Dog days

It's hot summer, and I'm mostly brain-dead again, so here's a hodge-podge of links and thoughts...

This is a cool idea. (via Itinerary for Marlette and Guiseppe)

Math is scary. (via Number 2 Pencil)

I already knew that verbal SAT/ACT/GRE scores were more highly correlated with mathematical success than math test scores were. I approve of this statistic, of course, since I'm a mathematician whose verbal test scores were better. It also makes sense to me; the (big) problems I've seen my classmates and students having over the years are much more often failures to understand what's going on -- especially failures to thoroughly read the question and failures to apply logic to the problem -- than they are "mathematical" problems like an inability to add or even do calculus. Being able to read carefully and to think and write clearly has more than made up for my inability to keep track of positive and negative numbers, and I honed these skills just as much in my best history classes as I did in my best math classes.

But, all that pontificating aside, a commenter at Tall, Dark and Mysterious points out that poor language skills that are specific to English might correlate with good performance in math, and not only because other countries tend to have better math education:

Robert - very very interesting, about the verbal versus math SAT scores. But I think that if one were to correlate English skills with mathematical success in my classes, you’d find a negative correlation - but that would be confounded by the fact that many of my strongest students were the East Asian exchange students, many of whom spoke very poor English. (Often I’d have a student call me over to their desk in the middle of a test and ask a question such as “What’s a rectangle?” And then I’d draw the appropriate quadrilateral, and they’d thank me, and then write up a beautiful, correct solution.) However, perhaps as a result of their poor English, these students were more inclined to read over the entire question carefully rather than scanning for keywords - something that the weaker anglophones do regularly.

And here's fmhLisa on being nice, nice, nice (a different aspect of the "Nice guys, bitchy women" topic).

Finally, I have a confession to make to the Feminist Mormon Housewives. I've recently noticed that I'm listed as a Lady Naccer, which is flattering, seriously, but I'm afraid I'm not really a Lady Naccer, seeing as how I'm Catholic.

I do think it's neat that I fit in with people I like and am interested in -- homeschoolers think I'm a homeschooler, and feminist Mormons think I'm a feminist Mormon. I guess I'm fitting in a little too well when I start accidentally deceiving people that way, but still, it was nice while it lasted. :)