education

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remlaPS
Home Page Web Logs at CCIL

Nov_06_2008

To be memorized...
VRP - View Reference Point
VRN - View plane normal
VUP - View up vector (cannot be parallel to VPN)
VRC - View reference coordinates
CW - Center of Window
PRP - Projection Reference Point
DoP - Direction of Projection [ DoP = CW - PRP ]
NPC - Normalized Projection Coordinates

World coordinates - VRP, VUP, VPN
View Reference Coordinates - PRP, Window, Front/Rear cutting planes,


Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#Acronyms06Nov08
Oct_05_2008

Schools where I won't send my son...

Columbia University (Hansen, Amedinijad)
University of Chicago (William Ayers)
UC Berkeley (general left-wing extremism)

==
Penn State isn't black-listed yet, but if they don't do something about
Professor Mann and his fraudulent research, they will be.

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#Blacklistschools05Oct08
Sep_26_2008

Bookmark for CS536, Computer Graphics, assignment 1....
http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~david/Classes/CS430/HWs/Assignment1.html

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#Assignment126Sep08
Aug_29_2008

First pass at filtering things out. "?" means I might think about it.
"n" means probably not.... One that caught my attention was "biological
simulations". Maybe a good subject, given demographics, though not
related to much that I know of at Verizon. I looked and that's on David
Breen's list. Coincidentally, I'm taking a class of his starting in a
couple weeks.

[?] Cognitive modeling
[n] Computer algebra
[n] Computer vision
[n] Engineering design
[?] Geometric modeling
[?] Operations research
[n] Software Engineering
[n] Symbolic computation
[n] Symbolic mathematical computation
[?] Theory of algorithms
[n] algebraic algorithms
[n] algorithms and systems for computer algebra
[?] analysis and synthesis of visual appearance
[?] applied artificial intelligence
[?] artificial intelligence
[n] automatic performance tuning
[n] autonomic computing
[?] biological simulation
[?] combinatorial optimization
[n] computational methods for Markov decision processes
[n] computer graphics
[n] computer science education
[n] computer vision
[n] driving and driver distraction
[?] engineering informatics
[n] formal design modeling and analysis
[?] geometric modeling
[n] governance of software development
[?] graph theory
[n] high performance computing
[?] human and machine learning
[n] human multitasking
[n] human-computer interaction
[?] intelligent tutoring systems
[n] medical image analysis
[n] mobile collaboration
[?] parallel and distributed computation
[n] problem-solving environments
[?] program understanding
[n] reverse engineering
[n] scientific visualization
[n] semantic web services
[n] service-oriented platforms
[?] software economics
[n] software engineering education
[n] software evolution
[n] software security
[n] software testing
[n] software visualization
[n] stochastic optimization
[n] synthetic characters

I guess I should go through and rank the "?" topics according to 1.)
Personal interest and 2.) Relevance to Verizon. Not tonight though.

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#FirstScreenTopics29Aug08
Aug_29_2008

Unique "Interests" from the Drexel faculty web-page... Not counting
(Affiliated|Auxilliary|Adjunct) faculty.

algebraic algorithms
algorithms and systems for computer algebra
analysis and synthesis of visual appearance
applied artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence
automatic performance tuning
autonomic computing
biological simulation
cognitive modeling
combinatorial optimization
computational methods for markov decision processes
computer algebra
computer graphics
computer science education
computer vision
driving and driver distraction
engineering design
engineering informatics
formal design modeling and analysis
geometric modeling
governance of software development
graph theory
high performance computing
high-performance computing
human and machine learning
human multitasking
human-computer interaction
intelligent tutoring systems
medical image analysis
mobile collaboration
operations research
parallel and distributed computation
problem-solving environments
program understanding
reverse engineering
scientific visualization
semantic web services
service-oriented platforms
software economics
software engineering
software engineering education
software evolution
software security
software testing
software visualization
stochastic optimization
symbolic computation
symbolic mathematical computation
synthetic characters
theory of algorithms

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#DrexelResearch29Aug08
Jul_20_2008

It's the AP, so it's suspect, but this article caught my attention anyway.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIknLQBhUVOj_QjvWRCm2sxwA4JQD91UHBDG0
> NEW YORK (AP) . On an occasional evening at the kitchen table in Brooklyn,
> N.Y., Victoria Morey has been known to sit down with her 9-year-old son and
> do something she's not supposed to.
>
> "I am a rebel," confesses this mother of two. And just what is this
> subversive act in which Morey engages . with a child, yet?
>
> Long division.

So I did a search and found this -
http://www.csun.edu/%7Evcmth00m/longdivision.pdf, with this disturbing
opening in the abstract.

> We discuss the role of long division in the K - 12 mathematics curriculum. We
> begin by reviewing the reasons that most math educators today depreciate the
> topic and other topics in the curriculum that derive from it, such as
> polynomial long division or polynomial factorization.

So apparently, there is some truth to the article. Long division
apparently is really being deprecated in today's K-12 math curricula.
The AP article quotes someone named Pat Cooney as saying, "Thus, when a
parent is asked to multiply 88 by 5, we'll do it with pen and paper,
multiplying 8 by 5 and carrying over the 4, etc. But a child today might
reason that 5 is half of 10, and 88 times 10 is 880, so 88 times 5 is half
of that, 440 poof, no pen, no paper."

Well, no. I would have done [(90 * 5) - (2 * 5)], but that's a contrived
example. Let's see one of those kids do 88 * 17... "poof, no pen, no
paper"? OK, [(90 * 17) - (2 * 17) = 1530 - 34 = 1496] works, but you're
starting to need some effort to keep the numbers straight in your head.
Go past 3 digits and you really start running out of steam (or at least, I
do).

Cooney goes on to say that "the traditional way is really a shortcut".

They did a little sleight of hand there. They opened the article talking
about long-division, but Cooney gave his simple example using
multiplication (conveniently containing the number 5, which just happens
to be a factor of the base in base 10), so I'm not even sure what they're
actually teaching as an alternative to long division.

Assuming they're teaching similar techniques to Cooney's multiplication
example in replacement for long division, I'm not buying the description
that one is a short-cut for the other. What we have are two distinct
algorithms. The traditional algorithm is a computational algorithm.
Cooney's algorithm is a search algorithm (10 was chosen by searching for a
convenient number to simplify the equation.)

I'm not going to do the analysis, but my intuition is that the
computational algorithm is much more consistent than the search algorithm.
In some cases, like Cooney's example, the search algorithm would be
faster. In other cases (I'd guess most), the computational algorithm
would be faster. The number of steps in the computational algorithm for
long division is always proportional with the number of digits. On the
other hand, there may be a large upper boundary on the number of steps in
the search algorithm. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. Bad
guesses lead to lots of steps.

If I were going to choose between the two for implementation by computer,
I would choose long division. It's disturbing to me that we're apparently
now teaching our children to do multiplication and division *only* by
search. The article also claims that this is "theory"? That's absurd.
Search is keep guessing til you guess right. That's brute force, not
theory. You can use theory to inform your guesses, but I think that would
require knowledge of long-division. Their reasoning is circular.

In my opinion, it is valuable to teach search techniques for use when
appropriate. My teachers did. But trying to use search to replace
computation is a really bad idea. No f'ing wonder our math and science
scores are taking a hit if this is what they're teaching now.

I will be raising h-e-double-hockeysticks if they try to gloss over long
division in my son's future math classes.

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#LongDivision20July08
Jul_18_2008

Strang lecture on eigenvalues and eigenvectors... (Lecture 21)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9ikPqqp5fU&feature=PlayList&p=E7DDD91010BC51F8&index=20

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#Eigs18July08
Jul_08_2008

Next lecture...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOX4T0Kb5Lw&feature=PlayList&p=E7DDD91010BC51F8&index=10

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#Lecture11-08July08
Jun_29_2008

MIT Linear Algebra lectures on youtube... REAL not required...
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E7DDD91010BC51F8

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#VideoLectures29June08
Jun_21_2008

Linear Algebra
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#LinearAlgebraMIT21June08
May_19_2008

Same document:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl

prefix namespace_URI
wsdl http://schemas.xmlsoap.org
soap http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap
http http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/http
mime http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/mime
soapenc http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding
soapenv http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope
xsi http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance
xsd http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema
tns (various) *this namespace*
(other) (various)

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#NamespaceURI19May08
May_19_2008

but wait... those 7 elements were from section 1 (Introduction). Section
2.1 says:

Services are defined using six major elements...

  • types
  • message
  • porttype
  • binding
  • port
  • service


Six elements or seven elements? Which is it? Hmmm... Section 2.1 doesn't
like "Operation" although "operation" is included in the binding section
of the previous grammar. I'm confused.

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#MoreService19May08
May_19_2008

http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-wsdl-20010315
Web Services Description Language (WSDL: version 1.1)

Elements in the definition of network services:

  • Types - Container type
  • Message - abstract definition of data being communicated.
  • Operation - abstract description of supported actions.
  • Port Type - abstract set of operations
  • Binding - concrete protocol and data format specification.
  • Port - A single endpoint: binding + network address.
  • Service - A collection of endpoints (ports).


Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#WSDL19May08
May_17_2008

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~yfcai/CS575/Lectures/SOABlueprints/SOA_Blueprints_Concepts_v0_5.pdf
A service-oriented architecture provides the implementation patterns
required to construct applications from loosely coupled services. In order
to build such applications, an implementation environment should provide
the following capabilities:

. Definition of services independent of their implementation, location or use
. Implementation and hosting of services as a provider
. Location and usage of services as a consumer
. Assembly of services from other services and business rules
. Support for synchronous, asynchronous and conversational services
. Orchestration of application presentation built on services and rules
. Support for multiple forms of human interaction (such as portal, email, wireless, etc.)
. Automated data transformation between disparate data structures
. Provisioning of local and remote services
. Support for simulating, testing and debugging of services

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#ServiceDesign17May08
Apr_06_2008

Here's our presentation from the PACISE 2008 conference.
http://members.aol.com/remlaps/docs/PACISE08/RADIX_REPRESENTATIONS_AND_STORAGE_UTILIZATION.pps

The conference page is here (for as long as it lasts)
http://cs.kutztown.edu/pacise/

I understand the Proceedings will be published on CD sometime in the fall.

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#PACISE08-06Apr08
Feb_10_2008

So I can finally delete some June, 2007 e-mails from mom, here's the
complete list of math educational links for kids, which I still haven't
taken the time to look over.

numberskills.com.au
www.mathletics.com.au
http://www.aaamath.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/
http://math247.jot.com/WikiHome/Library
http://www.counton.org/
http://www.firstinmath.com/
http://www.shodor.org/
http://www.nrich.maths.org/
http://www.waldomaths.com/
http://www.wizzkidz.com/maths.htm
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/index.shtml
http://www.mathsinternetguide.com/
http://www.blackdouglas.com.au/taskcentre/
http://www.funbrain.com/co/index.html
http://www.lmpc.edu.au/Resources/Mathematics/coordinates/coordinates.swf
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/SimpleMazeGame/
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/GeneralCoordinates/
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/MazeGame/
http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspDetail&ResourceID=241
http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspDetail&ResourceID=114
http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspDetail&ResourceID=78

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#KidsSites10Feb08
Jan_27_2008

Got this in e-mail a couple months ago. I still haven't had time to watch
the whole thing, but I like this concept... "Brick walls are there for a
reason".

==
Supposedly, around campuses in America there is a theme to some lectures:
"A hypothetical last lecture you would ever give." The thinking is to
challenge professors to pull together a lecture as if it where the last
one they would ever give. Well, there's a young Comp-Sci professor, Randy
Pousch, from Carnegie Mellon who is about to die from pancreatic cancer
and literally gave the last lecture of his life. I thought this was pretty
amazing. Read the story then when you have time, check out the lecture
video.

http://cmu.edu/uls/journeys/

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#LastLecture27Jan08
Jan_21_2008

"Admission Application Checklist" for Drexel University
http://www.drexel.edu/em/apply/coe/checklist.html

Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/education_index.html#DrexelApp21Jan08