Math Exercise: Multiple Approaches to Problem-Solving

For example, if the problem was to fi nd the answer to 8 × 6, students may suggest three options: memorizing the multiplication table for 6, knowing that 8 × 5 = 40 and adding another 8 to equal 48, or adding a column of six 8s. Allowing students to personally choose among approaches all confi rmed as correct and to support their choice will increase their comfort levels. Th is process also builds math logic, intuition, and reasoning skills that extend into other academic subjects and real-li...

 Aliens to Humans as Humans to Chimpanzees

know what you're thinking: we're smarter than bacteria. No doubt about it, we're smarter than every other living creature that ever walked, crawled, or slithered on Earth. But how smart is that? We cook our food. We compose poetry and music. We do art and science. We're good at math. Even if you're bad at math, you're probably much better at it than the smartest chimpanzee, whose genetic identity varies in only trifling ways from ours. Try as they might, primatologists will never get a chim...

 Be As Revolutionary as Science

Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t h...

 Focus When Being Inundated with BS

Langmuir is the most convincing lecturer that I have ever heard. I have heard him talk to an audience of chemists when I knew they did not understand more than one-third of what he was saying; but they thought they did. It's very easy to be swept off one's feet by Langmuir. You remember in [Kipling's novel] Kim that the water jar was broken and Lurgan Sahib was trying to hypnotise Kim into seeing it whole again. Kim saved himself by saying the multiplication table [so] I have heard Langmuir l...