# Blog Profile / Mathematics Under the Microscope

URL : http://micromath.wordpress.com/ Academics / Mathematics 176 0.3 March 17, 2008

## Blog Post Archive

Is the biggest possible symmetry in the 196,000 dimension (the monster)? If so, why isn't it possible to get more symmetries in higher dimensions? Added 14h ago

### As a mathematician, how would you mentor your child?

This my response to a question in Quora: As a mathematician, how would you mentor your child and help her to learn, do and live mathematics in her free time as she is growing up? I write from the  position of a mathematician about what...Show More Summary

### Harmonic mean

This problem is already in my lecture notes, and next week I will discuus it with my students: A car traveled from A to B with speed 40 miles per hour, and back from B to A with speed 60 miles per hour. What was the average speed ofShow More Summary

### Comment on “Making Oxbridge entry matter less” by Becky Allen

This is my comment that I left at Rebecca Allen's blog entry  Making Oxbridge entry matter less. Basically, her suggestion was Establishing robust and comparable degree classification will help fix the extraordinary stratification of universities in the eyes of employers. Getting into Oxbridge rather than, say, Nottingham undoubtedly gives people an e

### Handwriting and “Cortical homunculus”

???????????? - ??? ??, ??? ? ?????? ?????? ? ????? ?????????? ???????? ????? (??????????? ???? ??? ? ????????????? - ?????????, ????????) ?????????? "?????? ????????" (??????, ?? ????????? ??? dexterity). ?? ????, ??? ?????? ???????Show More Summary

### “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller”

The title of Italo Calvino 's book is great. When I first time saw the book on a shop shelf, I bought it on impulse because on its title. To the Russian year, it has immediate connotations with the famous passage from Chekhov's "Ionych": Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces, and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. Show More Summary

### “Mirrors and reflections” in Japanese

[caption id="attachment_398" align="aligncenter" width="1733"] Alexandre V. Borovik and Anna Borovik, "Mirrors and Reflections: The Geometry of Finite Reflection Groups[/caption]

### Evaluating students’ evaluations of professors

This paper contains some bizarre observations:   Michela Braga, Marco Paccagnella, Michele Pellizzari, Evaluating students’ evaluations of professors. Economics of Education Review 41 (214) 71-88. Abstract: This paper contrasts measures of teacher effectiveness with the students’ evaluations for he same teachers using administrative

### Meta-analysis of faculty’s teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related

An interesting paper: Bob Uttl, Carmela A.White, Daniela Wong Gonzalez, Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness:  Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related. Studies in Educational Evaluation,...Show More Summary

### J. Algebraic Combinatorics: editors resign to start an open access journal

A press release from Mathematics in Open Access for Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics (2017-07-27) (see also a comment from Tim Gowers): At the end of June 2017, the four editors-in-chief of the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics informed Springer that they will not renew their contracts, which terminate on 31 December 2017. Show More Summary

### Matrix Algebra

Lectures on Matrix Algebra, last update 19 July 2017, 09:56.

### Two elementary problems

Sketch the curve given by parametric equations (a) $$x =\cos^2 t, \; y = \sin^2 t$$ (b) $$x = e^t, \; y = e^2t$$

### Immorality of forcing choice on others

I very much hope that this story is a hoax, I tried to locate the source on the Internet, but failed. If it is not a hoax, then it is a huge breach of profession norms- made in a hurry and under stress, but still a breach. One should not put children in the situation of choice almost impossible for them -teachers should remember that. Show More Summary

### Georgio de Chirico, “Mathematicians”

[caption id="attachment_324" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Georgio de Chirico, “Mathematicians”[/caption]

### Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs: a missing component

Maslov's Hierarchy of needs misses a component highlighted by Ali Nesin (personal communication): responsibility. He formulates the triad Safety - Independence - Responsibility as the guiding principles of his work with children and teenagers at Nesin Vakfi  and the Nesin Mathematics Village.

### Soldiers and horses

From a discussion at a LinkedIn group on mathematics education: Q: You’re the general of an army. You have many soldiers and many horses. Each soldier needs one horse. What’s the fastest, most efficient way to see if the # of soldiers = the # of horses? A: Tell the soldiers that the war is […]

### The Metaphysician’s Nightmare

I had at one time a very bad fever of which I almost died. In my fever I had a long consistent delirium. I dreamt that I was in Hell, and that Hell is a place full of all those happenings that are improbable but not impossible. The effects of this are curious. Some of […]

### Growing neural connections

NYT: “Who gets to graduate?” “In the experiment, 288 community-college students enrolled in developmental math were randomly assigned, at the beginning of the semester, to read one of two articles. The control group read a generic article about the brain. The treatment group read an article that laid out the scientific evidence against the entity […]

### Calling a spade a spade: Mathematics in the new pattern of division of labour

This is the last pre-publication version of my paper: Alexandre V. Borovik, Calling a spade a spade: Mathematics in the new pattern of division of labour, arXiv:1407.1954v3 [math.HO]. Abstract: The growing disconnection of the majority of population from mathematics is becoming a phenomenon that is increasingly difficult to ignore. This paper attempts to point to […]

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