Shakespeare literature is confusing. That’s not even an opinion. It’s a fact. Stephan Thiel, for his B.A. thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, takes a wack at understanding Shakespeare through a series of visualizations.

As a result, and based on data from the WordHoard project of the Northwestern University, an application of computational tools was explored in order to extract and visualize the information found within the text and to reveal its underlying narrative algorithm. The five approaches presented here are the first step towards a dicussion of this potentionally new form of reading in an attempt to regain interest in the literary and cultural heritage of Shakespeare’s works among a general audience.

The above is a sample from an exploration of the most frequently used words for each character. The major characters’ speeches are highlighted in yellow.
Read more →

When major environmental disasters occur, thousands of people are often affected, but it’s hard to put it all in perspective when it’s not actually happening to you. When the BP oil spill was in full force we saw this simple mashup that placed the oil blob over your area. In the natural iteration to that, BBC Dimensions maps the outcome of other environmental disasters in your neighborhood, including Chernobyl explosion, the 2010 Pakistan floods, and Bhopal chemical accident. Enter your location, and put things into perspective.

[via]

My favorite part: (Start around 14:50)

(He is talking about how they have groups of students write books. ) “The kids will work harder than they ever have in their lives if they know it is going to be permanent…If they know that nobody can diminish what they’ve thought and said…We give so much attention to their thoughts…five drafts, six drafts…and once they’ve reached that level, once they’ve written at that level, they can never go back.  It is absolutely transformative.“

If you regularly use flashcards to build your brainpower but find it too easy to cheat or just inadvertently see through the cards, reader Honda Wang uses QR codes for an inventive solution.

I finally found an applicable use of QR codes in education! Before I started using them for foreign language flashcards, it annoyed me that I could see the English word behind the card when I was studying. Now I can’t see the English word since it’s a QR code!

When he’s ready for the answer, he just scans the code with his phone. Not bad!

Looking for a place to make your own QR codes? Try previously mentioned QR Stuff or QR Code Generator.

Use QR Codes for Better Flashcards [via #tips]

THIS ARTICLE CAME FROM LIFEHACKER.COM

Preparing for college is not only daunting but expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got some tips and tricks to help make the whole process easier.

Sure, most students aren’t heading off to college until later this summer, but if you’re fresh to the university halls or you’re looking for a fresh start at school, now’s the time to get started. Here’s a look at some of the most important hardware, software, and textbook tools you’ll want in your arsenal when you matriculate.

Hardware

Choosing a Computer
Forget the Mac or PC debate—you can make that choice on your own. The important thing is figuring out what type of machine you’re going to need. It’s unlikely that you’ll want to head off to college with a desktop machine—unless you’re studying video editing, music production, or something like that—so we’ll concentrate on laptops.

First things first: You’re going to need to figure out your optimal screen size and resolution. Most students can get by with a 13″ screen and should, because it generally provides a decent resolution (at least 1280×720) and it’s not too much trouble to carry around. If you’re looking to drop some weight, you can consider options like the MacBook Air or DELL Adamo, but you’ll be paying considerably more for considerably less in those cases. If you have cash to burn and just plan to use your machine for typing papers and taking notes in class, a pricey compact notebook might be right up your alley.

Say you’re going into graphic design; you’re probably going to need additional screen real estate. A 13″ screen probably won’t cut it in your case, and you should consider something larger. On the other hand, most laptop displays aren’t ideal, and if you’re looking for a large screen and a better panel (for color accuracy, viewing angle, etc.), you may be better off purchasing an external monitor instead of paying more for a larger laptop screen for the best of both worlds.

Your situation is going to dictate the type of machine you need, and there are too many variations to cover here. Instead, here are some important things to consider when choosing a machine for college:

• Does your schoolwork require a fast machine? Ideally you’d like your computer to last you the four years you’re at college, but if you don’t need the fastest machine on the market don’t get it. There are plenty of other things you can buy with the leftover money (or you can just save it).
• Are you doing any graphic design, video editing, or other type of media work? Figure out if the software you’ll need for your classes makes use of your GPU. If it does, make a good graphics card a consideration when choosing a machine.
• The size and weight of a laptop becomes especially important when you’re carrying it around all day.
• Battery life can be a huge issue if you’re spending long hours in class. If your class schedule is scattered, you may have time to charge in between. Maybe you’ll even be blessed with outlets in the classroom so you don’t have to worry about running out of juice. More than likely, though, you’ll need your battery to last you at least four hours. Try to choose a laptop that’s rated for quite a bit longer to ensure you’ll get the battery life you need. But if that level of battery life just can’t be possible you can always look at purchasing additional batteries or external power sources. Before you do that, however, try to get the most out of the battery you already have. We’ve looked at several ways to extend your laptop’s battery life: maximizing your Window’s laptop battery, 15 ways to increase battery life, extend your battery life with the right browser, and five tips for increasing your laptop’s battery life.

Getting a traditional laptop isn’t your only option. Being champions of portability and battery life, netbooks and iPads are other possibilities for certain kinds of students. While I enjoy both, I personally don’t see either being the best choice for students—at least exclusively. Even 11.6″ netbooks are still a bit cramped with screens packing in enough resolution to make the average person’s eyes tired. The iPad is also geared more towards consumption than productivity, so it isn’t necessarily an ideal choice for a student. But if you’re fortunate enough to be able to afford a supplementary device used primarily for note-taking and reading, reserving your main laptop for the real work, you might not want to rule out either device.

Getting a Discount
Welcome to the wonderful world of student discounts. It makes buying a new machine a little easier since you’ll be—potentially—saving $100 or more. While these savings aren’t as phenomenal as the software discounts you’ll receive, they’re generally pretty helpful.

If you’re looking at buying a Mac, you’ll need to use Apple’s School Finder to get your discount. Another lesser-known option for gaining a massive Apple hardware discount (mainly on higher-end hardware) is to sign up for a student developer membership via the Apple Developer Center. While it’ll cost you $99, you’ll be allowed one discounted hardware purchase. In some cases the discount will more than pay for the cost of the membership, but be sure to check before you purchase. A link to the ADC Hardware Purchase Program Store is available on this page (you need to click through from the page, which is why there’s no direct link here). You only get to use this discount once in your entire lifetime, so choose wisely.

If you’re looking at buying a Windows PC, the discounts will vary. Most major manufacturers—such as HP, DELL, and Sony—offer student discounts on their hardware, but not every discount is equal. You’ll want to compare machines from each brand you’re considering and check the discounts offered. Don’t forget to factor in the cost of shipping as well. Often ordering direct can land you higher shipping costs than you’d accrue with an online retailer.

Tax is another issue. While student discounts are great, often times your tax rate will negate them entirely. In some cases, like in the great state of California, sales tax is so high that your student discount won’t actually help you save money. When tax bloats the cost of the machine, it’s worth looking at online retailers. Generally an online retailer will offer a lower price than the manufacturer, and because you can avoid tax and shipping in most cases (especially if you sign up for Amazon Student), you may end up saving money by forgoing your student discount altogether. Before you assume your student discount is the best route to saving you some cash, calculate your discounted total with tax and compare it to the deals available through your preferred online retailers.

Secure Your Purchase
Depending on your living situation, the need for security can take a few forms. In dorms—especially with roommates who may be bringing people in you don’t know—you’re going to need to make sure your laptop is safe. While tethering your laptop to your desk is something you probably won’t do, you need to make sure you keep it somewhere safe. Work out a plan with your roommate to look after your stuff when you’re out and s/he’s home. Ask a friend to watch your laptop if you need to take a bathroom break while studying in the library. If you have friends you can trust, they’ll prove to be better security than an inanimate object.

If the worst does happen and your laptop is stolen, you’re going to want to make sure all of your data is backed up. We’ve created a fool-proof automatic backup plan using Mozy, but if you’d like to figure out your own plan you should consider the following:

• Ideally you want to follow Peter Krogh’s 3-2-1 backup rule, which states you need 3 copies of any important file, 2 different media types, and 1 copy stored off site. That means you’ll need an external hard drive (discussed later) for backing up locally and an online service of your choice (such as Mozy, Backblaze, or Carbonite).
• Figure out what you need to back up and what you don’t. If your computer were to be stolen or your hard drive were to crash, you’d probably be able to reinstall much of what’s on your machine already. What really matters is backing up irreplaceable, unique files like your schoolwork. For that purpose, something like Dropbox (a Lifehacker favorite) may do the trick-especially when you get 2GB of storage for free (which grows as you invite your friends).
• Backup isn’t just about having the latest copy of a file, but several older copies as well. If keeping multiple versions is important to you, you’ll want to take this into account when designing your backup plan. For a fee, Dropbox will keep multiple versions of your files. For Mac Users, OS X’s built-in Time Machine will manage several versions as well. If you want to get a little geeky, you can set up a shared web hosting account (here are some recommendations) and use Subversion to keep track of multiple versions of your work.

Software

The software you’ll need when heading off to college is going to vary based on your major, but there are a few staples every college student should explore.

Note-taking
Regardless of your major, you’re going to—at some point—find yourself in a position where you’re taking notes. While it would be easy to say use Evernote and be done with it, that doesn’t necessarily cover all your bases. Microsoft OneNote is a popular choice on Windows, as is Circus Ponies Notebook on OS X. If you’re simply looking to capture (mostly) plain text, Simplenote may be what you’re looking for.

The Office Suite
On Windows, the standard is Microsoft Office, of course. On the Mac you can get Office too, but Apple’s iWork is a worthy alternative (in some cases). If you’re running Linux or are just looking for a cross-platform and <em<free Office alternative, OpenOffice is for you. Last, if you’re willing to go web-only, Google Docs or Zoho are both great options.

Managing Your Money
Whether you’re getting a free ride or are inundated with loans, money management is going to be a necessity. As we saw in our recent Hive Five, there are a lot of great options for managing your cashflow (like Mint). Since much of your spending will likely happen while away from your computer, you might want to consider a smartphone application for keeping track of everything you spent. While some sites (like Mint) provide mobile apps, you can take a more active approach by using a mobile app that requires that you actually enter your transactions. It’s easy to get lazy with a debit card and online banking, but it’s not always up-to-the-minute and you can end up with overdraft fees pretty easily if you’re not careful. Mobile apps like Money (iPhone, free) and Money Manager (Android, $1.99) are the more tech-savvy alternatives to balancing your checkbook.

Free Stuff and Discounts
There’s a lot of free software out there and you should take advantage of it. For example, the starving students software pack provides you with a bunch of open source software you can use instead of the many for-pay alternatives. If you do (or have to) purchase your software you can get enormous academic discounts. While sites like Academic Superstore (my preference) and JourneyEd offer you a wide variety of software (and even some hardware) discounts, often times you can get better discounts by going directly to the manufacturer. Be sure to check before purchasing to make sure you get the best deal. You’ll also likely find something useful in our completely free Lifehacker Packs for Windows or Mac.

Textbooks

Photo by richardmasoner.

Used Books and Resale
New textbooks can be ridiculously expensive, so of course you want to by used when you can. Amazon offers a great textbook search and a buyback program. TextSwap is a free exchange service that’ll help you find a local and nationwide options. Chances are your school offers a program as well. Often times the school textbook buyback programs aren’t the best deal you can get, but they are convenient. Ambitious students on campus may have initiated a textbook trade program as well. If you give your admissions office a call, they can help you find out what your options are directly on campus.

Digital Textbooks
iPads and ebook readers have recently become an option for textbooks, but textbook availability can vary widely depending on your needs. Some quick searches will determine if this is an option for you, but this can be an expensive option. You definitely gain the convenience of carrying around a device that weighs less than a single textbook, but you lose the ability to buy used and resell. If you want to go the ebook route, consider where you can get your books from. Using an ebook reader like the Kindle or Nook ties you to a single bookstore (unless you can manage to find DRM-free PDFs or other supported file types for your textbooks). Devices like the iPad—which are much more expensive—give you multiple book sources and may improve your chances of finding what you’re looking for.

Not only does it allow you to have your class assignments and blogs on there, it even has a grade book and attendance module.

Best of all, as you saw in the video, it looks just like Facebook, so your students will already know how to use it.

I loathe, yes loathe, STI!  I hope our state’s contracts with STI are not too far reaching.  Email your superintendent about http://schoology.com.

• Last week, The New York Times set the stage with this: an article detailing how students are drowning in debt, which raises the questions: Can students still afford America’s expensive universities? And will banks keep making these loans? The Washington Examiner goes further and bluntly asks: Is a Higher Education Bubble about to Burst?
• Next, in The New Yorker, a widely-read article offers this factoid: During the coming decade, most of the sectors adding jobs in the US won’t require a college degree. So some academics (yes, academics) are left wondering, “why not save the money and put it towards a house?” Or, put differently, is a college education really worth the money?
• The meme continues yesterday with David Brooks musing in an opinion piece: “When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting. When the job market worsens, many students figure they can’t indulge in an English or a history major. They have to study something that will lead directly to a job.” “There already has been a nearly 50 percent drop in the portion of liberal arts majors over the past generation, and that trend is bound to accelerate.” So why bother with a humanities education? Brooks tries to make his best case, and it’s not a bad one. But I’m not sure that a younger generation is listening. And if you listen to this 2008 interview with Harold Bloom, they maybe shouldn’t be.
• And just to top things off: Stanley Fish launches his own defense of a “classical education,” even if it “sounds downright antediluvian, outmoded, narrow and elitist.” You get the drift. Another sign that the humanities is in a bear market.

This was taken directly from a post on OPEN CULTURE.

Whenever I get to the passage in The Great Gatsby about him being the platonic conception of himself, I always pause here to discuss Plato’s cave analogy.  I think it is fitting to talk about how Plato’s analogy applies to the text as well as talking about the meaning of platonic.

So here is a claymation version of it.  I would love to hear your take on it.

This video was found on OPEN CULTURE.

This was found on

[Read more posts about journaling here.]
I discovered the mother of all writing prompt lists this morning. And since we are coming down to the wire with our state test, I thought I would post these.  There are about 200 of each.  Enjoy!

Expository

http://www2.asd.wednet.edu/pioneer/barnard/wri/exp.htm

Narrative

http://www2.asd.wednet.edu/pioneer/barnard/wri/narr.htm

Persuasive

http://www2.asd.wednet.edu/pioneer/barnard/wri/per.htm

These are from Paula Banard’s website.

This might be useful for state writing assessments or other tests.

Here are the origins of several symbols we use in everyday life.

Question Mark

Origin: When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would place the word questio – meaning “question” – at the end of a sentence to indicate a query. To conserve valuable space, writing it was soon shortened to qo, which caused another problem – readers might mistake it for the ending of a word. So they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercased q on top of an o. Over time the o shrank to a dot and the q to a squiggle, giving us our current question mark.

Exclamation Point

Origin: Like the question mark, the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters. The mark comes from the Latin word io, meaning “exclamation of joy.” Written vertically, with the i above the o, it forms the exclamation point we use today.

Equal Sign

Origin: Invented by English mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557, with this rationale: “I will settle as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gmowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus : , bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle.” His equal signs were about five times as long as the current ones, and it took more than a century for his sign to be accepted over its rival: a strange curly symbol invented by Descartes.

Ampersand

Origin: This symbol is stylized et, Latin for “and.” Although it was invented by the Roman scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro in the first century B.C., it didn’t get its strange name until centuries later. In the early 1800s, schoolchildren learned this symbol as the 27th letter of the alphabet: X, Y, Z, &. But the symbol had no name. So, they ended their ABCs with “and, per se, and” meaning “&, which means ‘and.’” This phrase was slurred into one garbled word that eventually caught on with everyone: ampersand.

Octothorp

Origin: The odd name for this ancient sign for numbering derives from thorpe, the Old Norse word for a village or farm that is often seen in British placenames. The symbol was originally used in mapmaking, representing a village surrounded by eight fields, so it was named the octothorp.

Dollar Sign

Origin: When the U.S. government begin issuing its own money in 1794, it used the common world currency – the peso – also called the Spanish dollar. The first American silver dollars were identical to Spanish pesos in weight and value, so they took the same written abbreviations: Ps. That evolved into a P with an s written right on top of it, and when people began to omit the circular part of the p, the sign simply became an S with a vertical line through it.

Olympic Rings

Origin: Designed in 1913 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the five rings represent the five regions of the world that participated in the Olympics: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. While the individual rings do not symbolize any single continent, the five colors – red, blue, green, yellow, and black – were chosen because at least one of them is found on the flag of every nation. The plain white background is symbolic of peace.

This is a post from the most interesting math blog I have ever found (POLYMATHEMATICS).

Every year I get a few kids in my classes who argue with me on this.  And there are arguers all over the web.  And I just know I’m going to get contentious “but it just can’t be true” whiners in my comments.  But I feel obliged to step into this fray.

.9 repeating equals one.  In other words, .9999999… is the same number as 1.  They’re 2 different ways of writing the same number.  Kind of like 1.5, 1 1/2, 3/2, and 99/66.  All the same.  I know some of you still don’t believe me, so let me say it loudly:

Do you believe it yet?  Well, I do have a couple of arguments besides mere size.  Let’s look at some reasons why it’s true.  Then we’ll look at some reasons why it’s not false, which is something different entirely.  The standard algebra proof (which, if you modify it a little, works to convert any repeating decimal into a fraction) runs something like this.  Let x = .9999999…, and then multiply both sides by 10, so you get 10x = 9.9999999… because multiplying by 10 just moves the decimal point to the right.  Then stack those two equations and subtract them (this is a legal move because you’re subtracting the same quantity from the left side, where it’s called x, as from the right, where it’s called .9999999…, but they’re the same because they’re equal.  We said so, remember?):

Surely if 9x = 9, then x = 1.  But since x also equals .9999999… we get that .9999999… = 1.  The algebra is impeccable.

But I know that this is unconvincing to many people.  So here’s another argument.  Most people who have trouble with this fact oddly don’t have trouble with the fact that 1/3 = .3333333… .  Well, consider the following addition of equations then:

This seems simplistic, but it’s very, very convincing, isn’t it?  Or try it with some other denominator:

Which works out very nicely.  Or even:

It will work for any two fractions that have a repeating decimal representation and that add up to 1.

Those are my first two demonstrations that our fact is true (the last one is at the end).  But then the whiners start in about all the reasons they think it’s false.  So here’s why it’s not false:

• “.9 repeating doesn’t equal 1, it gets closer and closer to 1.”

May I remind you that .9 repeating is a number.  That means it has it’s place on the number line somewhere.  Which means that it’s not “getting” anywhere.  It doesn’t move.  It either equals 1 or it doesn’t (it does of course), but it doesn’t “get” closer to 1.

• “.9 repeating is obviously less than 1.”

Hmmmm…it might be obvious to you, but it’s not obvious to me.  Is it really less than 1?  How much less than 1?  No, seriously…tell me how much less?  What is 1 minus .99999999…?

Really???? Infinitely many zeros and then after the infinite list that never ends, there’s a 1????  Surely that’s stranger than the possibility that .9 repeating simply does equal 1.  Or for something even stranger, consider this:  if .9 repeating is less than 1, then we ought to be able to do something very simple with those two numbers:  find their average.  What’s the number directly between the two?  Or for that matter, name any number between the two.  Let me guess:  the average is .99999…05?  So after this infinite list of 9s, there’s the possibility of starting up multiple-digit extensions?  Doesn’t that just raise the obvious question:  What about .9999999…9999999…?  Namely, infinitely many 9s, and then after that infinite list, there’s another infinite list of 9s?  How, exactly is that different from the original infinite list of 9s?  If you saw it written out, where would the break between the lists be?

I’m afraid that if you apply the “huh??” test of strangeness, you get a much higher strangeness factor if you say that .9999999… is not 1 than you do if you say it is 1.

• “Uhhhhh, I’m sorry, but I still don’t believe you.  .99999… just can’t equal 1.”

Well, let’s look a little more carefully at what we really mean by .999999…:

This equation isn’t really up for debate, right?  It’s simply the meaning of our place value system made explicit.  That thing on the right hand side is called an infinite geometic series.  They have been studied extensively in math.  The word “geometric” means that each term of the series is the identical multiple (in this case 1/10) of the previous term. The definition of the sum of an infinite geometric series (and other series, too, but we won’t get into those) goes something this:

1. Start making a list of partial sums:  the sum of the first one number, then the sum of the first two numbers, then the sum of the first three, etc.
2. Examine your list closely.  In this case the list is: .9, .99, .999, .9999, …. (Note that the actual number .99999…. is not on the list, since every number on the list has finitely many 9s.)
3. Find some numbers that are bigger than every single number on your list.  Like 53, 3.14, and a million.
4. Of all the numbers that are bigger than every number on your list, find the smallest possible such number.  I think we can all agree that this smallest number is 1.
5. That smallest number that can’t be exceeded by anything on the list is the definition of the sum of the geometric series.

Notice that I keep putting the word definition in bold face.  (See, I did it again!)  That’s because it’s a definition, which isn’t really up for debate.  It is the nature of a mathematical definition that once you acccept it, you have to agree to its consequences.  In other words, .99999… = 1 by the definition of the sum of a geometric series.  It’s also true if you use the popular formula

a/(1 - r) with a = 9/10, and r = 1/10.

We’re left with this:  merely saying “.99999… doesn’t equal 1″ admits the fact that this number .99999… exists.  And if it exists, it equals 1 by definition.  The only way out for you now, if you still don’t believe it, is to have a different working definition of the sum of an infinite series (go talk to some math professors, and see how far you get) or to deny the very existence of the number .9999….  I have seen a lot of people doubt that the number equals 1, but very few of them are willing to deny the very existence of that number.  If you want to play “there’s no such thing as infinitely long decimal representations,” I’m afraid you won’t get very far, because there’s always the number pi to worry about, too, you know.

Okay, so there’s my rant.  .9 repeating equals one.  No, I’m sorry, it does.