What's the Problem? Math.

Math has problems.

It is the case that, due to a a number of causes working in tandem, mathematics is not enjoying the pop culture prestige of its domineering cousin Science. Consider for a moment names like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Albert Einstein, all names that, at their mention, can spark a conversation delving into the meaning of existence and the nature of perception. Mention names like Gauss, Gödel, or Euler however and you'll be met by a medley of crickets and dumbfounded looks. It, of course, is not the fault of anyone at this hypothetical party where these names are dropped that the attendees do not know the names of mathematicians, or the mathematical principles for which they are famous. Even someone like myself, who has taken more math classes than the average Joe College (but far fewer math classes than even a math major), can not converse about these mathematicians well.

Contrastingly, consider for example print media including, but not limited to, Scientific American, and Popular Science, two staples in the scientifically minded lay person’s bathroom magazine rack. These media sources and others like them have, if nothing else, made very complicated questions and answers in science available to the lay person with one important caveat, the lay person does not need specialized training in science! This really is quite an astounding context we find ourselves. We live in a world where persons with little to no training in a subject can converse intelligently, if perhaps clumsily, about the most complex topics in almost any given field of science from quantum physics to cosmology.

Perhaps with the addition of the one clause, “by comparison” I restate the aforementioned “Math has problems”. Even the word “math”, for some, harkens back to mind terrible experiences in a junior high classroom wherein, a stuffy old woman sat before a displeased audience of prisoners reciting line-by-line the solution to an algebra problem. It’s a shame really. I remember feeling quite dejected in junior high while my report card boasted A’s in every subject . . . save math. But it seems trite to relegate the pop-culture status of mathematics to a plethora of bad associations left by bad grades.

One problem in particular I’ve noticed lately is that, until a certain point, Math education is hierarchically linear. I mean that we begin to learn math at a very young age and we start with 1 2 3 . . . We need counting, then arithmetic, then algebra, then calculus and so on. It was never my intention in high school to study math but I distinctly remember my perception of it was formed by my experience of it. Take one class, then take the next hardest class and so on. Science is not like this. When I took science classes I took the basics and worked my way up for a while until it was time to take a new kind of science class. Biology was fun for a year, but after that came chemistry. I didn’t really need to remember anything about biology to memorize the elements or find molarity. It was a new system.

So if I had a question about math that was beyond the scope of the highest level class I had taken, I was out of luck. Somehow science has managed to get over this little snag and do something that all educators aspire to do i.e., take something complicated and make understanding it simple.

Which brings us to math videos. I do not believe that problems in math are inherent to the subject. Why? Because two semesters ago I took an upper division Number Theory class. What I learned was that the prerequisite mathematical knowledge for such a class is counting (and maybe a little algebra)! But mostly counting! To be clear, the class was very difficult indeed, but not because I didn’t have tools. Most popular science enthusiasts might not have Ph.D.’s in physics, but this doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of understanding the problems we face. In the same way, most people are quite capable of understanding many major problems is math (and their solutions). Math Made Almost Bearable, I hope, will be a step in the right direction. Frank and I do not expect to revolutionize the world, mathematical or otherwise. But we can aspire to “do no harm” with a camera and a whiteboard.

Video Editing Made Almost Bearable

In some ways, working on these video projects, I feel as if I am in Emeril's kitchen relegated to making grilled cheese, not because I'm not allowed to make something better, but because I only know how to use a spatula, and a skillet.

The actual shooting process was much quicker than i thought it would be. In my own mind and in pop culture it is easy snub actors for feeling tired when all they do (it often seems) is stand in front of a camera and talk. I quickly learned that standing and talking is rather wearisome work and i was not even the one talking. standing behind the camera for an hour or two at a time was bad enough. I find myself laughing to myself and my own naivete in this case.

Most of the shooting was done in two days, two days of what, in many ways, was a glorious upgrade to the project. instead of shooting with a consumer brand camcorder or laptop webcam we began using an HDV (that's code for "professional quality") camera. we had custom lighting, we shot in a green screen studio, Frank was microphoned for the first time in the short history of the project.

With great thanks to the UNM ARTSlab the project received a huge boost quality in the production regards. There were problems right off the bat however. the HDV camera we used had a broke fire wire port. when the gentlemen and the ARTSlab (hereafter "the lab") informed me of the problem my immediate reaction went something like, "oh . . . of course . . . the fire wire portal, yes, ehem, how shall we port the fire wires from here on out then?" what they were trying to tell me is that when i shot the footage it was going to be recorded on to an ol' fashion mini dv tape. I would not be able to digitally remove the footage from the camera i would need to find some one somewhere capable of taking the footage on tape and turn it into something digital for me to work with later. Let me warn anyone who is a first timer at a project like this whose budget is in the vicinity of $0 using university facilities. wait until fall! The university where i am currently enrolled does not easily offer it's media arts facilities to students during the summer. it took weeks of waiting for email and phone replies to find a way to do this. Perhaps i will recall that experience in another post but for now, i only wish to articulate the gravity of good and bad timing.

I am now and have been in the editing stages for a while. this where i feel like a i am making grilled cheese. Using final cut pro, CS aftereffects, and other pro media tools is VERY overwhelming at times. I may have the smallest simplest problem and no idea how to fix it. this project would be lost were it not for a knowledgeable friend or two who happens to work in the same room as i do on other media projects. If i weren't able to turn and ask for help from time to time this project would simply be a failure. there are many online tools that i've used to supplement my knowledge of video editing, but a google search for "so in final cut pro every time i want to cut a section out it sort of snaps the stuff in front of the stuff i cut out to the end of the stuff before the stuff i cut out. how do you fix that?" won't be of much help.

I'm slowly making progress. with every new technique i learn i feel like i've surmounted a great obstacle and am that much closer to finishing. the pieces are falling into place now and the faster they fall the closer i come to completion.

First Time Podacst

The making of podcast is a process quite different from what I imagined it would be. The kinds of problems and obstacles were not the kinds of problems I had expected.

The Interviews

Recording the interviews were, by all accounts, the easiest part which, in retrospect, was not that easy. Mechanically it sufficed to simply set up my computer in front of me and my interviewee, but conducting an interview was a completely foreign experience. I would walk in to a quiet room with my guest with a few topics written on a piece of paper to remind myself of directions to go if the conversation started to drag. What I noticed was that while the questions I wrote down seemed to flow very naturally in my mind, they did not seem to me to flow very naturally in the conversation. One aspect of interviews that I was trying to preserve was fidelity to the discourse itself. Obviously the context of conducting and interview is artificial, but so is the context of performing a play. I realized that what theatre and radio-style interviewing have in common however, is illusion. It is actually quite enough to take this constructed dialogue and have it simply appear to be natural. It is like a motor one starts by hand, no one thinks that it is unfair to benefit from the motor just because it took someone else to start it.

One of my great insecurities was, to continue the analogy of the motor was “starting the motor”. I had never conducted an interview before and I was certainly not very confident in my skills as an interviewer. The inspiration for my style was heavily influenced by the Public Radio International show “This American Life” hosted by Ira Glass, which is podcasted weekly. That being the case, I wanted to create an environment that was very casual which, in turn, had it’s own set of difficulties. As the interviewer/narrator I felt it was my job to give my audience a breather by interrupting the interview for a quick summary or personal reflection. I didn’t do this often, and it was not itself difficult. What was difficult was sounding casual with out sounding inarticulate. One word that will make or break the ability to be casual is “um”.

The “Um” Conundrum

I was surprised by what actually required the most amount of time on the back end of editing. In an attempt to sound very comfortable and I found that I tended to repeat myself and “um” quite a bit more than what sounded casual. So while I was editing away all of my pauses, stutters and um’s I realized what I was actually trying to do i.e., I was trying to make both my interviewee and myself sound intentional.

There would often be long pauses by both of us during an interview in order to think a thought through mid-sentence or to just wait and see if the that particular part of the conversation would go and further. I found when I removed that long pauses from the final recording I could make my interviewee and myself sound much more confident. The illusion here again is that both the person I interviewed and I will sound as if we had our thoughts organized quite well and had articulated them the first time through, yet we still remain in the constructed, casual, conversational context. Really what was added was a sense of continuity to both the questions and the answers in the interview. This seems very analogous to giving a speech in some regards. What I thought sounded best was to try to make it sound as if my interviewee had prepared something to say, when in fact it was more impromptu than not.

Even in post production the need to maintain an illusion was on the forefront of my mind. Many of the kinds of things we tolerate (if we notice them) in a live conversation are not the kinds of things that are tolerable for a radio audience. For example, one of my interviewees would often smack their lips before starting a new sentence. While I was conducting the interview I did not notice it at all. What I learned in post-production was that it sounded like punctuating sentences with hand claps, not at all the kind of thing that would be audibly acceptable to even a live audience. What is more, is that I did it too! As I was listening to my interviews for editing I found I spent a good deal of time simply removing auditory distractions.

Another sound related problem I ran into was that another of my interviewees inserted long pauses into their otherwise articulate answers. Again, while I was conducting the interview I never even noticed it. When I listened to it later it seemed like lifetimes of awkward silence in between question and answer. Some of the great fun I had making this podcast was eliminating small problems like this. Returning to the idea of an illusion, I was surprised how eliminating even a one second pause can turn a good sentence into a great sentence all because it sounds like they are saying very smart things off the top of their head.

Making the Internets Obey

One problem that I am continuing to have is to get an episode on the internet. If I can put the episode on my blog then I can get it to iTunes easily. For my blog I am using wordpress with a plugin called podcasting which makes syndication to iTunes very simple once the episode is uploaded. What wordpress needs to upload the episode is a URL to the server that I use where the episode is stored. The episode is on my server with the correct URL, yet wordpress can not seem to find it. As soon as this problems is resolved. The podcast will be available for subscription on iTunes.

Math Made Almost Bearable: Episode 2: Math as a Performance Art

In this episode I sit down with Frank Kelly to discuss what it means for math to be considered as an art, namely a performing art. Don't worry though! on the next episode we'll be right back to PERFORMING math for you as in episode one!

Math Made Almost Bearable: Episode 1: Fractions and Repeating Decimals

This is the first in a series called “Math Made Almost Bearable” One of my favorite professors, Dr. Frank Kelly and I are collaborating on this little project. The goal is simply to present short, interesting and intriguing facts about math in an approachable and engaging way. This first episode is called “Fractions and Repeating Decimals”.

Here's to UHON 401 Illiteracy!!!

Here's a very cool tutorial for how to make a Mac-style desktop wallpaper using photo shop

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/creating-a-mac-type-background-in-photoshop/

rough draft half script

http://tinyurl.com/6pk29p

here's last semester's video. critiques?

here's the new script. critiques?

Every once in a while an idea happens upon me. This idea gives me the giggles and I think to myself, “Self, I think I’d like to tell this to the internets” and thus spawned my most recent project, A Brief History of Philosophy.

Before I get started a quick word to the nitwits out there who digitally induce a geek-gasm every time they find someone on the internet they disagree with . . . go away. I’m quite aware that this video is already in the style of Zero Punctuation. These videos are homage to Yahtzee for pioneering a provocative and effective, if at sometimes disagreeable, way to make sure the aforementioned nitwits know who they are. Thank you. Now, on to Philosophy.

Philosophy starts out like this: In the beginning there was Plato. And according to a great deal of philosophers I could stop right there. Now, I know what some of you are thinking “Plato lived in the late 4th Century B.C. Weren’t there philosophers in . . . oh . . . say . . . China, Babylon, Persia, Canaan, and Egypt 1,000 years before Plato, thriving, doing math, philosophy and making fireworks?” First I’ll give you my answer . . . “yes”. Now I’ll give you philosophy’s answer, [Slide of character being shot in the head].

This is the west! and in the west talk like the west [slide of cowboy character. voice bubble “y’all”] we dress like the west [slide of in royal garb http://tinyurl.com/6d73f9], and darn it all we think like the west [slide of Plato character thinking]. So if you want to study chinese philosophy you can apply the University of Utah WE won’t give a damn. Now, back to the west [slide character stroking a map of the U.S.] thaaaat’s better.

Where was i? [slide of character scratching head and reading list] ah yes Plato. It is no secret that that giant among the Greeks set the stage for nearly all of the philosophical work that was to follow.

(Here I would like to explain Plato’s philosophy in brief but I have concerns about time with my 3-5 minute limit. I also don’t want this to be a video ABOUT Plato)

It’s only fair to say that Plato was part of a tripartite Greek philosophy machine [slide identical Plato characters labeled Socrates and Aristotle. consider cyborg looking characters]. There were even greek philosophers before them! [slide timeline with a mass of more identical plato characters labeled presocratics] but Plato made sure that we wouldn’t find out much about them [slide Plato with a Hitler mustache or swastika putting books labeled “presocratics” in bonfire/oven. need to be sensitive without compromising the point].

Then Plato experienced something that all great philosophers except Socrates fear, The Dead [every time “The Dead” is mentioned show black slide w/ skull and cross bones]. And after Plato caught a rather paralyzing case of The Dead, a host suitably obscure Greek and Roman wannabes tried to answer all of Plato’s questions, or assumed he was right in his answers. philosophy has only recently ridded itself of that stigma.

So for nearly 2000 years Philosophy didn’t move a whole lot [Slide of character sitting and drooling] then [comatose character turns his head] came the Moderns.

Moderns can be divi’d up into two categories, the European Rationalists and the British Empiricists. The rationalists looked like this http://tinyurl.com/cqsltz and this http://tinyurl.com/co8ved and [slide of character disgusted caption reading “make it stop”] they almost deserved it. Descartes was the first of these guys. He had a bunch of famous one liners [slide descartes character speech bubble “i think therefore i am” ever heard of if?] and is largely responsible for the pain that you get in your eyebrows when someone who is smart enough for their own good but not anybody else’s says to you, “how do you know that?”. You see, Descartes made it his priority to to show/prove that God exists [slide that says where are you going with this]. his strategy was assume that his body didn’t exist and that he was actually just a brain in a vat being stimulated [slide of character stroking brain over candle lit dinner] to merely believe that he was real. Why did he assume this? well that’s what happens when you keep asking yourself “how do you know that.” anyway he tried from here to prove that God exists and well . . . we’re all still pretty confused about that.