Regentrude wrote: "OTOH, out of the many hundreds of students I have taught, the truly outstanding students who display extraordinary abilities have almost all been male." According to IQ tests, the dispersion of intelligence is higher in males than females, although the means are about the same. There are more extremely dumb males than females, but also more extremely smart ones. On the SAT there are more males with near-perfect scores. The higher dispersion in males may be one reason that in many intellectual fields, men have made most of the breakthrough discoveries. The above argument is not PC, of course. Then-Harvard-president Larry Summers was demonized for expressing it.

I agree with regentrude (and earned a PhD in physics). My 1st semester in college I took electricity and magnetism (using the book of Purcell) and multivariable calculus. (I had come in with AP credits in calculus and physics.) To grasp Maxwell's equations one must have mastered multivariable calculus concepts such divergence, gradient, and curl. I really should have studied multivariable calculus BEFORE taking the E&M class, and since I had taken calculus in 10th grade, there was time to do so. For a student interested in physics, I suggest taking calculus as soon as one is ready and then to continue to multivariable calculus, differential equations, complex analysis, linear algebra. It is all needed, and it will be useful even if one does not become a physicist.

If the student is interested in a subject such as physics which is permeated by the concepts of calculus (acceleration is the 2nd DERIVATIVE), calculus should be learned as soon as the student is ready for it IMO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction By MATT RICHTEL REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — On the eve of a pivotal academic year in Vishal Singh’s life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk: book or computer? By all rights, Vishal, a bright 17-year-old, should already have finished the book, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,†his summer reading assignment. But he has managed 43 pages in two months. He typically favors Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos. That is the case this August afternoon. Bypassing Vonnegut, he clicks over to YouTube, meaning that tomorrow he will enter his senior year of high school hoping to see an improvement in his grades, but without having completed his only summer homework. On YouTube, “you can get a whole story in six minutes,†he explains. “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.†Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning. Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention. “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,†said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.†But even as some parents and educators express unease about students’ digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory. <rest at link> My children don't NEED Internet access or cell phones. If I think gadgets are doing them more harm than good, I can take them away. My oldest is only 7, so we'll see how these resolutions hold up. At home, there is only one PC connected to the internet, and I only unlock it for 30 minutes for a kid as a reward for doing some academic work (like EPGY). I am interested to read how others manage their children's use of technology.

Based on a recommendation at the Kitchen Table Math site, I bought a geometry book, published in 1982, which looks pretty good (and serious). The book lists other titles in the series. My default assumption is that older textbooks are better than newer ones :001_smile:. Here are the titles and authors in the "Addison-Wesley Mathematics Series". They are available used on Amazon. The calculus book by Thomas and Finney has a good reputation. I am interested in the opinions of people using this series. Algebra by R. Johnson, L. Lendsey, and W. Slesnick Geometry by E. Moise and F. Downs Algebra and Trigonometry by R. Johnson, L. Lendsey, and W. Slesnick, and G. Bates Pre-Calculus Mathematics by M. Shanks, C. Fleeonor, and C. Brumfiel Elements of Calculus and Analytic Geometry by G. Thomas and R. Finney

http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html Exploring Computational Thinking Maybe the resources at the site above (from Google) will be helpful in teaching programming, arithmetic, and algebra. I have not tried them yet. The programming language used, Python, is free.

The existence of large, innate differences in intelligence is a very politically incorrect fact. Most in the media, government, and academia ignore this fact. Thus it should not be surprising if mothers you know assume that you are somehow teaching your children better, rather than those kids being superior in intelligence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85 By JASCHA HOFFMAN Benoît B. Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician who developed an innovative theory of roughness and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields, died on Thursday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85. His death was caused by pancreatic cancer, his wife, Aliette, said. He had lived in Cambridge. Dr. Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal†to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature. “Applied mathematics had been concentrating for a century on phenomena which were smooth, but many things were not like that: the more you blew them up with a microscope the more complexity you found,†said David Mumford, a professor of mathematics at Brown University. “He was one of the primary people who realized these were legitimate objects of study.†In a seminal book, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature,†published in 1982, Dr. Mandelbrot defended mathematical objects that he said others had dismissed as “monstrous†and “pathological.†Using fractal geometry, he argued, the complex outlines of clouds and coastlines, once considered unmeasurable, could now “be approached in rigorous and vigorous quantitative fashion.†<rest of article at link>

http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses Open & Free Courses No instructors, no credits, no charge. Use these self-guiding materials and activities to learn at your own pace! Find a course you are interested in and click on "Get Started". If you want to keep track of your progress, sign in or create a new account. Otherwise click on "Look inside". ----------------------------------------------------------- Discussed in an NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/technology/11online.html In Higher Education, a Focus on Technology By STEVE LOHR Published: October 10, 2010

What book(s) discuss the various sources of energy, including fossil fuels, nuclear power, hydroelectric power, wind and solar, and biofuels, at a level appropriate for high school students or bright junior high school students? The book Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems by Vaclav Smil MIT Press (2008) has good reviews on Amazon but is a 500 page tome that is more thorough than what I am looking for. I am ordering Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence" Robert Bryce Public Affairs (2009) for my own interest, but in general I'd prefer that books used in education not be polemical.

I have a 3yo girl and 5yo boy starting to learn the piano. (The piano teacher says the girl is more proficient :001_smile: .) On Craigslist some people offer to give away old pianos to someone who will move it. I know nothing about the piano. What should I look for in these ads?

Links to dozens of academic competitions are at the Johns Hopkins CTY site, http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/linkb.htm .

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405511702112290.html By THOMAS SPENCE Wall Street Journal September 24, 2010 ... According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents. The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it. Everyone agrees that if boys don't read well, it's because they don't read enough. But why don't they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the "stuffy" literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must "meet them where they are"—that is, pander to boys' untutored tastes. For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means "books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor." AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to "grossology" parties. "Just get 'em reading," she counsels cheerily. "Worry about what they're reading later." ... Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised "so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education." "Plato before him," writes C. S. Lewis, "had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful." This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are. One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far. ... The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time "plugged in" than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys' attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor? ... I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

Having used the "What Your Xth-grader Needs to Know" books with my eldest son, I just bought the book Books to Build On: A Grade-by-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers Core Knowledge Series (1996) by E. D. Hirsch Jr. and John Holdren 361 pages It's good IMO. Like the WTM book, it reviews many books at each subject and grade level.

Reading magazines and books often suggests other books to read. I can put those books in my shopping list on Amazon, but I wish there were a site that let me make notes on books, describing where I heard about a book and/or why I'd like to read it (or have my children read it). Ideally the book site would let members share their current reading lists and comments with others (if they so chose). Is there already such a site?

Wissner-Gross lives in the NYC area and counsels such parents, and reading her book and New York Times stories on education, it appears to me that clustering such bright and competitive parents together can induce a degree of insanity. I don't want to become one of them, but they know what they are talking about when it comes to educational opportunities. Wissner-Gross does not understand that much of her advice -- such as prepping your 7th grader to take the SAT -- only makes sense if your child is quite gifted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/business/economy/05view.html A Course Load for the Game of Life by Greg Mankiw New York Times September 4, 2010 AS a Harvard professor who teaches introductory economics, I have the delightful assignment of greeting about 700 first-year students every fall. And this year, I am sending the first of my own children off to college. Which raises these questions: What should they be learning? And what kind of foundation is needed to understand and be prepared for the modern economy? Here is my advice for students of all ages: LEARN SOME ECONOMICS You knew this was coming. Perhaps I am just trying to protect my profession’s market share, but I hope it is more than that. The great economist Alfred Marshall called economics “the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.†When students leave school, “the ordinary business of life†will be their most pressing concern. If the current moribund economy turns into a lost decade, as some economists fear it might, it will be crucial to be prepared for it. There may be no better place than a course in introductory economics. It helps students understand the whirlwind of forces swirling around them. It develops rigorous analytic skills that are useful in a wide range of jobs. And it makes students better citizens, ready to evaluate the claims of competing politicians. For those who have left college behind, it is not too late to learn. Pick up an economics textbook (mine would be a fine choice), and you might find yourself learning more than you imagined. Not convinced? Even if you are a skeptic of my field, as many are, there is another, more cynical reason to study it. As the economist Joan Robinson once noted, one purpose of studying economics is to avoid being fooled by economists. <rest at link> He also recommends courses in statistics, finance, and psychology.

Here are some books that list competitions. I've only read the book by Wissner-Gross, which I do highly recommend. Academic Competitions for Gifted Students: A Resource Book for Teachers and Parents (2007) by Mary K. Tallent-Runnels and Ann C. Candler-Lotven Competitions for Talented Kids (2005) by Frances A. Karnes and Tracy L. Riley What High Schools Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You to Know): Create a Long-Term Plan for Your 7th to 10th Grader for Getting into the Top Colleges (2008) by Elizabeth Wissner-Gross

People who follow this sub-forum of WTM may be interested in the mailing lists of the TAG (Talented and Gifted) project http://www.tagfam.org/ , especially the TAGMAX list for homeschoolers.

EPGY and AoPS (Art of Problem Solving) should be considered.

Penn State Online http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/StudentServices_HighSchoolStudents.shtml (seems pretty restrictive -- can only enroll in one course at a time)

"Glass ceiling" is a meaningless term invented by feminists to explain disparities in certain professions, when they cannot point to any specific discriminatory practices. Since the ceiling is "glass", we can't see it, but it must be there. What a convenient, non-falsifiable theory. Maybe not as many women as men lust after the title of CEO and are willing to sacrifice everything to pursue it.

Thanks for your comments. I'd go further and say that ideally, students would be so interested in the subject that they buy the textbook well ahead of time and have read some of it before the course begins.

I disagree that MCQ's are inherently more "elementary". FYI, medical licensing exams have lots of multiple choice questions.

Course materials, including videos of lectures are available online: http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx courses SEE programming includes one of Stanford’s most popular engineering sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford undergraduates, and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering. Introduction to Computer Science Programming Methodology CS106A Programming Abstractions CS106B Programming Paradigms CS107 Artificial Intelligence Introduction to Robotics CS223A Natural Language Processing CS224N Machine Learning CS229 Linear Systems and Optimization The Fourier Transform and its Applications EE261 Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems EE263 Convex Optimization I EE364A Convex Optimization II EE364B Additional School of Engineering Courses Programming Massively Parallel Processors CS193G iPhone Application Programming CS193P Seminars and Webinars