Post Category → science and technology

Bill’s History Class is Not New

So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class…

Anyway, that’s the headline and, considering that Gates already thinks he knows how to fix American education, it’s not a big stretch for him to replace the traditional high school history curriculum.

The story began when Bill had some time on his hands following his retirement as Microsoft CEO and started watching a series of lectures by Australian professor David Christian titled “Big History”. In his classes, Christian wove together topics from history, biology, chemistry, astronomy and other disparate fields “into nothing less than a unifying narrative of life on earth”.1

A lecture on the Big Bang, for instance, offered a complete history of cosmology, starting with the ancient God-centered view of the universe and proceeding through Ptolemy’s Earth-based model, through the heliocentric versions advanced by thinkers from Copernicus to Galileo and eventually arriving at Hubble’s idea of an expanding universe.

In the worldview of “Big History,” a discussion about the formation of stars cannot help including Einstein and the hydrogen bomb; a lesson on the rise of life will find its way to Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.

Gates thought this approach could be used to replaced the standard chronological approach to teaching history in high school and started working with Christian to adapt his work.

I don’t often agree with Gates, about his ideas for education reform or much else, but in this case he’s on to something. In most high schools, the major curriculums are highly segregated, especially when it comes to math and science. As a result, students get a very unauthentic view of the world.

However, before praising Gates and Christian too highly, it needs to be pointed out that “big history”, the idea of using interdisciplinary approach to understanding history, is not at all unique.

In the 1970’s, science historian James Burke wrote, produced, and hosted a wonderfully entertaining series for the BBC (later shown on PBS) called Connections, an “alternative view of change”. In the series (plus two sequels and a half dozen books) Burke takes a storytelling approach to illustrate the many links between science, philosophy, world events, art and more, all with great humor, a sense of curiosity, and a large dose of caution about our reliance on technology.

The original series is on YouTube, although somewhat difficult to find,2 so if you have 50 minutes or so, watch part 1 to get a good idea of Burke’s pre-“big history” approach to explaining how our current world developed from seemingly unrelated connections in our past.

Anyway, original or not, Gates’ idea to punch holes in the silos in which we keep high school academic subjects is a good one, something that’s long overdue. I’m just not sure he is the person to make it happen.

Visualizing Science

Science on a Sphere is a very cool room-sized system for animating planetary data on a giant globe. Like this view of the Earth with the oceans removed.

Ok, words and still pictures really don’t do it justice but some of us who visited James Madison University today for their Brainstorm 2014 Conference 3 got an in-depth backstage look at the system created by NOAA2 for museums, science centers, and universities.

Too bad the installation is so expensive and requires a lot of space (at JMU it’s set up in half of the gym from a former high school.); this would be a great way to illustrate all kinds of science concepts for students at all levels. And it sounds as if programming for it is something high school students could learn.

Side note: I asked our hostess if they ever got any pushback from kids in the school groups when illustrating the effects of global warming or the way the surface of the Earth has changed over millions of years (not 6000 as preached by some creative storytellers).

Interesting that she said they don’t get any arguments on either topic from the elementary kids but do have some university students who are climate change deniers. I just hope none of them expect to be reputable scientists when they graduate.

Blame the Internet!

I don’t understand some of the writers employed by the Washington Post. Maybe they’ve been living inside the bubble of the infamous “beltway” too long. Or possibly they’re trying to write satire and the point never gets across.

Take, for example, a column from today’s paper that starts with the line “If I could, I would repeal the Internet.”. The writer’s primary thesis, as best I can determine, seems to be that the “terrifying danger” posed by the threat of cyberwar far outweighs the “relatively modest” benefits of the web.

He then goes on to lay out a variety of doomsday possibilities (disruption of the power grid, decimation of the financial system, Chinese hackers, etc.) to be brought about by the Internet, evidently drawn from a report, a book, and conversations with cybersecurity experts (all of whom profit from worst case scenarios).

And then he ends the column with this conclusion.

All this qualifies our view of the Internet. Granted, it’s relentless. New uses spread rapidly. Already, 56 percent of U.S. adults own smartphones and 34 percent have tablets, says the Pew Internet & American Life Project. But the Internet’s social impact is shallow. Imagine life without it. Would the loss of e-mail, Facebook or Wikipedia inflict fundamental change? Now imagine life without some earlier breakthroughs: electricity, cars, antibiotics. Life would be radically different. The Internet’s virtues are overstated, its vices understated. It’s a mixed blessing – and the mix may be moving against us. [my emphasis]

Another shortsighted pundit placing total blame for a problem (or potential problem in this case) on the technology involved rather than on the other, more human factors of how it’s used. And ignoring the fact that digital networks are a relatively recent invention (especially the part where everyone can have access) and we are only at the beginning of their evolution and application.

A similar reasoned, logical argument* could also have been made for those earlier, life-changing breakthroughs he lists, plus ships, trains, chemistry, the telephone, television and many more. Especially early in their lifetimes when society was working its way through the disruptions they caused.

You can debate the benefits of having a ubiquitous, always on communications network available in every home and classroom (which it’s not, yet). Certainly we need to address many problems in the way the technology is used, with some people doing very silly and even stupid things with the power they have.

However, only someone who has not been paying attention over the past fifteen years or so could declare that the internet has not enabled many fundamental, positive changes for society.

I wonder if the editor responsible for this columnist thought he was kidding.

Update (later today): David Weinberger suggests we repeal the First Amendment and oxygen using the same reasoning as the Post writer, then provides a MadLibs version to do the same for anything you don’t like. You too can be a Washington columnist.

* That was an attempt at satire, in case it wasn’t obvious. :-)

The Mathematics of Storytelling

The question from a couple of posts back was “When are we ever going to use this?”, something frequently asked by students in my Algebra and Geometry classes.

The Senior Scientist from Pixar offers an answer for kids interested in animation and movie making as he explains how math is used in their storytelling.

The topic of DeRose’s lecture is “Math in the Movies.” This topic is his job: translating principles of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra into software that renders objects or powers physics engines. This process is much the same at Pixar as it is at other computer animation or video game studios, he explains; part of why he’s here is to explain why aspiring animators and game designers need a solid base in mathematics.

And how important is that solid base?

Pixar’s biggest competitive advantage now is its ability to use this math-driven technology not to make better shapes but to tell better stories. DeRose and Pixar aren’t sitting on their laurels. “Somewhere out there, a brilliant kid and their friends are working in their garage” using and improving on tools like Blender, DeRose tells the assembled children and adults at MoMath. “They will be the next Pixar.”

However, there’s a big disconnect between what DeRose is discussing and the reality of the math curriculum in most schools. During their time in K12 classrooms very few kids will get to study the creative applications of math used in animation or be allowed to use any of that “math-driven technology”.

We gotta stick to what’s on the test.

Our Biannual Stupidity

Daylight Saving Time is one of the dumbest ideas ever created by man.

But that’s just my opinion. Here’s what a scientist with expertise in the matter has to say.

Whether or not DST saves energy [it doesn’t] is the least of the reasons why it’s a bad idea. Much more important are the health effects of sudden, hour-long shifts on our bodies and minds. Chronobiologists* who study circadian rhythms know that for several days after the spring-forward clock resetting — and especially that first Monday — traffic accidents increase, workplace injuries go up and, perhaps most telling, incidences of heart attacks rise sharply. Cases of depression also go up. As the faint light of dawn starts preparing our bodies for waking up (mainly through the rise of cortisol secretion), our various organs, including the heart, also start preparing for increased function. If the alarm clock suddenly rings an hour earlier than usual, a weak heart can suffer an infarct.

The reason for negative health effects of DST is that, in essence, the entire world is jet-lagged for a few days. Unlike some animals, like honeybees and reindeer, humans have a very robust circadian clock system that resists abrupt shifts.

DST is a relatively recent invention in human history. In the US, Arizona, Hawaii, and some counties in Indiana refuse to go along with the system, and it’s not used at all in most non-western nations, including China, India and Russia.

It’s not likely our Congress critters would consider dropping the tradition since they can’t get organized enough to work on the real business of the country. Besides, too many of them don’t believe in anything to do with scientific evidence.

However, the keeping of time is basically a concept that’s been determined by society as a whole over the centuries. I wonder what would happen if enough of us just decided to leave the clocks alone next fall.

Think about it, people.

* Chronobiology is a field of biology that examines periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms and their adaptation to solar- and lunar-related rhythms.