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06.3.2010

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist

Cheat sheets are paradoxical things when I was a student: the more thought I put into making one, the less likely I actually needed to use it during the test. For me, designing a cheat sheet was one of the best ways to study for a test, and I often found that I would make one even for exams on which they were not allowed just to help me organize my thoughts for the exam. As a result, as a semester proceeds I often allow students to make their own cheat sheets, in the hope that they might find them similarly useful.

Many do, but probably just as many make something like this:

Not only does this 3×5 card have a boatload of formulas and a complete duplicate solutions guide to a practice exam crammed onto it in miniscule 4 point Arial font, but if you rotate it clockwise ninety degrees you’ll see additional integration formulas written over them in pencil. The student said that it took him something like six hours to typeset the card the night before the exam, but in the end we only got a 40% on the exam, largely because (a) he couldn’t find anything on the card and (b) since he spent all his time copying formulas onto his cheat sheet rather than, say, attempting to comprehend what any of them meant, he didn’t even know what he was supposed to look for even if he could find it.

I use this as an example in class when I tell students about cheat sheets, and encourage them to not just perform a “formula dump” on a smallish piece of paper, but to spend time thinking about what things might actually help them, and how to organize those things to make it easy to find.

This semester, many students seemed to take this to heart, and I got a number of unique and clever cheat sheets.

For example, some students don’t need lots of formulas, they just need a little bit of encouragement. By Batman, for example:

(In case you can’t read it, Batman says Good luck on your test, TJ! Gothan City depends on it!)

Or Darth Vader:

Other students spent time organizing their cheat sheets various ways. If your work can be subdivided into, say, six major topics, don’t just partition your cheat sheet into six subregions. That’s soooo 2D. Buck up and add the extra dimension:

Another version was to anthropomorphize the subject matter as, well, me:

(Apparently, this is a common theme for me.)

Speaking of cheating, albeit tangentially, I thought my students’ plagiarizing crappy solutions to two-point calculus problems (summarized here and here ) was a bad enough… but plagiarizing your valedictory speech?

At Columbia University?

By stealing from a web-savvy comedian whose job is, in part, to destroy hecklers?

Sucks to be this guy.

Filed under: Math musings, Ripped from the headlines —

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06.1.2010

Transformvesty 2: Revenge of Michael Bay

I’m going to do you all a favor, and excise from the one-hundred fifty minute long soul-suck that is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen the only worthwhile scene. In it, the protagonists have located an ancient Transformer, one who has been on Earth since before the Great Pyramids were built. Quoth he:

You’re welcome.

Really, you ought to just walk away right now, because if you add any more details to this movie, you’ll realize just how terrible this movie is. Hell, just look at the title: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Just think about that for a moment, and it’s clear this movie is a joke:

Michael Bay was trying to make Transformers 2 an epic, but ending up with just EPIC FAIL. Just take every bad thing about the first Transformers movie (and if you need a reminder on what those are, here you go), increase it by an order of magnitude, and you’ve got the sequel.

For example,the first movie was dumb. I don’t mean this in the sense of being of poor quality or inferior (although it was certainly these things too); rather, absolutely none of it made any sense to anyone with more than one synapse to fire. This time its even worse. For example, the movie opens by stating that the Autobots and the U.S. Army having teamed up to covertly assassinate Decepticons remaining on Earth, whereby “covertly” Michael Bay apparently means “100-foot-tall robots level the living shit out of downtown Shaghai in the middle of rush hour.” Then an Obama administration official, slightly miffed by this, tries to deport them from the planet because they don’t have green cards.

Eventually it becomes clear that the real plot of Transformers 2 involves a transforming MacGuffin with the potential to empower Decepticons to destroy the Earth. It also has the power to magically teleport humans to Robot Heaven. Plus, it’s magic, and it only works if you really really believe in it, kind of like Tinker Bell.

I’m serious. This movie is that dumb.

For another example, in the first movie, the robots (despite looking cool) are invariably repulsive, one-dimensional caricatures. The same is true here. The aformentioned ancient Transformer, to take an example, is more or less summed up as CRANKY OLD GUY. We know he’s old, because when he transforms, his robot form includes an effing walker. Also, he’s incontinent, and occasionally shits himself.

I’m still serious. This movie is that classy.

(This is in fact the most classy example in the movie, too, in that the robot only shits out parachutes. The other robots in the movie cry, bleed, and even vomit various coolants and fluids on their foes. Combine that with robot urination from the first movie and I’d say Michael Bay has a really creepy fascination with watersports.)

It’s actually worse than that. Whereas the first movie only hinted at a Transformer’s mechanized manhood, this movie is chock full of cybernetic shlongs. There’s a blender that transforms into a foot-tall robot with a foot-long cock that shoots lasers. There’s another foot-tall robo-perv that humps legs like a horny chihuahua. There’s a robot that transforms into a supermodel (seriously) who makes out with Shia LaBeouf using her two-foot-long tongue and (literal) buns of steel. We even get an uncomfortable look at the underside of giant robot scrotum as its freeballin’ two-ton nads dangle (and clank) in the wind.

I’m still serious. Michael Bay is one sick puppy.

As if gratuitous robot alien gonzo porn wasn’t enough, Transformers 2 boasts as protagonists the most irritating, blatantly racist CGI caricatures since Jar Jar Binks, the Autobot twins. They’re robotic wanna-G’s that spend the entire movie saying things like “Git ready for a ass-whuppin’” and “‘Cuz you a pussy, that’s why” and “I’ma bust a cap in yo ass” before finally having to admit that they’re both illiterate. Also, they have nappy robo-hair, ginormous robo-ears, and one of them sports a gold (buck) tooth:

I think their names are supposed to be Mudflap and Skidmark, but “Amos and Android” would have been far more appropriate.

I could go on about this, but other sites have done it much better, such as the Editing Room or Topless Robot. Let me simply sum it up by saying that (1) Michael Bay is one racist, sick puppy, and (2) Transformers 2 is a monotonous unfunny joke.

Filed under: Reel life —

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05.28.2010

Links o’the weeks

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a link of the week, and since I’m about to give up my current Tablet PC for a next-generation version of the same thing, I need to review all my bookmarks. As a result, I’ve reconfabulated my blogroll on the sidebar, and you might enjoy some of the new entries, including the following.

NewsBiscuit, a British version of The Onion:

MathFail, which is pretty self explanatory:

Fake science, for when facts are too hard:

Relevant to your interests, a collection of goofy things found on the internet:

Neatorama, which is a collection of neato stuff on the internet:

I’ve also updated my links page, now with even more ways to waste your time. Have fun.

Filed under: Link o'the week —

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05.24.2010

Newsletter: month fifty

Dear Ladybug,

Wednesday not only marked the fiftieth monthly anniversary of your birth, but also your first paycheck.

Well, dollar bill, actually. I was working on the lawn, and as usual you decided to assist me. Typically, your assistance consists of four duties: (1) grabbing grass bags from the garage and opening them for me, (2) sweeping up errant grass in an attempt to clean up the mess I leave behind, and (3) pretending to mow the lawn with your bubble mower along with me, and (4) providing constant encouragement in the form of exclamations such as “Good job Dad!” or “The lawn looks beautiful!” or “You’re almost done, and then you can get a Coke, and I can get a Tummy Yummy!” In fact, it’s the last one that really explains your left-field love of lawn care: whenever I’m finished, I dump my lawn clippings and then get a soda for myself and a Tummy Yummy for you. Tummy Yummys are these little bottles filled with neon-colored form of sugar water billed as a “juice-like beverage.” Equivalently, it’s hummingbird goop sold to toddlers.

However, when we finished with Wednesday’s lawn work, you announced that in lieu of a Tummy Yummy, you would rather have a dollar.* I really couldn’t argue with that, on the twin grounds that (a) your mother hates it when I get you a sugary drink and (b) a dollar is actually less expensive than a Tummy Yummy. Interestingly enough, the very next day you volunteered to scrub the toilet for another dollar, to which I again happily agreed again. By the weekend, you had a whole $3.50 of “chore money” burning a hole in your pocket, which you’d managed to earn by opting to do chores with (or in some cases, for) me.

* You actually pronounce it as a DOUGH-lar, with significant emphasis on the first syllabus, like a mini Scrooge McDuck.

It didn’t last long. On Sunday we headed to the mall expressly so you could purge your piggy bank. Specifically, we headed to Claire’s, which is like a crack den for pre-tween girls. After a hour of deliberations, you settled on glitter nail polish and a week’s worth of stick-on earrings with matching crown rings. Unfortunately, it turns out that the nail glitter scratches off almost immediately, and the earrings only adhere to your ear lobes for about an hour before falling off, which more or less means that in one weekend you’ve been introduced to the twin concepts of unbridled consumerism and buyer’s remorse in one sitting. Welcome to America, baby.

As you might have gathered, you’ve become significantly more assertive in your loquacity. You’ve still got opinions on everything — what to watch, what to eat, what to wear — but now it’s insufficient merely to share them anymore; now they must be seriously considered by all parties within earshot. This isn’t to say you’ve become rude or snotty — you’re not! — you’re just interesting in making sure your two cents’ worth are paid their full due. (What is it with you and money this month?) In fact, you often punctuate your commentary with the phrase “I promise you” to emphasize its importance, such as “I promise you that Claire’s is cool” or “I promise you that a lollipop is a good dessert if I finish my dinner” or “I promise you that a mammoth’s jawbone will make an excellent guitar,” and so on.

It’s a rare occasion indeed when a conversation is not started by you anymore. I don’t mind this so much, since you frequently have interesting observations to make, many of which catch me completely off guard. For example, we went out for a walk the other day to enjoy the nice pre-summertime weather. Part of the trip included a short uphill hike:

You: You know want to know something? Walking uphill is tiring.

Me: Yes it is.

You: Well, it’s part of the walk back home. But you know what they say: you gotta do what you gotta do.

Me: That’s very wise, but who says that?

You: Leela. On Futurama.

And you know what? She’s right.

My only gripe is that, despite all the interesting topics upon which you’re prepared to expound, you have exactly one way to introduce them: You want to know something? (or in its phonetic form, You wanna know sumpin’?), as in:

“You want to know something? If I give you an apple, you should give me a flower,” or
“You want to know something? If you take off the bottom of the letter Y you get the letter V,” or
“You want to know something? I’d make an excellent paleontologist,” and so forth.

In fact, you previously used You know what? as you standard salutation. My dad (your Papa K) hated it when I started conversations with “You know what?” as a kid, and taught me to find alternate ways of starting a conversation; in fulfillment of the prototypical parental prophesy (viz. I’ve become my father) I have been compelled to pass this sense of talkative transgression to you. Hence, you’ve pioneered an alternative that subscribes, if not to the spirit, at least the letter of my admonition.

It’s not just verbal communication that you’re improving — you’re also working on your written communicative skills as well. You been working hard on mastering all the letters of the alphabet, and for the most part you’re getting pretty at recognizing them, although some of the less frequent ones still give you trouble. (I’m looking at you, J and Q.) Of course, you only recognize the capital versions of the letters, and then only if they’re in a san-serif font. In fact, any lettering scheme that does not subscribe to this convention you summarily dismiss as “cursive,” along with the invariable post-script “I promise you I’ll learn those next.”

It’s not just recognizing letters, though: you’re mastering writing them as well. I find this a bittersweet development. On the one hand, it means that you’re less likely to spend hours writing Gilgameshic epic poems in your distinctive alien scrawl.

On the other hand, it means you can, after a little effort and a comically furled brow, now write your name (and mine and your mom’s (although you spell her’s M-O-M-O, despite my many protestations to the contrary)) in an equally distinct and adorable script:

An you want to know something? That’s awesome.

I promise you!

– Ba ba

Filed under: Newsletters —

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05.14.2010

Yojimbo

Let’s wrap up the end of the semester in Sergio Leone fashion.

The good

Some cool stuff happened this semester. First off, I was an invited panelist for a Section NExT discussion at our annual sectional meeting of the MAA. It was cool round-table talk about the hows and whys of integrating twenty-first century technology into the mathematics classroom. I also won a R₂OPE Award, which is a student award given by the Residence Hall Council “to a professor that has been a positive influence in their careers” at Komplexify U. Thanks, guys.

This site has also apparently been making the rounds this month, which is paradoxical in that I haven’t updated it at all over said time frame. Apparently my letter to cheating students made it briefly to the front page of Reddit, and my defense of j also had a brief stab of Reddit popularity. Perhaps for these reasons, komplexify somehow managed to get included on to this list of the Top 50 Blogs for Math Majors. Sure, it’s at Number 50, but it’s included with the likes of of real math blogs like Division by Zero or y of x or God plays dice.

The bad

At aforementioned MAA meeting, we had a bona fide mathematical crank! Not one of those Cantor-disproving goofballs I occasionally poke fun at; no, this guy had re-invented the whole of mathematics at an axiomatic level to a theory of “Systems and/or Sub Systems” capable of describing the properties not just to numbers and geometric constructs, but also of taxes, poetry, God, and horticulture.

Seriously:

I didn’t get to see his talk (I was the MC at an undergraduate paper session), but my friends who did see it were at a loss of words to describe anything about his rambling and incoherent presentation except for (1) a Cartesian plane coordinatized by faces of various degrees of hydrocephalusy, (2) an inordinate amount of fruit accepting numerical inputs, and (3) an equation whose solution at one point included dividing both sides by God. I did manage to snag a copy of his PowerPoints later, which include the following “God Test”

Interestingly enough, he sat with our group at the opening banquet that night. Whereas during his presentation he was talkative to the point of tachylalia, he spent the entire time intently ignoring the other folks at the table and staring intently (and singularly) into his vegetable platter. I can only assume he’d surmised the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis in it.

But apparently he has a website! Go learn some Zim Mathematics and be on the cutting edge of… quantitative fruit analysis for deities, I guess.

The ugly

I’ve lost my faith.

In the nostalgic, sepia-toned days of my youth… say, the start of this semester… I designed courses with a sizable percentage of the grade set aside for homework and projects and such. I did so for two main reasons: (1) I set aside a lot of points for homework because I want students to do the homework and (2) it helps balance the grades against my notoriously unpleasant exams. (I have heard it said that I honed my test-writing skills from having sold by soul to the Devil, but that’s just plain silly. It was a low-level demon.)

My colleagues argued that this was a foolhardy approach, since (as one colleague said) “any homework assignment becomes a group assignment.” I always argued that while cheating was inevitable among some students, it was not representative of the majority of them; moreover, those who couldn’t master the material on their own would still fail the exams (and, therefore, the class) anyway.

Unfortunately, Calculus III proved me wrong.

Don’t get me wrong… I had a number of really good Calc III students,both those who were innately quantitatively gifted, and those who struggled and worked hard to persevere. Hell, I’d wager than most of Calc III students were honest, if not exactly hard-working.

It’s just the sheer volume and indifference displayed by the students this semester is infuriating and disheartening. First there was the Cramster fiasco, which was followed two weeks later by the solutions manual blunder. The former was committed by about 15% of the class, and the latter by about 20%, with 10% of the class being caught both times. Some of the students were the expected under-performers looking for easy points, but many were talented and smart students who, surprisingly to me at least, claimed to have done the same thing all through high school. I understand this mentality and could have even sympathized with it, except for the fact that all of students, when I talked to them individually about it, be they good or bad, couldn’t have cared less about being caught, and brushed it off with a nonchalant “aw shucks, you caught me” attitude, which pissed… me… off.

(Of course, that apathy dissolved into professed sorrow and shame the moment I called each one of them into my office to sign their name on the Dean of Students’ official Academic Dishonesty Reporting Form. I might have taken a moment’s bemusement from that if I wasn’t in anguish about labeling a tenth of class as cheaters on official paperwork.)

As a result, I killed the rest of the homework and labs, and let the rest of course be decided by exams and “podcast” assignments. Students knew I was ticked, and seemed to take the Honor Code I established fairly seriously. Finally.

So fast-forward to the last week. One of my students — let’s call him Billy — asked if he could take the final exam early as the scheduled exam time conflicted with a military deployment. Now our department has a no-early-finals policy, and I always stick to it on the grounds that the date of the final is clearly stated both in the syllabus and on the course website from the very the first day of class. This has caused me trouble before when students (or the parents) are too short-sighted to plan around it, but this didn’t seem to be the case, and so I acquiesced.

The exam was written to let students use Maple, and as a result had some strict rules governing its use, the two most paramount being (1) no online communication at all during the exam and (2) to ensure that, the manual disabling of the wireless adapter for the duration of the exam. Long story short: whenever I wasn’t around, Billy would turn on the wireless and chat for clues (effectively sharing the exam online in the process), and then disable it before I returned. I know this because I have it recorded using a program called Monitor. So got to sign the form and fail the class and ruin my faith in student honesty all in one fell swoop.