Wednesday, January 28, 2009

NSF how about a math focus instead of a Porn focus?

I always wondered how TERC/Investigations and Everyday Math and Connected Math Project got such support. Now it turns out there was a reason the NSF paid so little attention to results.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18070.html

To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data.

8 comments:

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dan dempsey said...

Two comments deleted as they added little if anything to the discussion. The language needed some improvement for the audience.

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Anonymous said...

To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data.

A man that freezes to death because a power company chose to monitor his power usage and turned his power off without telling him is a metaphor for the student that doesn't get an education at school.

At some point, the teacher says I can no longer teach this student and shunts him down a track that will most certainly lead to failure.

In our attempts at striving to raise test scores, we are losing half our students.

NSF employees watching porn is no better than students wasting their time reading? a meaningless textbook. What more could I add to your post? What is your point? That NSF employees spend taxpayer money acting like oversexed bonobos. Has anyone checked out the magnetic field strength around the NSF lately?

Anonymous said...

This is how NSF personnel directly support the arts, what's wrong with that? They're doing fabulous with math...Success for all? So why can't art merge with the internet? Think of all the interesting physics problems that might have been written!

My best guess is the enormous accumulated hours of porn viewing is masking the ego of a counterphobic moralist. Someone who learns by rote, who is neither intuitive or perceptive.

Like naughty little boys they need to be in control all the time. Inner critics privately give themselves stinging criticism and naturally reward themselves with a little fun time, until their inner critic sobers them up.

Bennett is a good example of a counterphobic and he can't win at cards neither. His weakness is Holdem.

Anonymous said...

What's this? NSF personnel are smitten with a virus that causes an obsessive compulsive disorder? There is no antidote.

Positives
team player, hard worker, systematic, dependable, moral, principled, loyal, dependable.

Negatives
workaholic, stingy, caustic, rude, pushy, perfectionist, emotionally empty, rigid, rigid, strict, stubborn, narrow-minded, procrastinates, harsh. Not to mention uncreative (hence starving for 2-dimensional entertainment.)

Worker moralist lives in a black-white world. They are consumed with doing more. No task is ever completed. Reality is The truth, not a truth.

They are also the most predictable of all people.

They believe that their guiding principles, their beliefs, and their character traits are above all others.

1. compulsion for detail (what do you think their viewing.)
2. they lecture intolerance (guilt)
3. they avoid feelings (porn has none)
4. they are usually following a book (or a standard).


Math reform is suffering from a compulsive disorder.

2.

Anonymous said...

Think of all the interesting physics problems that could have been written...

The NSF Director's Blues

My staff is a tale of woe. We worked so hard at school reform; but they've started acting tired and listless. They punch in early and clock out late. I have to beg them to go home. [chorus]

I tried buying more computers and we increased efficiency by 4000%. So I made reservations to go whale watching in Los Cabos, but no one sent a reply to my emails. You're working too hard I wrote back and I begged them all to go home. [chorus]

So I redoubled my efforts. I gave everyone paid vacations and handed out bonuses; it was the money I saved that hadn't been spent. But next day my mail box was empty, so I opened my door and between all the moaning and screaming I heard, I shouted out into the darkended hallways - You have to go home now. [chorus]

Next I hired a pair of consultants from Austin, Texas to fix the problem and they recommended a 300 story tower with pressurized offices and natural lighting. After all, taller is better and taxpayers might be suspicious of big, but tall is longer by one letter and tall-er is unrecognizable. Its 11 PM, my consultants are missing, the lights are all out, but there's still people inside - I can hear them. And I just want to go home. [chorus]

chorus: I'm a teamplayer, but I want to go home. If only brains were between legs instead of shoulders.
Then huevos would become sesos and dos sesos are better than uno seso.