This article is particularly relevant to me. I’m originally from a suburb of Cleveland less than half an hour from where the OP works, and I’m currently an undergraduate at Harvard. There are definitely some differences between the areas, and I can’t say that I have the overwhelmingly positive vision of the Midwest that the author of this post has. My feeling is that people in the Midwest are more content with the status quo — they understand what a comfortable life is, and they seek to achieve that. Life is very safe and sheltered, especially growing up there, and I feel that my peers from elsewhere have been exposed to so much more of life than I have.
The Midwest also lacks the intellectual vibrancy that a place like Boston does. It just seems to me that there are overwhelming concentration of smart, ambitious people from the coasts compared to those from the Midwest.
Personally, I love it here in Boston, way more than I do at home. Ohio was a good, safe place to grow up, and I imagine that it’s a great place to raise a family. However, I couldn’t imagine spending any more of my life there than I already have without dying from boredom or a creeping sense of mediocrity.
I'm currently a freshman at an Ivy League school where no credit is offered for AP exams, and I believe that this policy is similar at many of our peer institutions. The exams can be used for placement purposes; however, they aren't really that necessary considering that prerequisites are very loosely enforced. I think the most important use for AP exams is actually during admissions. An applicant with an AP class on his or her transcript but with a low or missing AP exam score may cause an admissions officer to question the rigor of the class.
We do have one program that allows students to graduate early or earn a masters degree in four years. Most people here have enough AP credit to do so, yet they rarely elect to use it.
I made the other submission and it's actually the exact same article, there is just a small difference in the URL. Interesting to see how this took off when the other one did not.
Reading this story brings to mind the history of algorithms in the field of machine translation. Early attempts at the problem attempted to explicitly define the rules of converting between tongues using meticulously laid out systems of vocabulary and syntax. This approach proved untenable, in part due to the complex and ever changing nature of language. Modern systems such as Google Translation make use of machine learning algorithms that are fed large amounts of source material and computationally discern relationships between them.
I wonder if a similar approach could be taken with language construction. Instead of spending 25+ years fleshing out the details of a language in painstaking detail, computer programs could be devised that, using large amounts input, determine the most "efficient" means of expressing information. The approach would not only be far less labor intensive, it could also accommodate the rapidly evolving nature of language, for example adding to its "dictionary" in response to new phenomena in need of naming.
According to a study published several years ago, mainstream languages seem to operate on an information density/speed tradeoff [1].The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode less information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace.
This does seem to suggest that biology may be the limiting role in controlling the rate at which humans convey information. Indeed, the language mentioned in the article seems almost laughably cryptic and dense. However, I feel that the limitation of the mentioned study results from the fact that it treats information on a relatively limiting per syllable basis. Quijada seems to suggest that an artificially constructed language has the ability to incorporate all the implicit meanings of a phrase that are left unsaid in normal conversation.
Ultimately, while Quijada's project seems quite unlikely to catch on among those who are not fringe pseudoscientists, it poses interesting philosophical questions about the nature of speech and communication and perhaps earns its title as a "conceptual-art project."
That's really interesting, I had never really thought about it like that before. Can you elaborate a little more about your in experience in the West versus somewhere else?
While I do agree this is an issue, how would you actually go about solving it? I mean, what useful contribution can someone make in math without having learned algebra first? You need to start with the fundamentals before you can do actually important things. In fact, it seems that the ability to suck it up and "just do it" without any immediate gratification is what sets other cultures apart with respect to education.
One area where I think young people can do potentially important things is with computers, especially with programming. With only a small base of knowledge, it is possible to do many original and useful things. When I was 15, I wrote apps that were used by hundreds on thousands of people, and I don't think it requires any special talent.
On the contrary, the Coursera courses that I've taken have been nothing less than top notch. The teachers have been great and easy to understand, the programming assignments challenging and relevant, and the whole experience felt polished and well done. I did try one Udacity course, but quit because I felt it wasn't challenging and poorly done. I don't think it's fair to compare Khan Academy and Coursera, since they are teaching far different conent (algebra vs. undergraduate level courses)
I think he's referring to high school, where the selection of computer courses is far more limited. At my high school right now (in the United States), the only computer course covers using MS Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. Absolutely no programming courses whatsoever.
(As a side note, I self-studied AP Computer Science and it isn't much better. Its pretty much all Java syntax and logic with a few sorting algorithms thrown in so that they can call it "computer science").
Current high schooler in the US here. I feel that today the trend is definitely more towards looking things up as opposed to memorizing them. For example, in my chemistry class, we always got a periodic table (with weights) and were given things like Planck's constant. We did, however, have to memorize some of the more basic ones such as speed of light and Avogadro's number. With regards to math, all tests involving more than trivial amounts of math you get a calculator, so I have never even thought of memorizing logs or exponents.
You've got a small typo: "We are user-oriented, everything is about u, the user." Should be "you" Also, "We believe in a good experience experience..." You repeated "experience"
> There is no way to link to an individual page, so while the manuscript is "online" it is not addressable as part of the linked web. Scholars who write about the manuscript will be unable to link to a specific item or to share linked-data with one another.
You can add a /n to the end of the URL, where n is the page you want it to point to.