I spend a lot of time browsing the blogosphere for things that interest me. Here’s some of what stood out in the past few days…
- NCLB: Act II – Expect New Rules for Title I on Tuesday – David J. Hoff at Education Week points out that Anre Duncan’s Department of Education will release new Title I regs this week. “Graduation rates” will likely be redefined. The changes may impact minimum cell size for the number of students in a subgroup needed for that group to be include under NCLB’s accountability rules.
- Ga. Senate OKs Extra Pay for Math, Science Teachers – EdWeek carried an Associated Press story a few days ago on Georgia’s plan to up the pay of math and science teachers. It will be interesting to see if the move carries over to other states and to other shortage areas (like special education). Georgia math & science teachers would get the extra pay for five years and then they’d have that bonus tied to student performance. That smells like merit pay to me…
- YouTube Edu Launches – Cool Cat teacher Vicki Davis commented a few days ago on the launch of YouTube’s K-12 channel. Still some bugs to work out.
- Open Education had a piece this week that reviewed some useful sites for teachers.
- Teacher Magazine ran a short piece on the annual “Technology Counts” report that Education Week just finished. Who’s Number One? West Virginia (although it shares the spot light in a tie with Georgia).
As we were driving to my wife’s family’s house on the morning of Christmas Eve we stopped and went inside a mall and bought a few last minute Christmas presents. There was a bookstore. Being educators, my wife and I decided to get books as some of the presents.
When the cashier rang us up we had four bargain books and they told me that there was a special on; I could have one more bargain book for free. It took me about nine seconds to decide. I’d thought about the book already – right there at eye level on the bargain rack…
I grabbed Ian Stewart’s The Story of Mathematics: from Babylonian Numerals to Chaos Theory.
My wife looked at me: “That’s it? You’re going to get that?” She called me a geek.
Later that evening I was browsing. I read a section on the Pythagorean cult that I found interesting.
Everyone has heard of Pythagoras. And his theorem (which we won’t talk about here). Pythagoras was a philosopher at a time when philosophy and religion weren’t very different things. He believed that numbers provided the key to understanding the universe. As part of that belief, Pythagoras and his followers believe that every length could be expressed as a ratio in comparison to other lengths. This made the universe a convenient place, at least mathematically.
Enter Hippasus. Hippasus figured out that this particular belief was false. He proved that some numbers couldn’t be expressed in terms of a ratio. In other words, he discovered irrational numbers. He made the mistake of announcing his findings at to a group of Pythagoreans while they were in a boat together out on the Mediterranean Sea. They were so upset with him that they threw him out of the boat and let him drown. At least that’s one version of the story…
It should be noted that the Pythagorean philosophical beliefs were considered controversial and were persecuted to the point that many of them fled to Egypt. On one occasion, 50 Pythagorean were slaughtered in a single location.
The moral of the story for Hippasus? Never announce your belief in a heresy while riding in a boat.
And maybe I am a geek…
