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.

Car horns are useless.

Interesting:

Washing with soap and water makes people view unethical activities as more acceptable and reasonable than they would if they had not washed themselves.

I'm not sure I buy it.

If you think the economic downturn is serious here, consider that it might cause a revolution in China.

Liberals and conservatives have different expectations from a dog. Alan Jacobs:

Do you want an animal companion who expects you to come when she calls as often as vice versa? Granted, it would be nice to have a dog who puts out food for me twice a day and picks up after me when I crap in the neighbor’s yard. . . . but overall, I don't think the equality thing is likely to work out, pet-wise.

Like Jacobs, apparently I'm a conservative. Who knew?

You're sitting, typing away, nursing your twelve-ounce drip coffee, and all of the sudden the coffee shop's wireless network changes its name to

BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate

Personally, I think it's brilliant.

she said yes

Slate has polled all its staff about how they will vote:

Barack Obama: 55
John McCain: 1
Bob Barr: 1
Not McCain: 1
Noncitizen, can't vote: 4

Of course it doesn't matter:

But—for the millionth time!—an opinion is not a bias! The fact that reporters tend to be liberal says nothing one way or another about their tendency to be biased.

Says nothing one way or another? Are they actually serious?

But I'm glad they're transparent about it and actually do this poll. They encourage other news organizations and commentators to do the same. So here it is, the Evil Line staff poll:

I voted to remove Judge James Klein.

Nick Mamatas used to write term papers for extra cash:

Six pages by 6 a.m. — the kid needs three hours to rewrite and hand in the paper by 9 or he won't graduate. "Cool," I'd say. "A hundred bucks a page." I'd get it, too, and when I didn't get it, I slept well anyway.

This piece is both very entertaining and very depressing.

Paul Bloom on personality and morality:

The iconic image, from a million movies and cartoons, is of a person with an angel over one shoulder and the devil over the other.

The alternative view keeps the angel and the devil, but casts aside the person in between. The competing selves are not over your shoulder, but inside your head: the angel and the devil, the self who wants to be slim and the one who wants to eat the cake, all exist within one person.

This pull quote chosen from many good ones in the article because it echoes the quote at the top of this blog.

I hate PowerPoint, so I really wanted to link this essay. Unforunately, it's half a rant about how kids these days are stupid and should get off my lawn and half a description of how deep, inspiring humanities are better than soulless sciences.

You're better off reading this old but still relevant article, titled "PowerPoint is Evil":

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.