Yes, we need the liberal arts, too!

Why America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

Creativity, writing skills, and the ability to think are truly important to our future. Technical skills are important, but they blossom when coupled with the benefits of a liberal arts education as well. For example, I give you:

That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket

Nice to see celebrated on Google

Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, was interested in mathematics and computation and made a name for herself in those fields. I remember studying her in high school in my history of computers class, and she was one of the few women, especially early on (keep in mind my class was circa 1983).

Anyway, check out Google today for a Doodle celebrating the anniversary of her birth.

Thank the Gods this is a parody

...a hilarious one, by the way. It's based on the real interviews, in which the question, 'Should evolution be taught in school?', was asked. You can view that video at: Miss USA 2011 - 51 Delegates Interview (Q2 - Evolution taught in school).

Thanks to David Reid for sharing the parody video with me. I particularly like, 'On the one hand there's math, and on the other you have, like, "non-math".'

Death of the fractal king

I missed much of the news the last few days, so I did not realise till today that we have lost a great mathematician, Benoît Mandelbrot, who is best known for his works in fractals and in particular, the Mandelbrot set. He died in hospice on the 14th of October of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 85.

I confess that what I know of fractals and of Mandlebrot is not from my study of mathematics, but from researching for a game of Call of Cthulhu, where fractals figured prominently and Mandelbrot was featured as well. I have to admit, I am just not good enough at math to fully grasp the concept of fractals. But I can appreciate enough to realise he was brilliant, and we have lost a genius.

Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw. His family, who were Jewish, fled to France and he lived under the cloud of Nazism for much of his youth. Fortunately he survived and went on to become a great mathematician.