I would have some characteristics of a liquid. Which poses the question asked by freshman biology majors the world over -- how does this seemingly random collection of liquid and solid cells combine to form a human being? EDIT: Having read the article, I seem to have confused the Ig Nobel with the annual prize for pointless research -- which this is not. I apologize. The article does make me think about liquids and solids, though in a different way. And that's what a paper like that is all about. Although I did not understand any of the math (I took Statistics for my mandatory math credits which has actually served me well in my former work in data analysis), I can see the questions it raises. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted October 29, 2020 Report Share Posted October 29, 2020 On 10/27/2020 at 7:35 PM, Cancer said: Copy-pasted from a colleague in my department: Chegg lets you do that? I hope that student (and the ones that copied from them) faces consequences. An automatic failing grade seems like a good start. I know it tempts students to take a shortcut to that great grade. But they're really cheating themselves (and whoever is paying their tuition, expecting them to learn this stuff). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 29, 2020 Report Share Posted October 29, 2020 I tried giving a conventional exam remotely last March, about two weeks after the violent transition to virtual classrooms. Though I do not have the hard evidence as described in that email, I estimated that academic dishonesty was committed in something like 50% of the cases. Consequently, I didn't give exams in spring quarter, and I don't plan to in the coming winter or spring. (I'm not givign any this fall, but since that's a lab class that never has exams anyway that isn't a relevant statement.) How I perform student evaluation is ... a bit of a trick, obviously, that I don't have fully worked out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 1, 2020 Report Share Posted November 1, 2020 This reminds me of an anecdote that was going around during my undergrad years. One day the professor, before he opened his notes to start lecture, said, "OK, you don't like taking exams, and I don't like grading them. So I'm going to skip the exams and give blanket C's. If you don't like that, come to my office the last week of classes, and we'll cut cards. You win, you get an A. I win, you get an F. My deck." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 1, 2020 Report Share Posted November 1, 2020 On 10/16/2020 at 4:27 PM, Old Man said: I've done a little calculus of variations, and I'm reasonably comfortable with real analysis, complex numbers and complex analysis. But I haven't touched the rest of the stuff below the "serious math" gap. I've never worked with Laplace transforms, but Fourier analysis is almost my bread & butter. Optics is all Fourier stuff, and between that and signal processing and extraction, I arrived at the impression that any observationalist should be able to think in Fourier space, and the more so for the radio astronomers who are always using interferometers these days rather than single-dish systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted November 5, 2020 Report Share Posted November 5, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted November 5, 2020 Report Share Posted November 5, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 6, 2020 Report Share Posted November 6, 2020 On today's episode of Seventh Grade Social Studies: Teacher: "(Student), can you please not chew gum in class?" Student: *turns off camera* Pariah and Logan D. Hurricanes 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archer Posted November 11, 2020 Report Share Posted November 11, 2020 https://hesstoytruck.com/stem/ -scroll down and fill out the form to apply for a Free 2020 Hess Toy Truck STEM Kit for teachers. Applications will be accepted now through December 31, 2020. 1,000 recipients will be selected in January and STEM Kits will be delivered in February 2021. Starlord 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archer Posted November 11, 2020 Report Share Posted November 11, 2020 A child comes home from his first day at school. His mother asks, "Well, what did you learn today?" The kid replies, "Not enough. They want me to come back tomorrow." Old Man 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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