jrells

So clean and beautiful! Paper and blackboards always leave me disappointed when I do graph theory.

I often worry that mathematics education is strongly supported on the grounds that it is about "learning how to think", yet the way it is executed rarely prioritizes this goal. What would it look like if math curriculum were redesigned to be super focused on "learning how to think"? Different, for sure.

It is common practice to cite things other than peer-reviewed papers (at least in math). There are even citations for "private communication", usually meaning a personal email or conversation.

I deem my name to be a competitive advantage overall. I have never wanted to change it. I deem racism to be a problem, particularly because you can't just sign a paper and change your race.

I only said it must be tough to face (non-mistaken) racism. I am curious how this is arrogantly shaking my fist, or is related to my political tastes. And I'm curious what you believe those tastes to be.

EDIT: In my own rereading, my original comment is strictly about the way people treat each other as individuals and could be consistent with any taste in politics from communism to anarchy.

As a white guy with a (very mildly) African American sounding name, I have had similar experiences. When I meet people in person after emailing them they sometimes seem surprised, and some later admit they expected me to be black. The worst example was when I was told by someone renting a room on craigslist that they couldn't rent to me because I was a "security threat", even though I had hardly said anything about myself. It must be tough for those who face that kind of attitude constantly and are unable to escape it.

"Subhuman" is an absurd term to use, especially since trying to look down on others is very much a human flaw.

Isn't the blame falling to the pension managers who picked the hedge fund, and the victims are the individual pensioners who each have negligible influence over decisions? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Fascinating stuff, I'd like to know more.

Does anyone know a better source?

I found the original article but sadly not freely available. This psmag.com article is thin and the graph of the data is so small I can't read much off of it. Google couldn't find any larger versions of the graph.

> Other research suggests that cyclists may actually spend more than drivers at some kinds of businesses because it's easier for them to pop in often and unplanned.

This is probably due to a shortage of parking spots.

There's a lot to take issue with in this article. Graduate institutional affiliation is huge because more and more research is being done by undergraduates, so top institutions can more easily pick out the best talent early. It is still true in academia that research>institution, but the latter is becoming more and more correlated with the former. Top PhD graduates come from top schools, with few exceptions (and those exceptions still get jobs). With undergraduate this correlation is weak.

Yes financial privilege is huge for getting that far, but everyone applying for an academic PhD program has spent decent time in academia and has chosen that instead of money. I've never seen or heard of someone turning down an elite academic PhD program because of a low stipend (students do use stipends to choose between similar schools). Any academic adviser would tell you you'd be crazy to do so.

Edit: This might only be true for math. In undergrad I was constantly surprised to find students from elite vs sub-elite institutions differed hugely in privilege and less in ability. In my PhD program, there was a huge difference in ability between our school (arguably #3 in the area) and nearby Harvard/MIT. While this is all anecdotal, elite academia is a small community and I've seen a large chunk of math. Ability here in math is easy to measure (if they can solve my problems and I can't understand theirs). Mathematicians keep mental rankings of other mathematicians. When you apply for graduate school and later jobs, lots of other mathematicians have a really good idea how you compare.

I could spend my whole life correcting people who draw an equivalence between legality and morality, and that would be a life well spent.

> She should be ashamed: she appears to have violated immigration, pension and tax laws.

She is an illegal immigrant, and a shameless criminal, but why should she be ashamed? Braking a law does not necessarily imply anything shameful, and sometimes it is shameful to obey unjust laws. I hope everyone can think of some laws (at least from history) that you'd be proud to break.

True, this certainly skews my impression of driving in other countries. However, some of the examples I recall can not possibly be good driving in any culture (like making a ten point U-turn when there is ample room to make a single turn, or failing to park in a large spot after several attempts).

I would question the claim that Americans are bad drivers in general. Compared to driving I've seen in other countries (particularly India, China), even the worst drivers I've seen in America aren't so bad. And the worst drivers in America I know personally are not actually Americans but internationals.

Maybe we are generally worse compared to other western countries but my experience suggests the prevalence of driving in America puts our skills among the best. If someone has data which suggests otherwise please share.