Leonard Susskind's book is not just a popularization: it's a chronicle of discovery and of the people involved. It echos Watson's Double Helix with Hawking playing the role of Pauling, but it's far more fair, yet unsettling. Scientists stand on the shoulders of previous great scientists, and it's clear that Susskind and the many other scientists he describes stand on the shoulders of Hawking, but also they have surpassed him, and they know it. At times, it is like reading words of physicists who arrived after Einstein like Heisenberg, Dirac, ..., in real time. These are greats who in many ways moved passed Einstein. Susskind and friends are the greats who have moved passed Hawking. If only for this reason, this book allows the reader to be a fly on the wall of science history, and it's fun the read.
But it is much more.
My knowledge of nuclear physics, while not deep, is not trivial. In the 1970's I worked in the Stanford Physics department and was well aware of the whys and hows of the linear accelerator and PEP. Now, I might as well be a worthless witch doctor at Johns Hopkins.
Be ready to be dazzled. Alice in Wonderland doesn't come close to the reality of the Holographic Principle - yes, Virginia, you're a hologram. The wild woollies of string theory or the math of strings (spinning elementary particles) amazes and Susskind makes it fairly clear without any equations. Smart guy holding the endowed Felix Block chair of Physics at Stanford. He is no lightweight. He does briefly state one or two objections to this "Plank Area" world. Basically, string theory has not been proven - it simply works better than anything else. More subtly, it hasn't been shown to be unique. Another mathematical approach may be more "true." Even more importantly, the emphasis on dualism between elementary particles and protons/neutrons etc is questionable. Physicists believe in dualism; perhaps too much.
Consider that recently the Poincare Conjecture was proven - so 19th century! The proof required dealing with scale, getting close to a surface requires different math than being far away. Physicists don't seem to know this issue may actually apply to them in subtle ways that their hubris may preclude. And that's the rub. All talk, no experiments, but for good reason: to test out their theories would a take a linear accelerator the size of the milky way. Oh yeah, one of the ideas of really modern physics is that small things are heavier than big things. When this starts making sense, you become self-aware of your sanity: alt world is the world.
In short, Susskind delivers an accessible tour de force of science today from the view of giants. If you're serious about knowing how the world really works, not in the simple political sense, read this.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Defense of Newsweek's Challenge Index
Criticism of Newsweek's Challenge Index is misplaced and misdirected. This is due to the limited background of critics who show no knowledge of a valuable analog: evolutionary theory. Consider two of stronger critics of Jay Mathew's work: Sara Mead and Andrew Rotherham. They succinctly write:
"A successful high school should show high levels of student achievement, graduate almost all of its students and not let any demographic subgroup suffer at the expense of others. Most national and local experts and policymakers share these values. To be sure, graduation rates and student achievement are hardly the only indicators of a school's quality. At a minimum, however, America's best high schools should be expected to meet these basic criteria.
"Yet our analysis shows that many schools on Newsweek's list do not meet these minimum standards."
Mead's and Rotherham's words appear well-chosen and difficult with which to disagree, but they are actually irrelevant and misleading for the simple reason that education is an individual achievement. Bureaucratic measures are not only meaningless, but often distorting to individual students. The efforts in education are simply those of multiple single individuals seeking the necessary trade-offs and efficiencies in teaching the many; and there are many types of many. Education is hard, but education is not policy. Forcing education to fit policy is a fool's game. There are many fools.
In 1966, simple Darwinism, which holds that evolution functions primarily at the level of the individual organism, was threatened by opposing concepts such as group selection, a popular idea stating that evolution acts to select entire species rather than individuals. George Williams's famous argument in favor of the Darwinists delivered the decisive response to those in opposing camps. His Adaptation and Natural Selection, now a classic of science literature, is a thorough and convincing essay in defense of Darwinism; its suggestions for developing effective principles for dealing with the evolution debate and its relevance to many fields outside biology ensure the timelessness of this critical work. Almost all Ed wonks ignore this. For example, they think that subgroup success and small "achievement gaps" on tests matter. Well it does for them and it sounds compassionate, but what does it matter to an individual student? Is it realistic to think that someone picks the a school because it has a small achievement gap, without asking "how much achievement or why does that matter to me?" Do Hispanic parents chose a school for their children because the Native-American subgroup did OK, without asking "what's OK or what does that matter to me?" Saying "meeting proficiency in state standards" truly begs many questions. People want a safe school with solid academics to maximize the chances of their children becoming successful. Everything else, outside of athletic considerations, is silly fluff for irrelevant-to-learning, but not to concerned bureaucrats in the education business. This can be nasty sounding. For example, a school with a high dropout rate isn't really an issue to successful students. It may actually be a plus: get rid of low-performing riffraff. This is what sport teams on campuses know also.
The Challenge Index simply and effectively helps parents and students pick schools from their perspective! Other measures may have some utility for education bureaucrats, but not for families. Bureaucratic measures shouldn't be mentioned in public because they lead to confusion like those from advocates of social group selection in the early 1960's.
"A successful high school should show high levels of student achievement, graduate almost all of its students and not let any demographic subgroup suffer at the expense of others. Most national and local experts and policymakers share these values. To be sure, graduation rates and student achievement are hardly the only indicators of a school's quality. At a minimum, however, America's best high schools should be expected to meet these basic criteria.
"Yet our analysis shows that many schools on Newsweek's list do not meet these minimum standards."
Mead's and Rotherham's words appear well-chosen and difficult with which to disagree, but they are actually irrelevant and misleading for the simple reason that education is an individual achievement. Bureaucratic measures are not only meaningless, but often distorting to individual students. The efforts in education are simply those of multiple single individuals seeking the necessary trade-offs and efficiencies in teaching the many; and there are many types of many. Education is hard, but education is not policy. Forcing education to fit policy is a fool's game. There are many fools.
In 1966, simple Darwinism, which holds that evolution functions primarily at the level of the individual organism, was threatened by opposing concepts such as group selection, a popular idea stating that evolution acts to select entire species rather than individuals. George Williams's famous argument in favor of the Darwinists delivered the decisive response to those in opposing camps. His Adaptation and Natural Selection, now a classic of science literature, is a thorough and convincing essay in defense of Darwinism; its suggestions for developing effective principles for dealing with the evolution debate and its relevance to many fields outside biology ensure the timelessness of this critical work. Almost all Ed wonks ignore this. For example, they think that subgroup success and small "achievement gaps" on tests matter. Well it does for them and it sounds compassionate, but what does it matter to an individual student? Is it realistic to think that someone picks the a school because it has a small achievement gap, without asking "how much achievement or why does that matter to me?" Do Hispanic parents chose a school for their children because the Native-American subgroup did OK, without asking "what's OK or what does that matter to me?" Saying "meeting proficiency in state standards" truly begs many questions. People want a safe school with solid academics to maximize the chances of their children becoming successful. Everything else, outside of athletic considerations, is silly fluff for irrelevant-to-learning, but not to concerned bureaucrats in the education business. This can be nasty sounding. For example, a school with a high dropout rate isn't really an issue to successful students. It may actually be a plus: get rid of low-performing riffraff. This is what sport teams on campuses know also.
The Challenge Index simply and effectively helps parents and students pick schools from their perspective! Other measures may have some utility for education bureaucrats, but not for families. Bureaucratic measures shouldn't be mentioned in public because they lead to confusion like those from advocates of social group selection in the early 1960's.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Games Played by Len Fisher
The subtitle of the book is a variation on its "real" title: Game Theory in the Everyday Life of Len Fisher. While pleasant, and somewhat helpful as an introduction, a better book is struggling to get out.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is best read by reading the chapters in reverse order. Fisher really wants to write about trust and how to gain it, by realizing that game theory not only describes situations (the seven dilemmas identified by Nash equilibriums), but also identifies methods for breakthroughs. Various problems in everyday life (mainly Fisher's!) and some business/political ones can be identified, then addressed. This is good stuff. Knowing the Ultimatum and Centipede games provide value.
A reader upon completion will most likely believe that while the book was worth the time and effort, a better book should be available with more interesting examples, that would have been MORE worth the time and effort. It's as if Fisher "mailed" it in. He couldn't have spent more than a few weeks (if that long) writing it. It's merely a money-maker that doesn't show great depth of knowledge or effort by the writer, but it is understandable.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is best read by reading the chapters in reverse order. Fisher really wants to write about trust and how to gain it, by realizing that game theory not only describes situations (the seven dilemmas identified by Nash equilibriums), but also identifies methods for breakthroughs. Various problems in everyday life (mainly Fisher's!) and some business/political ones can be identified, then addressed. This is good stuff. Knowing the Ultimatum and Centipede games provide value.
A reader upon completion will most likely believe that while the book was worth the time and effort, a better book should be available with more interesting examples, that would have been MORE worth the time and effort. It's as if Fisher "mailed" it in. He couldn't have spent more than a few weeks (if that long) writing it. It's merely a money-maker that doesn't show great depth of knowledge or effort by the writer, but it is understandable.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Book Review - A Certain Ambiguity
A Certain Ambiguity was disappointing and bordering on the trivial, sadly. In 1919, a fictional, yet exceptional Indian mathematician, worthy of being invited to a US university after living in Great Britain, believes like a child, that Euclid wrote about truth, and of course, rigid Christians jailed him. The only thing missing from the test is an angry mob at night with pitchforks ready for a lynching. However, good leadership by the New Jersey governor saved the day. Thank God for educated elites!
In 1919, Riemann, Poincare, were evidently not known to all expert mathematicians as the conceit of this book. OK. A few physicists still believed in the ether also. To be fair, Riemann's 1854 lecture may not have been well known, but Poincare was pretty famous at the turn of the century. By the time of the setting of this story, topology, not geometry, was the focus of study, because formalism was well understood as the refuge for mathematics. See the fifth paragraph below.
Still, the first person narration by an intelligent Stanford grad student, who evidently didn't know anything about series from high school math, but is worthy of a full scholarship to graduate school in mathematics, was far more improbable. Maybe he took Calculus in summer school after being accepted.
The conclusion that happiness and contentment are found by knowing that absolute certainty cannot be proven may be a mantra for some, maybe a majority, of intelligent people, but patting oneself on the back, which seems to be the point of the book, is fairly self-serving at the very least. Cool people don't believe in truth, just games, evidently.
A more honest and useful book would have stressed that before Riemann, Western thought, buttressed by Kant, believed that "a priori synthetic" systems existed: that our mind by itself (a priori) could obtain real knowledge (synthetic) of the world. Euclidean geometry was the prime example of this. As a result, a proof of God, while not rigorously found, could reasonably exist. The main counter to this belief was found in "personal idealism," which Bishop Berkeley, along with many, many others lectured. At it's extreme, everything is in one's mind and it is difficult, if not impossible to truly know anything about the real world (if it even exists!). This is very unsatisfying. "A priori synthetic" was important psychologically to many people. Other philosophies, such as positivism in 1919 in Great Britain, arose to try to bridge the gap with dubious success.
However, the authors, Suri and Bal, could have taken another, less well known, but perhaps, more valuable interpretation of Godel's work and resolved the issue better; although not as correct politically. Godel proved that every logical system would have at least one truthful statement that could not be proved by the axioms of the system. In short, any system is not complete by axioms alone. This is supposed to destroy full certainty of knowledge. Maybe, but it provides one GREAT and AWESOME question: from where do the unprovable truthful statements arise? They have to come from something outside of the system! In other words, the real world isn't found in "a priori synthetic," but in "synthetic a priori!" There is something out there so to speak. What it is - is the unanswerable question! God may exist, or at least a reality, for that is now certain!
The greatest problems with the book are the two horrible math errors made by the authors that invalidate so much of what they wrote. Most critically, curved space doesn’t invalidate Euclid at all. Maybe Gauss initially thought so; but Riemann in 1854 showed that planar geometry was merely a special case of when a triangle had 180 degrees in space. Other spaces had either less or more than 180 degree triangles (like those on a sphere). There is NO CONTRADICTION of Geometry by validating Einstein, if anything, it increases Geometry’s validity. Duh! Second, and not critically, the fifth postulate is not evidence of a statement that’s true but unprovable after Godel as the authors claim. This is obvious since more than one fifth postulate is possible, not just one. Duh!
A Certain Ambiguity is novel on math written by poseurs without ambiguity - an embarrassment on many levels.
In 1919, Riemann, Poincare, were evidently not known to all expert mathematicians as the conceit of this book. OK. A few physicists still believed in the ether also. To be fair, Riemann's 1854 lecture may not have been well known, but Poincare was pretty famous at the turn of the century. By the time of the setting of this story, topology, not geometry, was the focus of study, because formalism was well understood as the refuge for mathematics. See the fifth paragraph below.
Still, the first person narration by an intelligent Stanford grad student, who evidently didn't know anything about series from high school math, but is worthy of a full scholarship to graduate school in mathematics, was far more improbable. Maybe he took Calculus in summer school after being accepted.
The conclusion that happiness and contentment are found by knowing that absolute certainty cannot be proven may be a mantra for some, maybe a majority, of intelligent people, but patting oneself on the back, which seems to be the point of the book, is fairly self-serving at the very least. Cool people don't believe in truth, just games, evidently.
A more honest and useful book would have stressed that before Riemann, Western thought, buttressed by Kant, believed that "a priori synthetic" systems existed: that our mind by itself (a priori) could obtain real knowledge (synthetic) of the world. Euclidean geometry was the prime example of this. As a result, a proof of God, while not rigorously found, could reasonably exist. The main counter to this belief was found in "personal idealism," which Bishop Berkeley, along with many, many others lectured. At it's extreme, everything is in one's mind and it is difficult, if not impossible to truly know anything about the real world (if it even exists!). This is very unsatisfying. "A priori synthetic" was important psychologically to many people. Other philosophies, such as positivism in 1919 in Great Britain, arose to try to bridge the gap with dubious success.
However, the authors, Suri and Bal, could have taken another, less well known, but perhaps, more valuable interpretation of Godel's work and resolved the issue better; although not as correct politically. Godel proved that every logical system would have at least one truthful statement that could not be proved by the axioms of the system. In short, any system is not complete by axioms alone. This is supposed to destroy full certainty of knowledge. Maybe, but it provides one GREAT and AWESOME question: from where do the unprovable truthful statements arise? They have to come from something outside of the system! In other words, the real world isn't found in "a priori synthetic," but in "synthetic a priori!" There is something out there so to speak. What it is - is the unanswerable question! God may exist, or at least a reality, for that is now certain!
The greatest problems with the book are the two horrible math errors made by the authors that invalidate so much of what they wrote. Most critically, curved space doesn’t invalidate Euclid at all. Maybe Gauss initially thought so; but Riemann in 1854 showed that planar geometry was merely a special case of when a triangle had 180 degrees in space. Other spaces had either less or more than 180 degree triangles (like those on a sphere). There is NO CONTRADICTION of Geometry by validating Einstein, if anything, it increases Geometry’s validity. Duh! Second, and not critically, the fifth postulate is not evidence of a statement that’s true but unprovable after Godel as the authors claim. This is obvious since more than one fifth postulate is possible, not just one. Duh!
A Certain Ambiguity is novel on math written by poseurs without ambiguity - an embarrassment on many levels.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Outliers - William Gladwell - Review
The Outliers was presented to teachers at Estancia High School. It has lessons that apply to education from both student success and organizational perspectives. While motivational and entertaining, it's problems are many. It's reviews are spotty. The New Republic spent several pages on it.
_____________________The Outliers delivers one incredibly strong lesson in its first chapter: beware of the effect of arbitrary decisions on people's lives. Beware cut-off dates on ages for example. This is admirably shown in William Gladwell's first chapter. Hockey players in Canada are chosen on teams based on their talent, but also based on their age on January first. Those born on December 31 are effectively one year younger than those born on January second. Obviously many younger players won't be as adept as older ones, but so it goes. This means it may be advantageous to have two start dates for Kindergarten in schools.
A second strong lesson of the book is that timing, out of one's control, matters. People born in the middle 1830's in history were the most successful people in history. Cute stuff, but not too usable.
The third lesson is somewhat unremarkable; although vital: social background and elite status matter in success. Children of dedicated, usually wealthy, parents who are flexible in their own accomplishments do better than those from rigid, poor families. Duh.
The point of the three lessons is that people don't succeed by themselves, but their location in time and place determines the limits on their success. This point is told in very engaging ways by Gladwell. It is worth the time to read his text, but there are some caveats.
____________________
Isaac Chotiner's valid question (The New Republic, February 04, 2009) on why the chapter on airlines and culture was included in The Outliers can be answered with these three related points.
First, Mr. Gladwell did not want his book to justify racism. If wonderful family and social support is necessary for success, then a variation of William Shockley's argument that affirmative action is of no practical value to people doomed to failure would be true: why help a poor black student with a single parent, when he or she could never be a great success like Bill Gates or Bill Joy.
Second, the Korean chapter suggests that a few tweaks to culture can fix a problem and allow reasonable success. Similarly, affirmative action for law students seems to work out OK, as long as IQ is above 120. Please note that this is questionable research.
Third, Gladwell above can be seen as differentiating great success, ability combined with wonderful circumstances and timing, from "good enough" success, which society can support at certain intervals such as during schooling.
Unfortunately, Gladwell made three choices that undermine his likability and discernment. He's simply not self-reflective in his editing. Gladwell seems so full of himself and has simple politics.
First, his excessive demeaning of Langan was coarse, bordering on mean. Langan is such a buffoon that he doesn't know there is no "thumb right on you (p. 96)" at Harvard. However, readers of TNR's article on Zeke, Rahm's brother, may have noticed his words "But it was Harvard that was most oppressive (The New Republic, July 1, 2009, p. 27)." Maybe Langan, wasn't all that wrong. Furthermore, Reed College and Montana State should have been slapped by Gladwell. They failed disgustingly; almost inexcusably. Instead, Gladwell blesses their bureaucratic ineptness and laziness in dealing with Langan, because liberal Reed doesn't have a rigid (i.e. bad) bureaucracy. Reed, a small liberal college, simply let go one of its most promising students. As a student at Stanford, with parents having limitations, at the same time as Langan, I struggled to get my financial paperwork delivered months after it was due each year. I was never shown the exit - I was given emergency loans to pull me through. One of the 'red state' arguments against affirmative action is that it's affirmative only for preferred (i.e. liberal) people. Langan's situation makes ones wonder: is social support reliable as policy to help all people succeed?
Second, the most beautiful chapter in the book concerned how Gladwell's mother didn't claim racist discrimination in England after realizing that she and her ancestors had enjoyed generations of success because of the light tone of their skin. Sweet. Her blessed son disparages an abused man Langan (who has overcome a great deal) in print and left a pointless sentence in his book "Kiddo, when you leave New York, every place is Bridgeport. (p. 138)" Yes, Mr. Gladwell may be on the A-list of the chattering class and power clique at Harvard, but his framework is immature.
Third, Gladwell acts like a 'fellow traveller.' The chapter on KIPP read like a propaganda piece by Shaw when visiting Stalin in the 1930's, where his railroad car attendants had read his work! Yeah, sure. My high school junior read the chapter and asked "Is KIPP for stupid people? They work so hard, but only 83% are proficient." Gladwell may be smart, but you could sell him some swampland near Forrest Gump.
Ten Commandments for Teachers - George Polya
I. Be interested in your subject.
II. Know your subject.
III. Know about the ways of learning:
the best way to learn anything is to discover it by yourself.
IV. Try to read the faces of your students,
try to see their expectations and difficulties,
put yourself in their place.
V. Give them not only information, but "know-how," attitudes of mind,
the habit of methodical work.
VI. Let them learn guessing.
VII. Let them learn proving.
VIII. Look out for such features of the problem at hand as may be useful
in solving the problems to come -- try to disclose the general
pattern that lies behind the present concrete situation.
IX. Do not give away your whole secret at once --
let the students guess before you tell it --
let them find out for themselves as much as feasible.
X. Suggest it; do not force it down their throats.
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