Life is not a word problem
Our tutoring consultant continues to gain insights from his students.
Ways of learning and of avoiding it
Articles Tagged with learning
Interpreting French Oast
The complicated business of reading signs
Even simple daily tasks can involve very sophisticated thinking.
Plato’s fallacy
Education is good, but it has its limits
A scientist cautions against the idea behind the philosopher-king.
On textbooks
Learning and re-learning
Textbooks are to learn from, of course. But who is doing the learning, and when?
Hard problems and easy ones
What’s difficult is not always clear
Humans have accomplished some pretty amazing things, from putting men on the Moon (with old technology!) to sequencing their own heredity. But stubborn problems that look much easier persist.
What are tests for?
Several possible answers (and an essay)
One of our consultants has begun tutoring, which has brought him into contact with the world of standardized tests after many years away.
Unhappy with success
The Standard Model works too well
An enormous apparatus for scientific research is finding only what was expected. This bothers scientists.
A star by moonlight
How can the Moon affect a star?
As things go in the universe, the Moon is a small thing, insignificant compared to a distant star. Yet our astronomer found that it can have a definite influence on measures of the latter.
Thinking in stories
The limits of doing your science in metaphors
It’s vital not to confuse an illuminating explanation of science with the science itself.
Business books
A different form of literature
Our consultants encounter a type of writing that seems terribly strange, until they realize what it’s for.