Terence Tao (yes, again) has some thoughts on multiple choice tests. Of course he's right that more open-ended questions are better in some sense. But I wonder: here at CU, the applied math department takes great pride in administering open-ended tests where the work is graded to hundreds of engineers three times a semester. Are we sure that's better than giving, say, six multiple choice tests a semester?

Anyway, Tao might have a good claim to be the greatest living mathematician in the world, but I doubt any of his students have offered to start a riot on his behalf.

Terence Tao's trip through the airport leads him to a puzzle about moving sidewalks. I really like this problem. It's simple, related to real life, and the solution is not obvious.

Malcolm Gladwell on recruiting teachers:

In teaching, the implications are even more profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before

Top headlines on major news sites as I write this:

BBC: India police name Mumbai gunmen.
CNN: Gov. tried to sell Obama Senate seat.
New York Times: Illinois Governor in Corruption Scandal.

They're all missing the most important story of the day, and probably the month:

Malaria vaccine may be available by 2012.

Saving lives with checklists:

These are, of course, ridiculously primitive insights. Pronovost is routinely described by colleagues as “brilliant,” “inspiring,” a “genius.” He has an M.D. and a Ph.D. in public health from Johns Hopkins, and is trained in emergency medicine, anesthesiology, and critical-care medicine. But, really, does it take all that to figure out what house movers, wedding planners, and tax accountants figured out ages ago?

Think Starbucks drove little independent coffee shops out of business? Just the opposite:

Starbucks was the gateway drug to specialty coffee. Customers tried it there first and then graduated to the often-superior products sold by indie shops. Even Duane Sorensen, owner of the proudly anti-corporate Stumptown Coffee in Portland, Oregon, concedes that Starbucks raised standards in the industry. Ward Barbee, publisher of the coffee publication Fresh Cup, is even more effusive. “Every morning, I bow down to the great green god for making all of this possible,” he told the Willamette Weekly in 2004. In short, Starbucks and indie shops grew up side by side. Indie shops learned from Starbucks’s retailing genius and built off its customer base. Then the indie shops left Starbucks in the dust.

Pick up the trash in your neighborhood:

A fence partly closed off the main entrance to a parking lot. There was a narrow gap and a no-admittance sign that pointed out a new entry, 200 yards away. A second sign prohibited locking bikes to the fence.

When the fence was clear, 27 percent of people heading for their cars ignored the no-admittance sign and squeezed through the gap in the fence. But after several bikes were locked to the fence in defiance of that ban, 82 percent of people going to their cars squeezed through the prohibited entry.

This doesn't prove the broken windows theory, but it does make it more plausible. Public order matters.