Eideard

When Jacob Barnett first learned about the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics, he could hardly contain himself. For three straight days, his little brain buzzed with mathematical functions.

From within his 12-year-old, mildly autistic mind, there gradually flowed long strings of pluses, minuses, funky letters and upside-down triangles — a tapestry of complicated symbols that few can understand.

He grabbed his pencil and filled every sheet of paper before grabbing a marker and filling up a dry erase board that hangs in his bedroom. With a single-minded obsession, he kept on, eventually marking up every window in the home…

Entirely normal for Jacob, a child prodigy who used to crunch his cereal while calculating the volume of the cereal box in his head…

Elementary school couldn’t keep Jacob interested. And courses at IUPUI have only served to awaken a sleeping giant.

Just a few weeks shy of his 13th birthday, Jake, as he’s often called, is starting to move beyond the level of what his professors can teach.

In fact, his work is so strong and his ideas so original that he’s being courted by a top-notch East Coast research center. IUPUI is interested in him moving from the classroom into a funded researcher’s position.

“We have told him that after this semester . . . enough of the book work. You are here to do some science,” said IUPUI physics Professor John Ross, who vows to help find some grant funding to support Jake and his work…

This is not what Jake’s parents expected from a child whose first few years were spent in silence.

“Oh my gosh, when he was 2, my fear was that he would never be in our world at all,” said Kristine Barnett, 36, Jake’s mother.

“He would not talk to anyone. He would not even look at us.”

RTFA. A delight. Not just for the tale of young Jacob; but, how his parents adapted and learned, experimented with freeing his latent abilities – sometimes regardless of the directions suggested by professional help more inclined to find the right box to put him into.

Great family story from all sides. And a young person I look forward to seeing in a larger picture someday.

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Franklin Lakes, NJ — By the time they get to kindergarten, children in this well-to-do suburb already know their numbers, so their teachers worried that a new math program was too easy when it covered just 1 and 2 — for a whole week.

“Talk about the number 1 for 45 minutes?” said Chris Covello, who teaches 16 students ages 5 and 6. “I was like, I don’t know. But then I found you really could. Before, we had a lot of ground to cover, and now it’s more open-ended and gets kids thinking.”

The slower pace is a cornerstone of the district’s new approach to teaching math, which is based on the national math system of Singapore and aims to emulate that country’s success by promoting a deeper understanding of numbers and math concepts. Students in Singapore have repeatedly ranked at or near the top on international math exams since the mid-1990s…

For decades, efforts to improve math skills have driven schools to embrace one math program after another, abandoning a program when it does not work and moving on to something purportedly better…

Singapore math may well be a fad, too, but supporters say it seems to address one of the difficulties in teaching math: all children learn differently. In contrast to the most common math programs in the United States, Singapore math devotes more time to fewer topics, to ensure that children master the material through detailed instruction, questions, problem solving, and visual and hands-on aids like blocks, cards and bar charts. Ideally, they do not move on until they have thoroughly learned a topic.

Principals and teachers say that slowing down the learning process gives students a solid math foundation upon which to build increasingly complex skills, and makes it less likely that they will forget and have to be retaught the same thing in later years.

And with Singapore math, the pace can accelerate by fourth and fifth grades, putting children as much as a year ahead of students in other math programs as they grasp complex problems more quickly…

“All along, people have said it’s too hard, too demanding for teachers,” said Jeffery Thomas, a history teacher who founded SingaporeMath.com with his wife, Dawn, after using the books to tutor their daughter at home in the suburbs of Portland, Ore…

Well, that’s almost the “American” reason for reversing course on any program, isn’t it?

I haven’t read anything about Singapore math. Though “KB” and I have discussed the absence of maths improvement in some of the school systems which have increased success otherwise. Sorry to say, it’s been so long since I learned my basics – I don’t remember how it worked, though it probably was mostly rote. Given my geezer age.

Russian maths genius Grigory Perelman, who declined a prestigious international award four years ago, is under new pressure to accept a prize.

A US institute wants to give him $1m (£700,000) for solving one of the world’s most complex mathematical problems, the Poincare Conjecture.

But it is unclear whether Dr [Grigory] Perelman, a virtual recluse, will pick it up.

A children’s charity in St Petersburg, where he lives, has urged him to take the money and give it to charity.

Dr Perelman, 43, has cut himself off from the outside world for the past four years, living with his elderly mother in a tiny flat said by neighbours to be infested with cockroaches.

In an open letter on its website, the Warm Home charity called on Dr Perelman to give the cash equivalent of the US Clay Mathematics Institute’s $1m Millennium Prize to Russian charities.

It suggested that the mathematician had already made an ethical point by turning down the Fields Medal, the world’s highest prize in mathematics, in 2006….

The mathematician is reported to have said “I have all I want” when contacted by a reporter this week about the Clay Millennium Prize.

Whether my opinion gives people the creeps I could care less: I completely understand his point of view, and believe that he should be left alone if that is his wish.

President Barack Obama is seeking a major overhaul of the U.S. education system, with a shift from an emphasis on testing to an emphasis on career preparation — a plan that he is backing up with billions in budget incentives.

The administration has already pumped $100 billion into education and is now moving to rewrite legislation that has governed the nation’s schools for nearly a decade.

Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget includes $49.7 billion for education, and much of the 7.5 percent increase is focused on programs under No Child Left Behind, which could come up for reauthorization this year.

At the heart of the change is a major redesign of NCLB’s accountability measures, which have set the standard for school systems across the country for the past eight years…

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said NCLB, one of George W. Bush’s signature domestic accomplishments, demanded accountability but “does little to reward progress.”

“We want accountability reforms that factor in student growth, progress in closing achievement gaps, proficiency towards college and career-ready standards, high school graduation and college enrollment rates,” Duncan said, noting that the new approach is a “cradle-to-career agenda…”

So far, the Obama administration’s $100 billion investment in schools has supported nearly 300,000 education jobs.

In addition, the administration has launched a nationwide $4.35 billion competitive grant program known as Race to the Top that encourages states to create data systems, focus on teacher effectiveness and improve low-performing schools.

Meanwhile, we have one of the largest cities in New Mexico – Rio Rancho, the New Mexico home of Intel – preparing to reduce standards one more time because not enough children pass.

They’re confident lowering standards will pump out more kids with diplomas – as it will. Of course, they will need remedial classes before they qualify to flip burgers or hand out parking tickets.

“We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”

Those were some of the inspiring words by President Barack Obama at the launching of the new “Educate to Innovate” campaign…this week. This initiative aims to increase science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) literacy amongst students to improve our national standing from average (or in some cases, below average) to the top. $4.35 billion in Federal grants will be offered to schools who can innovate in STEM education and the private sector is stepping up with an additional $260 million in related funding and programs.

And this all couldn’t come at a better time. A recent survey by Intel showed that parents would rather talk to their kids about drugs than math and science. And while public and private sector funding is nice to have, one key to this initiative are the innovative new programs that reach out to inspire both kids and parents looking to get more involved. At the start of this campaign, five public private partnerships were announced which vary in terms of content and outreach in an effort to reach the broadest spectrum of young people possible…

It’s also great to see that the White House will continue to be a platform for increasing visibility on STEM education through hosting events that involve and challenge students to excel. A couple of months ago the White House held an Astronomy Night that not only focused on stargazing but focused on young students who had made important astronomical discoveries. And going forward there are plans to begin hosting a science fair that showcase national winners. Events like these that focus on and involve students and the important contributions they can make even at an early level can be an inspiration to young people everywhere…

The consensus is that this is a step in the right direction. Additional funding – especially funding tied to merits of new ideas and not just performance – will help foster innovation in how we teach the next generation of kids about math, science, engineering and technology. And these partnerships with the private sector will hopefully succeed in offering additional exposure to students both in the classroom and after school.

Read additional information about “Educate to Innovate” at whitehouse.gov.

Overdue – is hardly the word. It’s been 40 years or more since American students stopped learning to read. Encouraging science and math – praiseworthy – will likely affect less than 5% of the potential base.

An Asian elephant has reportedly mastered simple arithmetic, adding to the growing number of animals that are able to count.

The elephant, named Ashya, has shown mastery in simple addition problems.

When Ashya’s trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pachyderm recognized that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples.

“I even get confused when I’m dropping the bait,” says Naoko Irie, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan and Ashya’s math tutor.

Irie presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology’s annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

She discovered that as well as summing small numbers with almost 90% accuracy; elephants can also discriminate between small numbers.

Experts say animals from salamanders to pigeons to chimpanzees can discern numerical values. But all animals, including humans when forced to make split-second decisions, are best at telling apart two quantities when the ratio between the large and small number is greatest.

But Irie says that isn’t so for elephants.

The four that she tested distinguished between five and six apples as well as they did between five and one. They picked the bucket with the most fruit 74% of the time, on average, far above 50-50.

Sure sure sure. But can they solve a king and pawn endgame using the theory of related squares?