The New Math of Some Temporary Things
New Math is an attempt to quantify the world using words and basic math.
New Math is an attempt to quantify the world using words and basic math.
Researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Seoul National University have created a robotic worm. “So what?” you ask. They’re also making robotic horses—and robot hummingbirds, for goodness sake. What’s promising about the new robot worm, though—the Meshworm, as it’s called—is that it’s a different kind of robot. Robots are machines, and we’re accustomed to their looking…
Does attending college actually make you more liberal and less religious? Research indicates that the answer is: not so much. Contrary to conservative rhetoric, studies show that going to college does not make students substantially more liberal. A study analyzing changes in student political attitudes between their freshman and senior years at 38 colleges and…
Though I am unpersuaded by the overall argument, it is a pleasure to say that the book is for the most part wonderfully lucid at the individual sentence level, and often displays a charmingly light touch.
Under the Kyoto protocol most developed nations other than the US committed themselves to targets for cutting or slowing their emissions of the key greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The targets varied between nations. Some were allowed to increase their emissions by a certain amount; others were required to make significant cuts. The average…
Results of a recent experiment demonstrated that students who read material in difficult, unfamiliar fonts learned it more deeply than students who read the same material in conventional, familiar fonts. Strange as that may seem, the finding stems from a well-established principle in learning theory called cognitive disfluency, which has fascinating implications for teachers. As the…
Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.