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Journals 2007

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June

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June

Learning:
The Journey of a Lifetime
or
A Cloud Chamber on the Mind

Sunday June 24, 2007 5:10 am Lethbridge

It is +9 C with a high forecast of +22 C. Sunrise 5:24 Sunset 21:43 Hours of daylight: 16:21

A. Morning Musings

5:10 am

I am up early this morning. The 5 am coffee certainly hits the spot. It is already light outside and the birds are making a racket. The sky is overcast and showers are forecast. A quick check of the news headlines fails to identify anything that motivates me to comment. No really good news, nor any really horrific items.

But there was an interesting item on the decline of common songbirds.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/nature/birds.html

The article was balanced, noting that it is very difficult to obtain accurate data. Having said that, it is also clear that many species are much less common today than 40 years ago. The reasons are complex and what may explain a decline in one bird population will be irrelevant to another.

• "the species most affected are those that did well "in old-time agriculture" with its hedgerows, sloughs of water and abundant insect life. They are suffering today under the newer techniques of single-crop commercial farms with their heavy pesticide use and little in the way of ground cover."
• "global warming and urban sprawl are forcing many species northward in search of food and into greater competition with other species. They're also facing different predators."
  • the greater scaup: "Its traditional breeding ground on the open tundra has been transformed into a more forested region and this has provided greater cover for nest predators."
  • "In the northern Hudson Bay area, thick-billed murres, one of Canada's hardiest birds, are having to adjust to an aggressive mosquito population that is peaking earlier in the summer before the young birds are strong enough to survive the onslaught."
• "... spraying for spruce budworm and other pests in Canada's wide-ranging boreal forests — one of the most important way-stations for hundreds of species of songbirds and others — is also an important factor."

Fascinating reading. There is no simple solution, and indeed some of the effects are likely natural. But the general downward trend is a worry and governments should be working with researchers and biologists to come up with some activities that will have a positive impact. Perhaps organizations such as Ducks Unlimited should be given greater support as well as other groups such as the Audubon Society. Donations to such identified organizations could be used as a tax credit. This would encourage individuals to target contributions to groups that they feel deserve their support and would be more satisfying to many people than simply paying income tax and assuming that the money will be well spent.

Now to settle into some planning. Sunday is the day for setting up the coming week.

A review of the planning table for the past week indicates that all activities were completed. This is a win-win situation. My goals were realistic and I achieved them.

Now to set up the table for the present week. In large measure, this is simply a matter of transferring items from the June Monthly table to the weekly table (since this is the last week in the month). Here is the result:

The two potentially problematic items are the Mathematics and Science activities. Neither of them is very precise. "The Canon" has 9 chapters. If I am going to complete this by the end of the week, I should aim for 2 chapters a day until I have the goal clearly in sight.

Similarly, I need to be more precise with my goal for mathematics, both for the week as well as for today. A look at the e-book "Algebra: Abstract and Concrete" suggests the following steps:

• Chapter 1 Algebraic Themes
  • Review sections 1 - 3 (previously read and noted)
  • Read section 4 "Symmetries and Matrices" [p. 11 - 16]
  • Complete exercises 1.4.

My first estimate is that it will take a day to complete the review, two days to read section 4, and 4 days to complete the exercises. Now to build this schedule into my daily "immediate" plans.

B. Plan

C. Actual Learning Activities

6:20 am

The first Learning activity for today is to create weekly and monthly planning tables.

7:30 am

Done. Here is a June Plans web page that contains both a planning table for the remainder of June as well as two tables that indicate the breakdown of these activities across the remaining two weeks.

So far, so good. The exercise has been worthwhile. I have already made a couple of adjustments, both for today as well as for next week. I realize that my Birding activities needs to become a top priority, that one book on XML and CSS can be ignored, and that my Mathematics activities need to be reactivated.

At the moment, the plan for today seems realistic. Now to make that coffee.

Science 1 June 24/07

11:30 am I have finally begun reading "The Canon" by Natalie Angier. At first I found her use of clever sound-bites annoying, but a second reading of the first two chapters suggested that I should continue with my idea of making a few notes. Introduction Why study science? "... you don't need to know about science. You also don't need to go to museums or listen to Bach or read a single syly honied Shakepeare sonnet. You don't need to visit a foreign country or hike a desert canyon or go out on a cloudless, moonless night and get drunk on star champagne. How many friends do you need?" [p. 11] "In place of civic need, why not neural greed? Of course you should know about science, as much as you've got the synaptic space to fit." [p. 11] "Of course you should know about science, for the same reason Dr. Seuss consels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun, and fun is good. ... It's fun the way rich ideas are fun, the way seeing beneath the skin of something is fun. Understanding how things work feels good. Look no further - there's your should." [p. 12] Interview questions "If you had to name a half-dozen things tht you wish everybody understood about your field, the six big, bold canonical concepts that even today still bowl you over with their beauty, what would they be?" [p. 14] "What are the essential ideas that you hope your students distill from the introductory class?" [p. 14] "What does it mean to think scientifically?" [p. 14] "What would it take for a nonscientist to impress you at a cocktail party, to awaken in you the sensation that hmmm, this person is not a complete buffoon?" [p. 14] Chapter 1 Thinking Scientifically "Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing on its face." [p. 19] "Science ... is a dynamic process of discovery. It is alive as life itself." [p. 19] "The world is big. The world is messy. The world is a teenager's bedroom: Everything's in there. ... How can you possibly begin to make sense of it?" [p. 20] "If you're trying to pose a question in a way that gets you data you can interpret, you want to isolate a variable. ... In science we take great pains to design experiments that ask only one question at a time." [p. 20] "Scientists accept, quite staunchly, that there is a reality capable of being understood, and understood in ways that can be shared with and agreed upon by others." [p. 22] "Mathematics is a way of describing nature but not necessarily of understanding it." [p. 28] Second only to their desire that science be seen as a dynamic and creative enterprise rather than a calcified set of facts and laws, scientists wish that people would learn enough about statistics - odds, averages, sample aizes, and data sets - to scoff with authority at crooked ones. Through sound quantitative reasoning, they reason, people might resist the lure of the anecdote and the personal testimonial, the deceptive N or sample size ..." [p. 29] "Science demands evidence." [p. 30] "How you want it to be doesn't make any difference. ... In fact, if things are turning out the way you want them to, you should think harder about how you're doing your experiments, to make sure you're not introducing some bias." [p. 31] "Your data should be true even if your story is wrong." [p. 32] Chapter 2 Probabilities "... it's really hard to look accidental on purpose, and ... randomness can look suspiciously rigged?" (example of faking a 100 coin tosses) [p. 47] "People want to apply the fifty-fifty rule over a very short period of time..." [p. 48] " 'People don't tend to pay attention to the background information, the sample space. They take the foreground information without context, and they accept it at face value." [p. 54] Take into account both Type I error and Type II error. Try the "Fermi flex". Imagine some quirky mental challenge (e.g. How many cell phones are there in Canada?). "A good thinker should be able to devise an ad hoc, stepwise scheme for coming up with an answer that is within an order of magnitude" [p. 59] Regression toward the mean is often a plausible explanation for an observed result. If you look at enough factors, you are bound to find something.