Check out my new blog post on Karl Popper and whether we should treat Natural Science differently than we treat Social Science at Sapien Games.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:10 — 34.0MB)
In This Podcast
- What is a Category, and why do I care?
- Did cave men use the word “the”?
- Getting funky with “functors”.
- The WORST George Clinton impersonation of ALL TIME
- Sets vs Groups vs Vector Spaces vs Graphs
- Do movies take away something important from life?
- Do 3-d movies give it back?
- AND Bonobo Sex … Yes, I said it … Bonobo Sex
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:59 — 37.5MB)
In This Podcast
What’s wrong with economics?- Is mathematics an appropriate tool for social science?
- Vector bundles
- The Delorean and it’s role in understanding typewriters.
- The 12-Gauge shotgun approach to fixing economics!
References
- Eric Weinstein’s lectures on Gauge theory (3 video’s at the bottom of page – well … links to video’s.)
- Tom’s post on it here.
- Terrence Tao on Gauge Theory
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:36 — 24.4MB)
In this Episode:
What does a good Clint Eastwood impression have to do with being a good teacher?- How Teach For America is revolutionizing the teaching scene
- Can you teach good teaching?
- What’s up with Texas and their maniacal standards for graduation?
References
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:04 — 27.5MB)
In this episode:
- The sexy habits of Side Blotched Lizards
- Quantum Game Theory Basics
- Q vs Captain Picard – who’s better at coin flipping? And,
- Can you smell what The Rock, paper, scissors is cooking?
References
I come across articles that might make for good pod-fodder all the time, so I thought I ought to start posting them here as potential starting points.
This article (The Science of Success) has some interesting ideas on gene-environment interactions as a sort of dual-strategy approach to life. One set of genes makes for people likely to do pretty well in most circumstances (the “dandelion” strategy), whereas another set of genes makes for people who will thrive like crazy given the right care–or, languish in ordinary circumstances (the “orchid” strategy).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:59 — 22.9MB)
In this podcast we discuss:
- What a ‘Game’ is, mathematically
- Some areas where games apply to real life (most of them!)
- How game theory is applied in biology
- The Prisoners Dilemma game, and
- Why all political campaigns go negative
For more about game theory, a great resource is GameTheory.net. And I’ll be posting a series of articles on my blog introducing game theory in politics and biology over the next few months.
Apologies
I’ve got two things to apologize for. First, that it’s taken so long to get this second episode on the web. After we posted the last one, we were heading right into the last weeks of the term, and lord knows how that goes.
The second thing is that this episode had some technical difficulties. There is some clipping here and there, and some chucks had to be removed (sorry if that breaks the flow).
At the end of the episode, I’ve appended a short discussion of the Nash Equilibrium in Game Theory. We’d actually had a section on that within the podcast, but it was too messed up to use. So, I cut that whole chunk out and we redid it, and added at the end.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:03 — 29.3MB)
Main Talking Points in this Podcast
- How American Middle Schools are not up to par with Japanese Middle Schools, and if there is anything we can do about it.
- Is there such a thing as an Asian philosophy of Mathematics Education? If not, who cares?
- Ways that time bombs and cow tipping can aid students learning of math.
References and Links
- Leung, Frederick. 2001. In Search of an East Asian Identity in Mathematics Education. Educational Studies in Mathematics 47, no. 1 (May 29): 35-51. doi:10.1023/A:1017936429620.
- Sawyer, W.W. MATHEMATICS, EMOTIONS AND THINGS. http://www.marco-learningsystems.com/pages/sawyer/things.htm.
- Schaub, Maryellen, and David P. Baker. 1991. Solving the Math Problem: Exploring Mathematics Achievement in Japanese and American Middle Grades. American Journal of Education 99, no. 4: 623-42.
