Natural Blogarithms

I received an email earlier to day trying to promote some sort of a boycott of Exxon/Mobile Mobil gasoline stations in an effort to force them to lower their gas prices. Recognizing that there are few around my neck of the woods, I didn’t pay much attention to the email. Plus, I pretty much disregard those kinds of efforts anyway.

A follow up email attempted to make the point that we aren’t paying that much more for gasoline considering a significant increase in fuel efficiency over the last 20 - 30 years. The examples cited were anecdotal and encouraged me to do a little research on my own.

I was surprised to see that the increase in fuel economy is a lot less than one might have expected over the last 30 years. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the average gas mileage for new vehicles sold in the United States has gone from 23.1 miles per gallon (mpg) in 1980 to 26.7 mpg in 2007. This represents a paltry increase of 15% over the 27 year period. Even if you limit yourself to domestic passenger cars the increase is from 22.6 mpg in 1980 to 31.3 mpg in 2007.

Even more interesting to me is the fact that we have benefited from a relatively low cost of gasoline for an extended period of time. (see here) Adjusting for inflation we see a steady decline in the cost of gasoline dating all the way back to the 1920s. The only exception is the late 70s, early 80s and the last 5 years. Prices are at their upper limit even with inflation considered. When considering only yearly averages, the highest cost occurred during 1981 at $3.17 (adjusted to 2008 dollars). Through March of 2008, this year’s annual average has been $3.08.

Now back to the original point, on average the cost (in 2008 valuation) per mile was 12.8 cents in 1981 (when gas averaged $3.17 per gallon in 2008 dollars and the average fuel economy was 24.6 miles per gallon) . The average cost per mile, currently, is 13.6 cents (with a current national average of $3.63 per gallon and average fuel economy of 26.7 mpg). In the end, while it seems that we are paying a ghastly amount at the pump we aren’t that far above the historical high, nevertheless we are, in fact, paying more than ever.

written by SplineGuy

HT: GraphJam

written by SplineGuy \\ tags: humor mathematics

Very cool.

In a similar vein to the rotating hypercube, thanks to Rinus Roelofs here are a couple more fantastic impossible animations.

Conflusions: An amazing collection of optical illusions » Blog Archive » More amazing animations

written by SplineGuy

I just learned about questdlg, a very cool little command in Matlab that I plan on making great use of.  HT: blinkdagger 

. . . if we use the following code, we can create a window that queries the user for their favorite color [or anything else]. Go ahead and copy and paste the following code into the Matlab command prompt.

%this example comes directly from the Matlab help
ButtonName = questdlg('What is your favorite color?', ...
                         'Color Question', ...
                         'Red', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Green');

Matlab GUI - A simple but powerful command: questdlg | blinkdagger

written by SplineGuy

Math class is not terribly different from shop class. Both are all about tools and toolboxes. Math class is no more about mathematics than wood shop is about craftsmanship and design.

— Tony Lucchese

written by SplineGuy

Don’t forget to mark you calendars for the upcoming holiday this Friday.  What holiday, you say.  Well, it’s Pi Day, of course.  March 14.  (3/14, as in 3.1415926…)

We mathematicians will celebrate anything, I tell ya.

In honor of Pi Day, I am reposting my favorite pi song.  Enjoy:

Pi Song

written by SplineGuy

I dropped off on Saturday’s post and there were a few remaining talks I attended, shoving a few fresh concepts into my already overflowing noggin.

Saturday afternoon:

1.  There was a sparsely attended talk on using concept maps in blogging which I attended mainly because it was pointed out to me earlier in the day.  I am intrigued by concept maps but haven’t master the concept, as it were.  The basic premise was that the instructors used a common approach across two different disciplines for students to integrate and connect the ideas across topics as well as within subjects.  The students developed concept maps and posted images of them onto a class blog.  Apparently, the students disliked making them and claimed they gained nothing from them, but the instructors claimed their was demonstrable improvement.   I did not see how they demonstrated the advantage of using concept maps other than the students made improvements in making the concept maps, themselves.

I like the idea of using concepts maps to help students to connect concepts and organize their understanding of a particular area but I didn’t get a whole lot out of this talk that I will put in place.  I am motivated to put "landmarks" or "signposts" up at different points in the semester where students are encouraged to assimilate the skills and knowledge from the course by communicating the most challenging ideas they’ve faced.  This communication might come in various ways, including blogs or discussion board entries, oral discussions, presentations of material or even concept maps.

2. Tweaking Online Calculus: continued.  This presentation was an impromptu (or encore) performance by Maria over at Teaching College Math Technology Blog.  I attended one of her earlier talks and she was pushed and pulled into various topics that were outside the realm of that talk.  This was her opportunity to delineate some of the specific technologies she is using in her courses: Avatars, Jing (for screen capture), discussion boards, tablets, live classroom,digital pen technologies.  Certainly, these technologies are providing excellent ways of taking the classroom to the student wherever they are and whenever they want.  My favorite good idea from this session was to have a different student each class use a digital pen to take the notes of the class and then upload those notes to the course website. 

How about this for cutting edge technology: Livescribe: a digital pen which not only created a digital version of hand written notes from class but also voice records the professor while the notes are being taken.  You can then click on any part of the notes and it will replay what voice recording when that was originally written.

I skipped the Gala because I reached my social limit for the weekend.  I slept a little too well and woke up later than I wanted but I still made it home for dinner on Sunday.  It’s good to be home!

written by SplineGuy

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when I checked in to my hotel, the Econo Lodge Central.  It’s lower end (2 star at most).  It’s not disgusting but there are no frills whatsoever.  I should say, no frills except one.  I have free wireless internet access which is something that the folks here, at the Marriott Rivercenter who are paying at least three times as much per night as I am, cannot say.  But of course, I am paying the 10 bucks a day so that while I am here I can check email and find out just how far behind I am on everything.

Remember the view from the Marriott hotel:

Here’s the view out my window:

Nice, eh? 

written by SplineGuy

I’ve said this to so many people here but I am "mentally saturated".  I have too many new ideas that I’m worried I won’t be able to take any one of them and start using it.  To alleviate this fear, I have documented as much as I can in several pages of scribbled notes.  Over time, I will try to dump many of them here.  Let me continue with an overview of what I’ve learned and what’s up and coming.

Continued from last post: (still from yesterday)

7.  I received a wealth ideas for student projects related to biological and life sciences in a Computer Minicourse on Biocalculus.  With my upcoming Math Models courses in the fall, I am always looking for new projects to try out.  I learned how to implement sliders in Excel and saw a confirmation of an idea I have been pondering for Excel.  I was wanting to develop an Excel spreadsheet to explore predator-prey models in Differential Equations.  The idea was to create an underlying calculation worksheet and then on the main spreadsheet have a series of graphs, sliders and parameter settings that allow the model to be "toyed" with.  The presenter pointed me to a project called ESTEEM where several such workbooks have been produced toward this end.  (more on this later)

8.  The evening was capped off with a wonderful outing with some fellow bloggers (and pre-bloggers).  We had lengthy discussions about what most disappointed us and most excited us about this conference.  We conspired a few blog storms to take down misdirected technologies.  I’ll rip off some pictures from their blogs as soon as they are posted so you can see just what a lively bunch we turned out to be.  (Thanks to Maria and Robert for helping to put the evening together)

On to Saturday:

1.  I took my time getting around this morning.  I was up all hours of the night trying to catch up and answer email.  I failed miserable at the "catching up" part.  I arrived to the conference center around 9:30 and wandered around the exhibitor’s booths.  The exhibits I spent the most time with included TechSmith and MapleSoft.  TechSmith produces SnagIt, Camtasia and Jing.  I used a freeware screen capture software for our online College Algebra course called CamStudio and I wanted to know what the "Gotta Have It" feature in Camtasia.  I needed more motivation to fork over the $180 for a license.  Nothing grabbed me, but there are few features that I need to look over more closely.  Flash quizzing, fully-featured editing suite, 8 different export formats, call out features - they all have potential but nothing I can’t accomplish with freeware.  Maybe the fact that it is all in one place is enough to sell me.  We’ll see.

2. I attended a panel discussion on Evaluation and Online Teaching.  Not much new for me here.  It might simply be a function of my innovation tank reaching capacity.  Although not directly related to the talks, I did learn about WizIQ for potential use in live office hours and pen technologies that record audio and can replay by clicking on a particular point in the hand written notes.  I’ve got over a dozen new software packages to test out and consider how they might fulfill a niche in my content delivery. 

Who wants to place bets on how much of the material I’ve collected this weekend will fade into oblivion as I return to the daily obligations of teaching and research?

Here’s the rest of today:

1. Blogging with Concept Maps
2. Tweaking online Calculus
3. 20th Celebration of ICTCM (Gala)
4. Bed and go home tomorrow !!! woohoooo!

written by SplineGuy

So here’s a quick overview of what I’ve done so far at ICTCM.

Friday:

1. First thing off the bat was the keynote address by  Frank Hughes, Vice President for Training Products at Tietronix Software.  We presented the idea of using immersive 3d environment to engage our students and deliver course content in a medium that matches the mindset of the newest generation of college students.  The only problem I had with this idea is that the immersive environments were no different than the contaminant dispersal models that I was involved in developing 10 years ago at Texas Tech under an army contract and there was no clear explanation of how we might use the environments created by Tietronix to, as he said, "just plug in our mathematics."

2. I attended Maria Anderson, of math blogging fame, where the primary topic of her talk was to demonstrate the use of WebAssign as a course management tool.  Poor Maria was faced with a room full of excited and interested math educators who she, several times, had to fend off with a stick because the questions kept flying and pulling her talk in several different directions simultaneously.  Nice job, though, Maria!  I’ve got some great ideas for building community among my online students.

3. I attended a talk by Robert Lopez on using Maple 11 to do "Clickable Calculus", syntax free computing in Maple.  There were many new features that I were new to me in Maple 11 and I think I just might have to run out and get a copy so I can convince myself and my colleagues its time to upgrade.

<lunch break - mmmmm, pepper steak and fried rice>

4.  Robert Talbert, another world renowned blogger, demonstrate his use of student developed wikis in a couple of his courses.  I was definitely intrigued on the use of wikis for keeping track of presented homework and especially the idea of an open-wiki exam at the end of the term.  Fantastic talk!

5. Next, Mario Triola presented a talk on Statistical Mythbusters.  Great fodder for a series of blog posts to come.

6.  I was introduced to OCTAVE, an freeware competitor (copy-cat?) of MATLAB.  The exorbitant cost of MATLAB makes this alternative a very interesting option to consider.  I was absolutely amazed by the fact that this software was so nearly equivalent to MATLAB when it comes to its basic functions.  It performs the numerical computations I need with the same syntax.  Very nice alternative for my students.

<more to come, off to my next talk>

written by SplineGuy