Dr. Tae on Teaching and Learning

Summary
Dr. Tae is a physicist advocates for cultural changes to the way that schools operate to make them useful for learning.

(Video: Vimeo)

Commentary
I found myself vigorously agreeing with Dr. Tae's presentation. I was particularly surprised by the comment by Lawrence Krauss (emphasis added):

According to a presentation Krauss delivered to the Canadian Association of Physicists' Congress Tuesday, 90 per cent of U.S. middle school science teachers have no post-secondary education in science themselves.

Of course, a lack of qualifications is irrelevant when all you need are certifications.

The humanities are sidelined as well (via Robert):

I know one of your arguments is that not every place should try to do everything. Let other institutions have great programs in classics or theater arts, you say; we will focus on preparing students for jobs in the real world. Well, I hope I've just shown you that the real world is pretty fickle about what it wants. The best way for people to be prepared for the inevitable shock of change is to be as broadly educated as possible, because today's backwater is often tomorrow's hot field.

In the course of my discussions, some people have raised the following objections to Dr. Tae's approach. Here are some of the more common reactions:

How did Dr. Tae grade the students from his "workshop" class?

I don't know, but I can ask him.

I should point out that his experiment was geared at demonstrating a new model of education--one in which grades are not emphasized because competence and mastery are the goals. Nonetheless, the question is valid, because we do not have many institutions that support his proposed model of education (although compare his model to the Yeshiva system).

Isn't Dr. Tae's model of education very expensive?

Perhaps the "workshop" aspect, but definitely not the "distributed teaching" aspect. The latter might reduce the former if "real" teaching and learning were sufficiently commonplace.

Don't some subjects have to be taught in a lecture format?

I'm not sure why this would be the case. People learn an amazing variety of information and skills "outside" of the classroom. I say "outside" to highlight the artificial nature of the boundary of where teaching / learning occurs.

Meta
I'm going to contact Dr. Tae in the next few days, so feel free to post questions for him in the comments below (deadline: Friday, 2010-12-10). I'll write a separate post if Dr. Tae responds.

See Also

• Lawrence Krauss Discussion with Richard Dawkins at YouTube for the complete discussion quoted in Dr. Tae's presentation.
  
  
• A Faustian bargain at GenomeBiology for the full text of the open letter to the President of SUNY Albany.
  
  
• An Integrated Vision of Jewish Education at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for a Talmudic story that exemplifies a teaching and learning culture (in the utmost).

Pi v. Tau

Summary
Pi is considered one of the most important mathematical constants. However, there is a growing movement that suggests that a different constant may be easier to use and easier to teach.

We've already computed trillions of digits of pi. Don't make me restart.
(Photo: Chris Blakeley on Flickr)

Commentary
The value of pi is a constant that relates the circumference of a circle (length around the circle) to its diameter (length through the center). In 2000, Bob Palis wrote a short article called Pi is Wrong! where he outlined arguments for a different circle constant: one that relates the circumference to the radius (length from the center to any point on the circle). In June 2010, Michael Hartl published Palis' arguments as The Tau Manifesto where he suggested that the new circle constant be represented by the Greek letter tau.

The main arguments are as follows:

1. While pi appears in many equations, it most frequently appears as 2pi. All instances of 2pi can be replaced by tau.
   
   
2. Measuring angles in radians is much more straightforward because there are tau radians in a circle (rather than 2pi radians).
   
   
3. The relationship between the trigonometric functions and the unit circle is easier to grasp.
   
   
4. Euler's identity ends up sounding even more powerful: e^it = 1 (A rotation by one turn in the complex plane is 1.)
   
   
5. The area of a circle is in quadratic form similar to many other physical phenomena where two values are proportional to each other. Examples:
   • Falling in a uniform gravitational field (velocity is proportional to time)
   • Potential energy in a linear spring (force is proportional to distance)
   • Energy of motion (force is proportional to acceleration)
   So now we can add: Area of a circle (area is proportional to radius).
   

The arguments are persuasive and merit thought, especially for the pedagogical benefits tau provides. I suspect it will be some time before anyone adopts this constant as a matter of course, but I have no problem writing "tau = 2pi" and moving on from there.

See Also

• Pi is Wrong! by Bob Palis for the original paper.
• The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl for why tau ought to be the new circle constant.
• Turn at Wikipedia for a historical discussion of using a turn as a unit of rotation.