Published at May 28, 2007
in Linux.
I was recently assigned a group project in my European History class that involved making a video as the final product. I very quickly became my group’s technical “whiz”, being suited to the job in disposition and experience.
I realized that, unfortunately, I knew of no good all purpose video editing software for Linux (my operating system of choice; I use Ubuntu). I soon learned that this is because there aren’t any (please feel free to prove me wrong!). I left a post on Ubuntu Forums asking for advice, and received several suggestions, the best contender of which was kdenlive, a very straightforward, fully featured video editing application.
Kdenlive worked perfectly for splicing videos, trimming them, and laying sound over them. It consistently crashed, however, when dealing with images (not video clips), and when opening saved projects. This made it very difficult do deal with, given that I needed to create a slideshow of sorts for my project. I eventually got the project done, but only by stubbornly persisting with kdenlive for several hours until I could get everything together before it crashed. I will be looking out for a new version of kdenlive; with these bugs fixed it will be an incredibly useful program.
No, sorry, this post does not address math in a different coordinate system. It does, however, address the unfortunate reality that math is becoming a more and more polarizing subject: either a student is very good or is but dull normal.
I have heard (from those older than myself) that in the olden days one had to be exceptional to advance beyond high school math in high school. Now it is commonplace to find people taking Calculus (technically college math) in senior year, if not even earlier. But it also seems that there a greater number of people who are falling below the established mathematical standard. In Washington, over half of students taking last year’s standardized mathematics exam failed it. This is no difficult math folks. And Washington students are supposed to be above average as a whole.
So what do these conflicting data mean? Must be that a greater number of students are good at math, but at the same time a greater number are exceedingly lacking in mathematical skill. This leaves a much smaller middle ground, those who are just okay at math, not great, not terrible. This is bad because it turns math into a kind of elitist subject, where those who aren’t awesome think that they are utterly terrible and get demoralized, and as a result sink into the ranks of those who are utterly terrible. This means even less people who are mathematically competent, an important group for this age of developing technology and ideas. Bad news my friends.
So how do we fix this grave dilemma? Make our math education better! This way, there will be no one that really can’t do math for beans. I think some schools are taking initiative in this direction, though it may come too little too late (the case of many educational improvements in the US). I hope not. Cross your fingers, and support those attempting to better math education.
Published at May 18, 2007
in School.
Today in my Language Arts class, we were having a discussion regarding something encountered in a book we were reading. In order to earn “participation points”, each student had to voice at least one question, opinion, or comment. I noticed that, within a time span of roughly ten minutes, the word “like” was injected out of context into peoples’ speech no less than 21 times. Though I myself sometimes fall prey to this habit, I thought its incredibly frequent occurrence today was lamentable and worth comment. My advice to you (and myself): do your best to edit improper uses of this word out of your speech entirely, as it drastically undermines the intelligence of the speaker.
(For those in question, Language Arts is akin to an English class, though by calling it by that appellation teachers alleviate the sorry obligation to teach anything directly related to the use of the English language. Perhaps this is a cause of the above state of affairs?)
Published at May 13, 2007
in Life.
Yesterday we were having burritos for dinner, and my dad was savagely sliced by his tortilla. He is a smart guy too, not like this was a result of scarce intelligence. This unfortunate turn of events just goes to show you that you must be wary of danger, wherever it may lie. The most unsuspecting objects (inanimate or otherwise) can strike out and wound you in your most vulnerable place (in the case of my father: his lower lip). Watch your backs (or lips), my friends…
At last the moment I have been waiting for has arrived: both of my Advanced Placement tests have come and gone! On Wednesday I took the AP Calculus AB exam, which I didn’t own, but I still think I did pretty well. The AP European History test, which I took yesterday, may have been a different issue, as I think I did spectacularly on the multiple choice but not so hot on the essays. Oh wait, I am not supposed to talk about this for thirty-three hours yet. Pretend you didn’t read that…
Punch line: I now have free time, liberated from studying the gargantuan amounts of information that I was supposed to have memorized! Now I get to continue learning Python, develop a website or two, get some of my untouched community service hours done, code some stuff, excel in photography, feed my fish, peer into the metaphysical workings of the world…and do all the other things I put off while studying for these exams. Please excuse me, I have a lawn to mow…
Published at May 4, 2007
in Math.
We all know about square numbers, but did you know that some numbers are triangular? You can visualize a square number like so:
+++
+++
+++
(being 32). You may have seen this coming: a triangular number could be represented like this:
+
++
+++
Nice! A triangle! Must be the triangle of three (=6). But while squaring a number is easy, how the heck can you “triangle” a number? Well, a little thought produces a simple solution. The following arrangement may assist:
+##
++#
+++
The pluses represent the numbers of the square of three that are included in its triangle, while the pound signs are those that are not. Check it out: the equation
n(n+1)
2
will give the triangle of any number n, as according to the area of a triangle: base * height / 2. You are just including the areas (the numbers) that make up the hypotenuse (if visualized as a right triangle), thus included in the area (by multiplying by n+1 as the width instead of n). The first few triangular numbers are as follows:
1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28…
The idea of triangular numbers can be used for a cool math trick: quickly taking the sum of the first n integers. What is the sum of the first 50 integers? 50*(50+1)/2=1275. Sweet!
“Machiavelli”
“Sisyphus”
