sojournTime @sojournTime@qoto.org

How can we train people in the art of learning to read scholarly research like a scientist?

Fascinated by this project that studied how biologists read papers, from undergrads to faculty, and why undergrads get so lost on things that experienced researchers find fast/easy.

More experienced readers focused on the data. More junior ones focused on the narrative.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21548455.2022.2078010

School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.
==

#Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, has spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects.

#News #Education #Schools #Students #Politics #Government

https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown

Given that I am surrounded by Mathematicians here, let me ask for help for what should be a simple problem I can't seem to be able to solve:
Assume you have n fair dice with m faces (i.e. each can roll an integer from 1 to m with a uniform probability). You roll all n, and keep the k (with 0<k<=n) highest results. What is the probability that the sum of the k dice you kept is X?
(If one keeps all the dice, probability-generating functions give the answer straightforwardly. If I roll 2 dice and keep 1 I can easily enumerate the outcomes and calculate the probabilities, but I am stumped by the general case).

#ProbabilityTheory #IShouldKnowHowToSolveThisButIDoNot 😞

As part of an ongoing research project, and also to learn how to create animated graphs, I decided to perform a literature review of zero density estimates \[N(\sigma,T) \ll T^{A(\sigma)(1-\sigma)+o(1)}\] for the Riemann zeta function, where \(1/2 < \sigma < 1\) and the game is to get the exponent \(A(\sigma)\), and particularly the supremum \(\sup_\sigma A(\sigma) \), as small as possible. The Riemann hypothesis basically asserts that this supremum is 0, while the weaker Density hypothesis asserts that this supremum is at most 2. By 1972, the work of Ingham and Huxley had pushed the supremum down to 12/5=2.4, but it then remained stuck for over fifty years, until the recent work of Guth and Maynard reduced this to 30/13=2.307...

I had always wondered why there did not seem to be a comprehensive survey of all the zero density theorems that had been established over the years, and now I know why: the literature is immensely complicated, especially in the region \(3/4 \leq \sigma < 1\) where there has been a lot of activity using a variety of methods. The bounds tend be piecewise in nature, mostly due to the fact that the methods rely on controlling integer moments rather than fractional moments. However, while these bounds are quite messy to state in human-readable form, they are quite digestible to a computer, and it was surprisingly routine to collate all the bounds into a single Python file, which I then used to create the attached animation. These zero density estimates are useful inputs to other analytic number theory problems, so when our project concludes we will be able to easily tweak the code to explore what could have been proven at different points in history of the subject.

Under Trump, the U.S. military spread lies, via social media (later picked up by "traditional" media) about China's covid vaccine to persuade Asians not to use it.

China's regime is a criminal organization, and it lied relentlessly about covid and the U.S.

That's no excuse for what we did.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

And it's no excuse for what American anti-vaxxers did, and continue to do.

Conspirators in death.

I have never been more disappointed by a spelling error:

https://dp.la/item/9383481d7c3b1a327cbdf34ba6255d14

So at a linux (or equivalent) terminal, type this:

$ telnet mapscii.me

Get an interactive world map. In your terminal.

Zoom in and out with A and Z, use the arrow keys to move.

Astonishing.

Many yearn for the "good old days" of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.

https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/

#web #newsletter #CitationNeeded

you have got to be kidding me

A better view of the wild solar prominences during Monday's eclipse.

(Quick hand-held shot with Nikon Z9 + Nikkor 800mm f/6.3 PF)

We didn't break the message with this, but hey, we could have!

Encrypted on an original Enigma

What it’s like to experience totality.

#eclipse

i love light hearted humour 😂🔥🌞 #solar #eclipse #eclipse2024

The Verge article on the best printer in 2024 is just completely brilliant in so many ways.

And also kinda sad.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

"I’m fond of effective altruists. When you meet one, ask them how many people they’ve killed."

- Stanford professor Leif Wenar pens a devastating takedown of #EffectiveAltruism for WIRED magazine, in the wake of #crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried's sentencing.

https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/

#EA #SamBankmanFried #SBF

OMG 😧 Playing doom using windows task manager
https://youtu.be/hSoCmAoIMOU?si=mvZ3YrFtRziyjw-A