Musings of the Technical Bard » Education

R.I.P. John McCarthy

Taliesyn — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:14:30 +0000

Yesterday, John McCarthy, one of the fathers of modern computer programming passed away. John McCarthy may not have received as much notoriety among tech people as Steve Jobs did, but he was perhaps more influential. McCarthy developed LISP in 1959, based on Alonzo Church’s lambda calculus, for use in artificial intelligence research. My contact with …

On Canadian History in the Schools

Taliesyn — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:15:38 +0000

My eldest daughter is in the eighth grade, and she is a fairly typical 13 year old. She likes and excels at math, likes to read and enjoys most of her classes. At her school, they long ago merged what were once Grammar, Literature, History and Geography into one giant mess called “Humanities”. While I …

On Math in the Schools

Taliesyn — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 03:45:07 +0000

The teaching of mathematics in our public schools is in a terrible state and Margaret Wente has done a point of explaining one of the key reasons why: An alarming number of elementary-school teachers are so uncomfortable with math, they can’t teach it properly. This means that more and more students are arriving at university …

The failure to explain Capitalism

Taliesyn — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:45:40 +0000

I have noticed in recent years that some new graduates of university do not understand capitalism. A recent posting by John Westover, entitled The Forgotten Member of the Triple Bottom Line, brought these thoughts forward in my mind. John explains that our educational system has indoctrinated (my word, not his) our young people about the …

On Computer Simulations and Reality

Taliesyn — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:48:07 +0000

Today, I was directed to a very good article, But It Worked in the Computer Model, on why complex computer models, of any subject, will usually contain errors and not provide a good analogue to reality without a lot of real world experimentation. It also explains, tangentially, why many students coming out of universities with …

Impressed by youth

Taliesyn — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 03:46:50 +0000

In the Saturday National Post, I was intrigued by a column that talked about young people blogging about personal finance and providing advice to their peers. While I no longer qualify as a young person, I found these blogs (I actually checked them out) interesting and would point any young people to them. They do …

On Taxation and Affordability

Taliesyn — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:21:45 +0000

Two items in the news/blogosphere over the last week caught my attention and triggered a thought in my mind. The first was the news that a survey by Environics for TD Canada Trust found that 30 per cent of respondents don’t have enough cash to pay for basic living expenses. This was run as the headline …

Health Care and Election 2011

Taliesyn — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:47:47 +0000

To my faithful readers – all four of you – I apologize for my lack of posting this election season. Like many, I find this fourth election in 7 years a little uninspired. Scratch that – I find it insipid and depressing. From all sides. The issues that concern me are those that concern most …

On LIB promise to help students

Taliesyn — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:33:40 +0000

The Liberal promise to help students is doomed to fail if implemented, due to the law of unintended consequences. Providing students with more “free money” for education will have two negative effects. (1) It will reduce the incentive for students to choose an educational path that leads to real employment. If you don’t have …

On Fukushima, Part 2

Taliesyn — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:01:52 +0000

I had another thought on the Fukushima incident that I think is interesting. A number of years ago, I read an interesting book called “To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design“. While a short book with only a few detailed case studies, it does lay out how failures are a …