Over the three years Jordan Ellenberg was writing his book, he repeatedly encountered the same reaction to its subject. ?I?d be at a party, and I?d tell someone what my book was about, and then I?d be like??Hey, where?d you go??? What topic was so awful and off-putting as to make people flee at its mere mention? Math.
Quoted: ?We?ve done a great job fighting poverty for the elderly,? said Timothy M. Smeeding, professor of public affairs at UW-Madison and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty.
Quoted: A key to Slender Man?s appeal may be that he is faceless and Andrew Peck, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who studies Slender Man and other folklore, likened the amorphous Slender Man to the villain of so many campfire horror stories ? a man with a hook hand.
WASHINGTON — Amid growing concern that outstanding student debt is hurting the economy, President Obama on Monday directed his administration to make an additional 5 million existing student loan borrowers eligible for the federal government?s most generous income-based repayment program.
But is it possible to present a realistic view of ordinary experiences if a photographer is staging and enhancing each shot? Catalina Toma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor whose research includes examining emotional well-being and social media, says people tend to construct very flattering images of themselves online.
Perhaps the best?and nearly unavoidable?way to start an exploration of the new Jim Dine artwork at the Chazen Museum of Art is with the six-foot-tall sculpture of a human skull sitting outside the front doors. Roughly textured, with dark eye hollows, the bronze form serves as a fitting harbinger for the sixty-six prints, paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures of skulls that await inside the museum.
Quoted: Alfred McCoy, a history professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied the rise of the surveillance state in America, has written about how America?s war against terrorism has ultimately encroached more on the lives of individuals in their homes and hometowns.
Miss: The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents just can?t seem to get it right. After reluctantly being forced to accept a two-year tuition freeze imposed by a Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker, regents last week approved higher fees for students in its latest budget proposal.
Jordan Ellenberg?s ?How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking? is a miscellaneous romp through the world of quantitative reasoning.
Jordan Ellenberg really wants you to like math. Not math in the sense of calculating a tip or doing your taxes, but math as the path to understanding, math as evidence, math as truth. Hence the title his new book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, which Penguin Press released this week.
Quoted: PJ Liesch, who studies insects at UW-Madison, was in northern Wisconsin over Memorial Day weekend. That Friday and Saturday were pleasantly mosquito-free, but hordes of the blood-sucking pests appeared as if out of nowhere that Sunday, he said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to end sexism with science. The college announced the launch of a “feminist biology” post-doctoral fellowship, in which students will attempt to “uncover and reverse gender bias in biology,” according to the official release.
Quoted: Dr. Michael Fiore, a smoking cessation expert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the study, said a growing number of high-tech solutions to tobacco addiction ? such as the online resources at the government-run Smokefree.gov – are putting solutions at smokers? fingertips.
Gov. Scott Walker contends that four people who have quit a state drunk driving task force didn?t contact his office or the office of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb.
A possible change in funding and program control for Wisconsin?s technical colleges has been brought up in Madison, but the concept is getting no support in central Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison athletic department spent the second-highest amount of money on its athletic program among public universities in 2013, trailing only the University of Texas, according to new figures compiled by USA Today.
Four members of a working group studying ways to reduce drunken driving in Wisconsin ? a state with notoriously lax laws ? resigned Thursday and said bar and tavern owners have too much influence on the committee and are not interested in actually combatting the problem.
Quoted: ?Our perception has changed more than the reality,? says Dave Riley, the Rothermel-Bascom Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: The day of the Normandy landings, D-Day, has been called ?the day that saved the world.? University of Wisconsin-Madison Military History Professor John Hall says that?s an over-simplification.
A ?special consultant? has been hired to run the Oregon Police Department.
Brett Eby is not fond of the Highlander, the 10-story apartment building at 121 W. Gilman St., which he has called home for the past year.
UW-Madison rocks Twitter, a new study found.
Quoted: Noelle Chesley, an associate professor sociology at the University of Wisconsin who has studied stay-at-home dads, thinks there has been some increase in dads who made the choice to stay home with the kids.
Nestled on an isthmus that?s home to both buttoned-up politicians in the state Capitol and more liberal-leaning college students just a short walk away, Madison lives up to its endearing unofficial motto as ??77 square miles surrounded by reality.??
University of Wisconsin System students and their families won?t have to shell out any additional money for tuition next year, but they?ll face higher fees and room-and-board costs under a budget proposal system leaders approved Thursday.
Quoted: ?There was this magical moment a few days into the thread,? Andrew Peck, a PhD candidate in folklore and media at the University of Wisconsin who has also been involved with Slender Man from the beginning, told the Guardian. ?People began riffing on it, took this character who is not well defined and made it their own.?
?The kids know that this content is being refreshed all the time, so it can be total immersion in a way we haven?t had before,? Joanne Cantor, a psychologist and former director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin said.
Joshua Osborn, 14, lay in a coma at American Family Children?s Hospital in Madison, Wis. For weeks his brain had been swelling with fluid, and a battery of tests had failed to reveal the cause.
The past few years have seen a welcome crop of fine mathematics titles that are intended for the general reader, but are also valuable as inspiration and sources of interesting material for those of us who teach the subject. Jordan Ellenberg?s outstanding book pretty much shares its subtitle with Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham?s classic Why Do Buses Come in Threes?, although the two books are very different in terms of style and content.
April 4th, 2004, is a date Laura Dunn has never forgotten. That was the day the Midwestern preacher?s daughter who didn?t believe in sex before marriage says she lost her virginity to not one but two University of Wisconsin-Madison athletes.
Julian Barnes? The Sense of an Ending is a good novel. We know it?s a good novel because lots of people like it, and because it won the Man Booker, one of the biggest prizes in English-language literature.
Audio: Today on the Gist, the case for integrating math into everyday conversation. Mike talks with Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not to Be Wrong.*
From Pennsylvania to Oregon, the number of top public universities bidding to shake off government control keeps growing.
Quoted: Joanne Cantor, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studied the effect of media on children, said stories such as Slenderman can have a greater effect because children can interact with the tale by viewing pictures, watching videos or posting their own versions of stories or comments.
Quoted: The software allows parents to monitor their child?s Internet use and flags dangerous words and images that they may come across. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Joanne Cantor said parents can?t rely on the software alone.
An expert on children and their perception of media says she believes two 12 year-old Waukesha girls accused of stabbing their friend when they say they did it to win the approval of Slenderman, a fictional character they believed to be real.
The neuroscientist whose research inspired the La Crosse Compassion Project visited the city on Monday to headline the ?La Crosse Compassion Project Live!? event.
The new public library at the corner of Hillgrove Avenue and Poplar Place in La Grange is built of red-stained wood and has a brown shingled roof, but it sits on a post and will never hold more than two dozen books.
Quoted: J. Michael Collins, professor of consumer finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that student-run banks have operated without much oversight, which has bred skepticism.
For the second year in a row, tuition will be frozen this fall for in-state undergraduates attending the University of Wisconsin. However, the proposed UW budget does include a 3.6 percent hike in students? segregated fees, plus an average 2.7 percent increase for room-and-board at the four-year campuses.
Most states are moving away from allocating public colleges? money based entirely on enrollment and toward rewarding them according to benchmarks for access and completion. A proposal to do that in Iowa highlights the difficulties of creating new rewards for some institutions without punishing others.
Nearly every college president opposes allowing guns on campus, according to a new survey.
Sometimes it seems we never stop worrying. We worry about the food we eat and the air we breathe. If we own property, we worry about whether it will keep its value, and if we don?t, we worry about whether we can afford to.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez announced on Monday the restructuring of the coaching staffs for men?s and women?s track and field and cross country.
Each date represents a day to set aside five minutes to pull one credit report from one credit bureau, according to J. Michael Collins, UW-Extension family and consumer economics specialist and director of the UW-Madison Center for Financial Security.
Richard Davidson calls it revolutionary, the idea that compassion isn?t some pre-determined personality trait.
The popular science conversation series Science on Tap takes a different approach this week in tackling a controversial topic. Instead of hosting one speaker at a brewpub, it?s assembled a panel at a large venue to discuss the proposed iron mine in the Penokee Hills.
Noted: The ripples could go much further in Alabama, where 36 of the state?s 140 legislative districts ? eight Senate seats and 28 House seats ? are majority minority. David Canon, a political science professor and redistricting expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said judges try to target their remedies as accurately as possible.
Quoted: Mary Louise Roberts, a widely respected historian at the University of Wisconsin, has explored and expanded on the experiences of civilians like Roger in two recent books: 2013?s ?What Soldiers Do,? which cast a brutal light on the behavior of American soldiers in the conflict, and her just published ?D-Day Through French Eyes.?
Referring to the very rich of the Gilded Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, ?They are different from you and me.? Likewise, the Millennials and Gen X are different from their baby boomer predecessors.
?Capital in the Twenty-First Century,? Thomas Piketty?s new book, has received a great deal of attention. But we shouldn?t neglect another important new book on income inequality, from a much different perspective. Titled ?On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City,? and written by Alice Goffman, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, it offers a fascinating and disturbing portrait of the economic constraints and incentives faced by a large subset of Americans: those who are hiding from the law.
A panel of scientists and scientists, engineers and regulators is set to gather in northern Wisconsin this week to discuss a potential iron mine just south of Lake Superior.
Quoted: Andre Phillips, senior associate director of admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said students? participation in AP courses and performance on AP exams increasingly plays a part in admission decisions.
Quoted: ?The palace is afraid of Thaksin. He?s powerful and popular. And the palace is declining,? says Thongchai Winichakul, a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Although most of the attention given to greenhouse gas has focused on the air around and above us, there?s another significant source of carbon that could contribute to climate change and has previously been unaccounted for: soot and fossils buried in soil that formed up to 15,000 years ago.
How Not to Be Wrong, the first popular math book by University of Wisconsin-Madison math professor Jordan Ellenberg, just hit the shelves. In addition to a Ph.D. in math, Ellenberg has an MFA in creative writing and has been writing about math for popular audiences for several years. Unsurprisingly, the book is witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read.
Most people consider never having missed an aeroplane something to be proud of. After all, what could be worse than the sinking feeling of arriving at an airport gate only to see the plane taxiing down the runway without you? (Paywall.)
Missing a flight would ordinarily be considered the worst possible start to a holiday. But not according to American maths professor Jordan Ellenberg.
The cult of the kid genius could do more harm than good, former child prodigy turned mathematics professor Jordan Ellenberg says. Mr. Ellenberg, author of “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking,” joins Lunch Break with Lee Hawkins.
When I was a child, I was a “genius”?the kind you sometimes see profiled on the local news. I started reading at 2. I could multiply two-digit numbers in my head when I was 5. One of my earliest memories is working out a way to generate Pythagorean triples. In third grade, I commuted to the local junior high to take geometry. Kids on the playground would sometimes test me by asking what a million times a million was?and were delighted when I knew the answer.
