I'm not affiliated with this guy, but I sure do like browsing his site: Grand Illusions I'm glad that he has lots of videos so that I can see his toys in action without having to buy them.
Once my students find out I'm an avid homebrewer, I get deluged with questions about The World's Greatest Hobby(TM). The answers to almost all questions are here: HowToBrew
John Palmer has written the most excellent intro-to- brewing book. Since he's in 3rd edition now, he's put his 1st edition online so you can read it for free.
I'm not a photographer, but I sure do enjoy good photography. I think Stern Magazine has the best photographic team inside Saturn's orbit. It's a German magazine, so their standards for...um...exposure are sometimes different from American standards, but you may set filters. Towards the top is a link to "Bilder des Tages" (Pictures of the Day.) This gallery is added to daily. Towards the bottom are two gray-background strips with about 4 thumbnails. These lead to "View Photocommunity" and "Photographie" galleries. Very many very nice pictures there: Stern Besides, it's useful to see what some of the Europeans think of us.
Here's a sight you may find occasionally useful;
before there was wiki, there was MathWorld. Type in anything math-ish you like and see what you get. Try "factorial". If there's a formula for something, you can find it here.
Next: Fireball Crosswords This guy makes the best crosswords. He used to edit a daily puzzle, but has backed off to once per week. If you love freakishly hard puzzles, you can subscribe to his weekly puzzle for $10 for a year. You can also buy books of his old puzzles. (Again, I'm not affiliated.)
I am a member of this club: Austin Saengerrunde We own Scholz' Bier Garten, nuff said.
Finally, for your amusement (and hopefully education) here's link to a 10-year-old article from the New York Times. Some things never change: NYTimes
The Calc Ninja
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Late Homework
Let's get two things straight:
1. Homework is stoopid.
2. There is no late homework.
I hate having homework for a number of reasons. It's a phenomenal amount of extra work. Take 240 students at 10 problems per week. 1 minute per problem is 40 hours. You spent several hours preparing homework; do you think 10 minutes is enough to evaluate your work? Worse, assigning homework for a grade is such an insult to you. Surely you are, by now, mature enough that if I were to hand out a list of exercises for each topic, you would do them so that you would learn the material, so that you would do well on the exams, so that you would do well in the next course, so that you would do well in life. Right? Right?
I don't want to insult you, but I'm afraid that if I don't assign some small number of points to the homework, many students won't do it and then they will fail. Does it help to assign points? I don't know. There are a number of students who just copy someone else's work to get the points. (Of course it's cheating, but, heck, go for it. There's a certain schadenfreude watching you shoot yourself in the foot in the attempt to lie to me.)
So it's stoopid. I shouldn't have to club you over the head with "points" to get you to educate yourself and you shouldn't have to put up with being clubbed.
So on to the second point: The syllabus says "No late homework." What this means is: There is no late homework. I.e., if you try to hand in your homework after the due date/time, then it will not be accepted. In other words, homework must be handed in on time for any credit. Are we clear yet? Do you see anything in the above that says "unless you have 12 doctors' notes" or "unless grandma dies" or "unless you leave it in your room by mistake?" Me either. There is no concentration of multiple disasters that will convince me that I and the TA and the grader ought to spend a couple hours passing your homework around and having it specially graded. It's not worth it for the fraction of a point that the assignment is worth.
Most of you will find this hard to believe, but there are always a couple non-students in every class that can't do anything right. They are late for class EVERY day and (if I accepted it) they would turn in homework late EVERY time. They make an error on EVERY problem on EVERY exam. (And they expect partial credit, as if someone should earn a C or B having never worked a problem correctly.) And they're always sick or have to work or can't find parking or...or...or....
I sure seems to me that if you can get to class every day at 10:15, then you can get to class every day at 10:00. And if you always have your homework ready by Friday night, then you can always have your homework ready by Friday morning. So I don't understand the problem. Perhaps these non-students are addicted to excuse-making? Yes, things happen, and occasionally everyone screws up. But there's a huge difference between someone who screws up and someone who is a screw up.
If you are not one of them, then it's no big deal if you miss a homework or two. Your grade will never notice. If you are one of them, then welcome to the world of no excuses. It is my sincere wish that my strict homework policy helps you overcome your screwupishness. Now go buy a stapler.
The Calc Ninja
1. Homework is stoopid.
2. There is no late homework.
I hate having homework for a number of reasons. It's a phenomenal amount of extra work. Take 240 students at 10 problems per week. 1 minute per problem is 40 hours. You spent several hours preparing homework; do you think 10 minutes is enough to evaluate your work? Worse, assigning homework for a grade is such an insult to you. Surely you are, by now, mature enough that if I were to hand out a list of exercises for each topic, you would do them so that you would learn the material, so that you would do well on the exams, so that you would do well in the next course, so that you would do well in life. Right? Right?
I don't want to insult you, but I'm afraid that if I don't assign some small number of points to the homework, many students won't do it and then they will fail. Does it help to assign points? I don't know. There are a number of students who just copy someone else's work to get the points. (Of course it's cheating, but, heck, go for it. There's a certain schadenfreude watching you shoot yourself in the foot in the attempt to lie to me.)
So it's stoopid. I shouldn't have to club you over the head with "points" to get you to educate yourself and you shouldn't have to put up with being clubbed.
So on to the second point: The syllabus says "No late homework." What this means is: There is no late homework. I.e., if you try to hand in your homework after the due date/time, then it will not be accepted. In other words, homework must be handed in on time for any credit. Are we clear yet? Do you see anything in the above that says "unless you have 12 doctors' notes" or "unless grandma dies" or "unless you leave it in your room by mistake?" Me either. There is no concentration of multiple disasters that will convince me that I and the TA and the grader ought to spend a couple hours passing your homework around and having it specially graded. It's not worth it for the fraction of a point that the assignment is worth.
Most of you will find this hard to believe, but there are always a couple non-students in every class that can't do anything right. They are late for class EVERY day and (if I accepted it) they would turn in homework late EVERY time. They make an error on EVERY problem on EVERY exam. (And they expect partial credit, as if someone should earn a C or B having never worked a problem correctly.) And they're always sick or have to work or can't find parking or...or...or....
I sure seems to me that if you can get to class every day at 10:15, then you can get to class every day at 10:00. And if you always have your homework ready by Friday night, then you can always have your homework ready by Friday morning. So I don't understand the problem. Perhaps these non-students are addicted to excuse-making? Yes, things happen, and occasionally everyone screws up. But there's a huge difference between someone who screws up and someone who is a screw up.
If you are not one of them, then it's no big deal if you miss a homework or two. Your grade will never notice. If you are one of them, then welcome to the world of no excuses. It is my sincere wish that my strict homework policy helps you overcome your screwupishness. Now go buy a stapler.
The Calc Ninja
How not to e-mail your prof
The relationship between you and your prof has its beginning and end in your education. It is, therefore, unwise to send him an e-mail which demonstrates that he is failing. Several things:
1. E-mail is great. You don't have to slog across campus at a pre-defined time in order to wait in line outside my office, then exchange niceties, then ask for whatever it is you want, then have me say "no", then stomp off across campus again. What a time saver!
I welcome e-mail, however:
2. My name is not Dude or u. And while I'm clever enough to decipher sludge like "wut hw tmrw do", I won't. My attitude doesn't arise from my inherent professorial arrogance, but from the fact that you've just insulted me. Keeping up with the latest fads and slang is something for the insecure young. I'm not young nor insecure. I don't feel the slightest urge to impress anyone with how groovy I can talk. Your suggestion that I do or ought to rubs my fur the wrong way. Please do me the courtesy of speaking to me like an adult.
3. Normally, I have two hundred and some students every semester. If you e-mail me saying, "Do we have homework Friday?" I can't answer if I don't know your name and which section you're in. So first, note that I can not deduce your name from your e-mail address mowhawkboy@tattoos.edu. Please tell me your name. Second, even with your name, I have to open up all my spreadsheets (there may be as many as 7) and hunt through them to find the information you've requested. It takes me 15 minutes to answer a short question, when it should have taken 1 minute. Please supply which course you're in and which discussion section. Do the math: If I have 240 students and they each take up 15 minutes of my time per week, that's 60 hours. That doesn't leave much time for preparation, lecturing and grading.
4. This is not a big deal, but while we're here: Plain text is best. You can send me decorated messages if you like, full of colors, italics and boldness, but you should realize that there's a good chance that it will look like "I A^bfreallybf &need& NNaNN usCn," by the time it passes through all the machines between yours and mine.
The summary is: please be considerate of my feelings and my time. The extra 10 seconds you spend typing your name and section saves me 10 minutes.
The Calc Ninja
1. E-mail is great. You don't have to slog across campus at a pre-defined time in order to wait in line outside my office, then exchange niceties, then ask for whatever it is you want, then have me say "no", then stomp off across campus again. What a time saver!
I welcome e-mail, however:
2. My name is not Dude or u. And while I'm clever enough to decipher sludge like "wut hw tmrw do", I won't. My attitude doesn't arise from my inherent professorial arrogance, but from the fact that you've just insulted me. Keeping up with the latest fads and slang is something for the insecure young. I'm not young nor insecure. I don't feel the slightest urge to impress anyone with how groovy I can talk. Your suggestion that I do or ought to rubs my fur the wrong way. Please do me the courtesy of speaking to me like an adult.
3. Normally, I have two hundred and some students every semester. If you e-mail me saying, "Do we have homework Friday?" I can't answer if I don't know your name and which section you're in. So first, note that I can not deduce your name from your e-mail address mowhawkboy@tattoos.edu. Please tell me your name. Second, even with your name, I have to open up all my spreadsheets (there may be as many as 7) and hunt through them to find the information you've requested. It takes me 15 minutes to answer a short question, when it should have taken 1 minute. Please supply which course you're in and which discussion section. Do the math: If I have 240 students and they each take up 15 minutes of my time per week, that's 60 hours. That doesn't leave much time for preparation, lecturing and grading.
4. This is not a big deal, but while we're here: Plain text is best. You can send me decorated messages if you like, full of colors, italics and boldness, but you should realize that there's a good chance that it will look like "I A^bfreallybf &need& NNaNN usCn," by the time it passes through all the machines between yours and mine.
The summary is: please be considerate of my feelings and my time. The extra 10 seconds you spend typing your name and section saves me 10 minutes.
The Calc Ninja
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