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PUSH BUTTON EDUCATION

June 2, 2015

“You guys have all given me different answers, and I don’t know what to do.”

The math tutoring room at the local community college has two parts, one for advanced math—trigonometry, pre-cal, and calculus; the other is for basic math, from carrying and borrowing up to college algebra.  I work in the latter, but as somebody with a Master’s in statistics, I am often the “go to” person for statistics questions.  The fact I have seldom used statistics in the last decade has made me rusty, but the material comes back, so long as one learns it well the first time.

When the individual came to me stating the conflicting opinions she had received, I should have either turned her down or told her she was going to have to decide up front whom to believe.  If I were not that individual, she should leave, and not waste her time.  The issue itself was a 1-sample proportion test, one of the M &M problems, where a certain proportion of different colors are put into the bag, people count out the number of each type to see if the proportion corresponds with the claimed proportion, within a reasonable margin of error.

The student had used the instructions given to her what to input into the calculator and found a probability that made no sense to me.  I looked at the question and came up with the correct probability.  The example she copied looked at the probability’s being greater than a specific number; the problem she asked me looked at the probability’s being less than a specific number.  She didn’t understand that the example given to input and the problem were asking opposite things.

I tried every way I could think to explain the issue to her.  I have become more adept at calculators, finding them fast and helpful.  This woman, as are so many students today, was faster with the calculator than I.  Her problem, however, was something that it took me some time to figure out.  I had drawn a diagram of the probability curve, the Bell-shaped normal or Gaussian distribution, and she had looked confused.  That led me to finally ask a simple question:

“Have you ever computed these probabilities using a normal probability table?”

“No.”

I now understood her problem.  She was being asked to input data and push a lot of buttons.  Unfortunately, she had no idea what was being done to the data and why.  A lot of statistics is finding the difference between the sample and a postulated or known mean/average, then dividing by the standard error, a measure of variability.  The concept of variability is critical to understanding not only statistics, but everything statistics is used for, be it political campaigns or climate science.  Natural processes, like heart rate, body weight, stock market prices, or temperature, are not the same when measured over a period of time.  They fluctuate, and statistics helps us understand the fluctuation.

Dividing the mean by the standard error normalizes the data, allowing it to be compared to one standard, this instance to a table to find a probability.  By doing many problems where I had drawn a bell-shaped curve and looked at probabilities, I understood the concept well enough to teach it to undergraduates in Las Cruces for two years and in Tucson for another four.

This woman was from another generation of students, however, and in the decade where I have not been heavily involved with statistics, drawing a picture of how the data were distributed and having a sense of what the data were trying to say has atrophied, at least where I am tutoring.  The argument I was having with the student had a lot to do with the arguments I needed on the calculator;  she did not understand them, only that she was obtaining different answers.  Put simply, she did not have the background to be using a calculator.  I could say that about many students.  When I taught for a private for profit college, when a student saw a probability “6 E-4,” they wrote “6” as a probability, both impossible and showing no sense of what E-4 means, which is a power of 10 to a minus number:  6 E-4 =0.0006.  I don’t expect the average person to know that; I do expect somebody taking statistics and using a calculator to understand it.

That is only my opinion, from one who learned the material from first principles and is still slow to pick up a calculator, because I am often more comfortable performing my own calculations.  It remains to be seen whether we will continue to teach by calculator or teach by understanding the material, using the calculator as a tool to speed up the process.  I fear that in our rush to educate people, we are giving them instructions as to what buttons to push in a lot of subjects, without any idea of what is going on inside a calculator or more importantly, inside the system we are analyzing.

This is not idle philosophical musing.  When I taught, more than half the class did not understand what “the rate of increase in health care costs is declining” meant.  To them, the statement meant that the costs were decreasing, rather than the number was still increasing, but less rapidly than it was before.  This term is commonly used. The concept of statistical error to many people means that statistics is wrong, so it doesn’t matter.  Statistics is unable to tell us the exact results in a population, because from a poll, we do not know what the exact result is for the people in whom we are interested.  Where we differ from other fields is that we quantify the error in terms of confidence and probability, and we know the difference between the two terms.  We reject the concept that “anything can happen,” because we define a priori what “can happen” means.

We need to learn what calculators can do; equally importantly, what they cannot do.  Data that are not collected randomly have limitations what we can say about them.  Calculators do not have the ability to discern that. Calculators answer only what we ask them; they neither ask questions, nor do they tell us what we might want to know.

Calculators and computers are wonderful tools to get information that one needs, but education, critical thinking, and understanding remain timeless.

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CAUTION: BEFORE GOING TO WAR, READ INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY

May 28, 2015

Early March 2003:  I remember speaking to my father about how many people alive that day would not be in the coming year, due to the impending invasion of Iraq.  I was against the war, because I believed Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, there was no convincing evidence of weapons of mass destruction, starting wars was a lot easier than ending them, we would create terrorists by being there, and we would have an influx of refugees.

2015: my father is no longer alive, I still am, and every one of my concerns was correct.  Several thousand Americans and perhaps more than a million Iraqis died; the consensus recently was that the war was a mistake.  Really? Those who made the mistake are alive and rich; incredibly, some of them are still being considered for high level governmental jobs:  Mssrs. “the war will pay for itself” Wolfowitz and Bolton, the latter one of the nastiest men on earth.

With that background, I read American Sniper, by Chris Kyle.  I had some misgivings about whether I really should or wanted to read the book, but did so.  Not surprisingly, there were  things I didn’t like.  He and I were from two different worlds, generations and belief systems.  But we were both Americans, and we both served.  There were areas where I found myself nodding assent.  Mr. Kyle was a warrior, not a writer.  I am a writer, not a warrior. He was a warrior like Patton, for he loved being at war.  He loved it more than family, he and his wife both admitted it.  He had a chance to quit the military but stayed.

What Mr. Kyle wrote should be discussed every time we go to war.  He de-humanized the enemy, referring them as savages.  This is not wrong; it is how people bring themselves to kill other people.  We used “gook” in Vietnam.  He referred to killing simply as “got him.”  He was a superb warrior and sniper who lived for action, had incredible luck, much of which he made, whereas literally millions of others did not have the luck or live.

While Mr. Kyle said he had only one brief “flashback,” he was changed by the war.  I don’t know how he couldn’t have been. Diving for cover when a car backfires is not normal.  I don’t know how any individual can live through war and remain normal.  He and his fellow warriors fought in bars over minor issues and got drunk often.  It doesn’t make them bad; they were young men at war.  Being at war makes such behavior more likely in young men.

We glorify warriors; mankind always has.  When we need them, we want good ones, and Mr. Kyle was the best of the best.  He was humble in his story, lavished praise upon others, and had many narrow escapes.  One man next to him was shot in the eye and was permanently blind.  He lived, but not long.  Another died in Mr. Kyle’s arms. Every person “down” ended up either in a body bag or in the hospital.  This was an ugly war in an ugly place fought by an ugly enemy.  The smells of Iraq cannot be described.  I have smelled similar places.  The smell of blood, the sight of bad trauma I know, although not like what occurred in Iraq.  Mr. Kyle survived an IED and just missed another one; several hundred Americans did not; thousands survived mutilated and beyond repair.  Many are homeless today. Having video games extolling fighting and killing disturbs me deeply.  War is horrific.

Mr. Kyle was a patriot.  Sadly, he fought in a war started by old men who had never been warriors and who had no business starting this one.  He spoke out strongly against politicians giving rules of engagement, lawyers wanting to know if a “kill” should have been done.  Mr. Kyle wrote that once the military is in place, it should be allowed to do its job.  He was dead right.  That is why going to war must be carefully thought out, for the military’s doing what it should do is ugly, often based on misleading intelligence, and many will die unnecessarily. That is war.

The run-up to the Iraq war was a lot of flag-waving and jingoism.  It was “Mission Accomplished,” when 3 years later, the country was nearly a failed state and in 2015 may become one.  The war was illegal and marketed to the American public. The strategy was flawed by men who chained warriors like Mr. Kyle, so he could not be as effective as he could have been.  It made contractors like Blackwater rich for shoddy work, frank murder and showed an uncaring nation in our handling of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Walter Reed, and care for veterans.

I laud the late Mr. Kyle for including comments by his wife, her experiences.  She built her own walls against pain, walls against a person whom she loved.  She did not enjoy war action, for she was raising children and wondering if she would be visited by two men, informing her that her husband was dead, which happened to thousands of others.  As bad as death is, having a husband come home who is blind, had his legs blown off, or his brain damaged in a way that can never be made whole again may be worse.  It is an ongoing hell, and those who go to war leave behind those who worry and deal with “boring,” tedious, necessary day-to-day life.  Warriors fight and have glory, thinking they are immortal, until something happens that ends it all….forever.  Their spouses must bring up children who don’t know a parent.  Some are widowed mothers at 19. That tragedy visited Tucson after Fallujah.

Mr. Kyle’s death at 38 was at the hands of someone he was trying to help, who turned on him at a range, shooting him six times, so sad and ironic.  Mr. Kyle no longer feels, but his wife does and has her own hell to go through, alone.

I’ve served in the military, but I’ve never been a warrior.  Nor have I been or ever will be a hero.  I’ve fired a rifle exactly ten times, 40 years ago.  I never have touched another firearm.  Not once. I don’t shoot bullets.  I write words, try to help people understand the world we live in, and give of myself to causes I believe in.  I won’t be famous, and when I die, few will grieve.  I have lived as an imperfect human being, done some good, seen more of the world than many, been blessed with skills others have not, and tried to speak out against injustice, evil, and wrongdoing.

Had we stayed out of Iraq, the late Chief Kyle would likely be alive today, as would perhaps a million others.  In 2003, few knew Mr. Kyle.  In 2015, most of the country knows of him.  I salute both his memory and his wife, for what she had to do.  I cry out against the injustice, the lies, the waste, my being labelled a traitor, and all the other things the Iraq war did to individuals and to us collectively.  It was wrong, and in 2003, I was in the 16% who said it was wrong.  I wasn’t prophetic.  I’ve read much about war, from the Romans, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and every word Samuel Eliot Morison published.  I walked on Corregidor; I’ve seen Pearl Harbor, the Memorial Cemetery in Manila, gone ashore on Okinawa and Inchon, seen rusted hulks on Eniwetok.

In 1970, we seniors at Dartmouth were asked to answer a question:  “Is there a war that you would want to fight in?” I never forgot the words one of my classmates wrote, back when we were involved in another wrong conflict.

“I can’t imagine there ever being a war I would want to fight in.  I can imagine one I ought to fight in.”

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ZWEI ALLEIN (TWO ALONE)

May 14, 2015

The man was adamant.  “My wife will not have chemotherapy.  We survived the concentration camps, and we will both go together.”  His wife had cancer metastatic to the brain, and other than radiation, there wasn’t anything else we were going to be able to do except control brain swelling.  I had the sense the man was challenging me, but I wasn’t about to fight them, not a pair of concentration camp survivors fighting their own losing battle.

A few weeks later, I read in the newspaper that there had been a murder-suicide in an elderly couple.  The name was familiar, and I knew exactly what had happened.

I watch German videos online every day.  I no longer spend 3-4 hours daily learning vocabulary, memorizing lists, or studying grammar.  I did that for a few years, but I moved on to other interests, as I knew I would.  I like exploring the world; there is so much to see and do, and I find the time short.

Today, I listened to a video where the ending was not perfect, unfinished.  It was real. It was powerful. The plot was simple enough.  A woman, Henriette, and her sister were walking in a park, when suddenly a robber jumped out, stole the sister’s purse and shot Henriette in the abdomen.  The sister was unhurt and got help, but Henriette died in the hospital during surgery.  There had been 4 murders in the park in the past several months, so this appeared to be another.

Benedikt, her husband, was a bus driver.  The next day, he went to work, confused, and drove the bus past people waiting, through a red light, and was pulled over by the police.  When they learned his wife had died the day before, they told him they would take him home.  Benedikt suddenly left the bus and took a cab, not home, but by places where he had spent time with his wife.  For the next several days, he acted like a grieving man. Flashbacks were shown, one finally showing the Henrietta with him, months earlier, suddenly collapsing from abdominal pain.

It dawned on me that perhaps this shooting was intentional.  Indeed, it soon became obvious.  The woman had visited a gynecologist and had a malignancy, likely ovarian cancer, although it was not stated.  She and Benedikt had discussed her disease, decided against further treatment.  The police in the meantime, had discovered the perpetrator, but the latter stoutly denied anything to do with this murder, even as he laughingly admitted to the others.

At the end, it was obvious that Benedikt had shot his wife, with her prior consent.  His sister-in-law finally discerned the truth and watched helplessly at the end, as Benedikt held a gun to his chin.  He suddenly fired the gun at the sky, at God, he said, and the movie ended. There was no “closure,” a term that needs to be used less, since many seem to believe that candlelight vigils and other memorials will help speed closure.  They don’t.  Closure takes time, and Americans, for whom time is precious, want to speed up something that has its own schedule.

In Oregon and four other states, Benedikt’s wife and the woman with metastatic cancer could use Death with Dignity.  Both women were had a life expectancy fewer than 6 months, mentally competent, and would have qualified for a prescription, if two physicians, one of whom could be the individual’s personal one, agreed that she were terminal. Two requests have to be made 15 days apart.  This is not a “I want it tomorrow” issue.   The prescription is then taken to a specific pharmacy, filled by a specific pharmacist, because some pharmacists refuse to fill it.  Then, at a time of the patient’s choosing, the patient takes the pills, becomes unconscious and die.  No gun, no jail for the spouse.  It is terribly sad, but the individual is in control of the dying process, which was going to occur soon regardless.

Do we think that people don’t know they are dying?  Do we have to let the soon-to-come death come on its terms, rather than on a patient’s terms?  Oh yes, there is palliative care, and while it is good, if I have pancreatic cancer or a glioblastoma I don’t want death on death’s terms.  I don’t want to lose half my weight, become jaundiced, lie in a bed for weeks, slowly dying, even with pain control, seizure control, and being kept clean, all a very tall order, because not all palliative medicine is the same.  There won’t be a sudden miracle, and anybody who practices medicine as I have is far more an expert than those who live in a dream world of fluff and unicorns, where there are happy endings.  No, I wouldn’t want to die.  But I would not take my life, the disease would.  If it is a matter of one day vs. a few weeks, why should I not have control?  Isn’t that a civil right of mine?  What is more private to an individual, more of a right, than their right to exist?

Oh, I know the arguments.  Hospice can do this, except there are hospices that don’t do it, and I don’t want to end up in one of them.  One charged Barbara Mancini for murder when she handed her father morphine that he asked her for.  It wasn’t even clear he wanted to end his life then.  He wanted it for pain and was taken to the hospital against his wishes and given naloxone to reverse the morphine.  He died a few days later, the way he did not want to.  About $100,000 later, jail time, and national press, Ms. Mancini was acquitted, with a 42- page scathing report written by the court against the prosecutor, who may now be in Congress.

I am not on a pedestal shouting this to the world.  Or maybe I am.  In any case, the slippery slope that the Catholic Church and others predicted would happen in Oregon didn’t.  The thousands of people predicted to die every year hasn’t reached one thousand yet, and the law has been on the books for 17 years.  A third of the people who get the drug never use it.

I say all this as a former neurologist who spent 17 years practicing in a Catholic hospital, where I had no trouble pulling tubes and stopping feeding of those on whom I diagnosed irreversible brain injury and the family told me “he never wanted to be like this.” I wasn’t playing God.  The Church and I had no disagreement about discontinuing futile treatment.  Many of my colleagues disagreed with me, and I wasn’t popular, although a dozen referred their families or themselves to me, even if they didn’t refer me patients.  The ICU nurses, who frequently dealt with death, respected me.  That respect mattered.

The probability we will live to 90 in great health and suddenly die is highly unlikely.   I’ve seen and dealt with the reality.  We need to remain compassionate, accessible to families, and allow in all 50 states this final civil right.  It isn’t suicide, and it isn’t forced.  It’s humane, sacred, and its time has come.

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DAY OF RECKONING

May 8, 2015

A recent Facebook post showed a way to divide that the individual said “made no sense” to her.  Others weighed in with similar comments, saying they learned division differently.  They didn’t say whether they could still divide.  The complaints were leveled at Common Core, which now is to blame for everything wrong in education the way Mr. Obama is to blame for everything wrong in America.  Teachers are now getting on the bandwagon, in some instances bragging how many children are opting out of the test.  Before I tackle that problem, let me address this division problem, for there are several ways to do it.  First, if one doubles 2460 to get 4920, and divides by 10 (doubling both divisor and dividend doesn’t change the answer), one gets 492.    IMG_1117

That is how I would do it in my head.

Here, one is breaking down 2460 into numbers easily divisible by 5; namely, 2000, 400, and 60, and adding them.  Same answer.  This would be my second choice.

What I asked was how many could divide 4 into 3586.  To me, if one cannot do that problem quickly, the way they learned division didn’t work for them, and the issue isn’t with Common Core but with how to divide.   I divide 4 into (3600-14), to get 900-3 1/2= 896 1/2

As for parents not being able to do their child’s homework, my father, a science teacher, wasn’t able to help me with my geometry homework, either. That’s not common core; it’s the fact that  over time we forget how to do things.  If one learned how to divide but no longer can do it, with brief practice, one could again do it well.  I re-learned calculus 32 years after I took it.  I wasn’t brilliant, but I had once learned the concept.  When I saw it again, and saw the instructions, my ability once again returned.

One good comment posted was “how do you divide by 7?”  I answered that in my response to the original post.  Suppose we want to divide 7 into 3817:  I break 3817 into 3500 +280 +37.  If I divide 7 into each of the three dividends, I get 500 +40 +5 remainder 2, or 545 2/7.

The issue with Common Core, just like No Child Left Behind, from the “Education President,” is that American children as a whole are not doing well in math and other subjects, lagging behind the rest of the world. The rise of charter schools, the decline of public schools, the lack of funding for the latter, while we are building prisons and cutting taxes for upper income earners and businesses are all contributing factors.  The public also demands accountability.  That is fine.  The response has been to create various forms of testing to prove competence.  After all, at some point in the educational process, somebody needs to be proven competent.  How one proves such without testing I do not know; proof of knowledge has traditionally required showing one’s ability to do something, and I call that a test.  The fact a student may be nice, easy to talk to, gets along with others, gives hugs, or helps out at home or in the community is fine, but I want more from my mechanic, doctor or pilot.  I like hearing a friendly voice at Dutch Brothers.  I also want them to make change properly and serve drinks with safe water and safe ingredients.  I want my automobile properly engineered so it doesn’t break down and the seat belts and air bags work.  I want the dam up river to be constructed so it doesn’t break, which it did a while back, and lack of attention to prior broken parts caused the one of the sluices to be left open, because the motor at the time couldn’t be trusted.

We often don’t see the results of competence first hand, so we tend to disparage tests; we do, however, see the results of lack of competence.

Arizona had the AIMS test, testing English, math, and science.  The problem with AIMS was that not surprisingly, many students failed it.  If they failed it too often, they didn’t graduate.  A child’s not graduating from high school upset parents and others, because for years, children had been passed on up the line to graduation, leaving high school with the inability to do math, speak well, know geography, history, including American history, and ability to write properly.  But they graduated.  Eighty per cent failed the local community college’s math placement test.  I tutored for years in an affluent high school where students in the 10th-12th grade worked on simple arithmetic problems at the third grade level, all along being allowed to listen to music.  When I objected, stating music was a distraction, the students said they needed music to perform.  I then asked why they were in the class in the first place, since their performance to date hadn’t been acceptable.  The school allowed music to be listened to; I thought that a bad idea.  I often wonder what these students are doing now.

AIMS became watered down, so that as long as a student had a decent GPA, they could graduate without it.  Finally, AIMS disappeared altogether.  In its place, we have new national standards.  I am not saying I agree with what is on the test, and I don’t agree teachers should teach to the test.  They shouldn’t have to. Too often, math tests are written by those who want to show how clever they are.  I think we might well do better with at least two tiers of math, one for those who are likely to go to less intensive (regarding math) fields, and the other for those who are going to college and need a certain degree of math to continue.  Germany tests its students earlier in their educational career; it is clear that some should not go to college but belong in other careers, important to society, a better fit for the student, but without the math that is needed for higher level education.  I might require basic statistics, so that students would understand something about sampling, margin of error, mean-median difference, how to make and read a graph, and how to count things that matter.

Like it or not, people need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.  They absolutely need to memorize the multiplication tables, and eventually multiplication will become automatic.  They need to be able to use calculators but also understand when a calculator’s answer makes no sense.  Students must show knowledge of math for a given grade before they are promoted, the proof being one with which any reasonable adult would agree.  Some high school diplomas will not contain the same words as those for students who took four years of high school math.  Parents need to fish or cut bait.  If we want children to be properly educated for the 21st century, then we need to prove it.  It is distressing to see and hear both parents and teachers alike complain about Common Core unless they are developing alternatives.  I’m open to suggestions; I’m not open to continuing to pass students along to the next level, delaying the day of reckoning.

That day has long come.

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OOPS, OCCUPIED!

May 3, 2015

A week ago, driving out of the Cascades near Santiam Junction, I stopped at a Forest Service Trailhead to use a restroom. Because the door was ajar, I started to open it.

“HEY!!!!”  I heard.

Had I been a better person, I would have apologized.  I think I did mutter “Sorry.”  But I took the coward’s way out.  The car was still running, I got into it and sped out of the parking lot to US 20 and hightailed it back out of the mountains.  I didn’t want the user to see me.

My wife laughed.  “Why didn’t he lock the door?”  “Or,” she continued, “why didn’t he just say ‘Occupied!!’”   Good question.  He should have been more embarrassed than I.

****************************************************

I went out to the community college today, since it was my day to tutor.  It had been a good week with no further “HEY’S”. I  did a difficult but worthwhile exploratory hike in the Cascades, where I hadn’t been before but was going to lead a hike there in a month.

When I got to the college, the parking lot looked empty.  I had a sense something was wrong, and sure enough, the doors were locked.  I returned to the car, googled the college’s calendar, and found there was a conference that day, so no school.  I was annoyed.  This sort of stuff happened when I volunteered in Tucson schools, too.  They would have a holiday and nobody told me.  I showed up and wasted my time.  I didn’t get much of an apology, either. It was so bad, I had to check each Friday to see if there were any days the following week where I wouldn’t be needed.

Sometimes, “I’m sorry” isn’t enough. In 2003, I interviewed for a teaching position in quality improvement with the American College of Physician Executives.  After not hearing from them for a month, I sent an e-mail, a letter, and phoned them.  I received no reply.  That’s uncalled for.  Yes, people are busy, but this is a 30 second e-mail (“we will not be hiring you” takes about 24 seconds.  I timed it).  I left the organization, and as I expected, they would notice. Money counts.  I received a call to ask why I hadn’t renewed my membership.  I told them why.  Within a minute, the Executive Vice President was talking to me.  I didn’t mention the name of the man who should have notified me.  I didn’t want to cause trouble for him.  It was a classy move on my part. I got a call a day later from the individual at fault, who said, “I guess I should be sorry.”  YOU GUESS?  I wasn’t demanding a job; I only wanted to know what the results of the interview were (which I had long since guessed).  That is not an apology.  You don’t guess with apologies.  That makes the situation worse.  You make an apology CLEAR.

I’ve done a lot of wrong in my life, so I have gotten a lot better at apologies.  For those who haven’t apologized much, the first rule is do it with empathy.  Mean it.  You would be amazed at how much that helps.  That means you must convey a sense that you really are sorry, even if you aren’t. That is step one.  Guys, take note of this, when you deal with women.

Yes, step one.  For there are two more steps.  Good apologies must be done right.

Second, say what you believe the consequences of your action caused.  Yes.  I apologized to my wife for something once, and I apologized for the wrong thing.  Yeah, really. What I thought I had done badly was not the issue, it was something else.  Wow, that’s being clueless.  I plead guilty.  But at least by saying what I thought I did wrong, I discovered my real error.  That mattered.

The third and final step is to say what you will do in the future to ensure, as best as you can, that the mistake does not occur again.  My mother once refused a CT head scan, and we were told the scan was normal.  Yes.  Really.  Five months later, when we took her for a “repeat” scan, we learned that she had never had one.  My father and I went to the CEO of a hospital to ask how this could happen.  All we heard was how many printouts of data the CEO had to deal with daily.  Think we cared?

Witness a good apology:  A psychiatrist reamed me out over the phone about an opinion I had given about a patient he was seeing.  “You didn’t spend enough time with the patient.”  I was speechless, and in that time of “less”, he hung up.  That was skunk anger, which is not good coming from a psychiatrist.  Important rule in medicine: never believe what a patient tells you another doctor said.  Come to think of it, it’s a good rule in life, too.

Two days later, the psychiatrist called me, apologized for his behavior, which he said must have stunned me.  “I have since spoken to a several other people about you, and they told me what a good doctor you are.  I am sorry I treated you that way.  I hope you will forgive me.”

Forgive?  Hell, it made my day.

Here’s how apologies should not be done:  A man from Comcast was to look at the house when we wanted to install wi-fi.  He gave me a window of time when he would show up, and he didn’t come.  I had his number, calling it periodically for 3 hours, getting voice mail and no responses.  It wasted my whole afternoon.  About 4:30, I got a call with a cheery, “How are you doing?”  I think most of us might say that we weren’t doing particularly well at the moment, and I told him that.  “Oh, sorry about that.  We had a sudden meeting I couldn’t miss.”

I’ve been in management.  People have meetings.  Sometimes, they are “right now” meetings.   But when the guy who installs my phone can’t get a message, doesn’t call me until three hours later, it doesn’t give me confidence in the telephone service.  What should he have done?  “I’m really sorry, but I’m going to be at least three hours late.  I have an urgent meeting, I didn’t know about it, and I will work late if you will allow me to come over at 5 tonight.  I know it is important for you.  Again, I am sorry.”

That works.  Instead, the next day, when he finally arrived, he mentioned how overloaded he was, with work, but the fact he had driven back from Boulder to Eugene after the Oregon-Colorado football game.  Do you think I cared?  Most people aren’t interested in a service provider’s using their vacation as an excuse.  A lot of people don’t get to take vacations.

I’ll go back out to the school on Tuesday.  They forgot.  It’s an honest mistake.  They are entitled to that.  They will apologize.  If they don’t, I won’t call them out on it.

But I will be disappointed in them.

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OPTING OUT…OF MATH

April 27, 2015

Lately, there has been a lot of press, fanfare and pride in having one’s child opt out of testing for Common Core.  I am not a fan of standardized tests, but I took them every year in elementary and high school.  Perhaps the stakes weren’t high then, or maybe I did well enough on them so it didn’t matter.  My teachers didn’t teach to a test.  They taught material, and we were supposed to learn it.

I have taken more than one proud teacher to task for bragging about how many kids aren’t going to take the test.  “What,” I ask, “do you plan to put into place to know that a student is competent to advance to the next grade?”  At this point, I usually hear complaints about how teachers aren’t listened to, rather than specifics about how to make something better.  It’s easy to complain about something; it is a lot more difficult to put oneself on the line and offer something different.

At Lane Community College, where I am a volunteer math tutor, a recent editorial in the school newspaper suggested the school get rid of any math requirement, with the headline “Math-free degrees make sense.”  Some quotations:

  • “Many of those careers don’t require people with math skills.”
  • “For some college programs, not all, math is completely unnecessary.”
  • “However, for some students, any math is a hindrance to getting a degree.”
  • “When students have to subjects they are not suited to, rather than attending classes of…relevance…they become stressed and tired.”
  • “Granted, those going onto (sic) four year colleges would still have to study math.”
  • “What matters to employers is that job applicants have the necessary knowledge and skills to get the job done.”
  • “Choosing between a job candidate who had to study math…and one who didn’t…employers simply wouldn’t care.”
  • “These days (sic) technology handles all the math most people will ever need.”
  • “I’m not saying no to math in education altogether.  I’m saying it’s the responsibility of earlier education.   Remedial math should be the choice of the individual, not a community college mandate.”
  • “A more practical…alternative would be where students learn…how compound interest works, how monthly payments enslave people…”

My first reading of the article was that is was sarcasm, but I soon realized it was not.  The editor-in-chief of the paper has her picture present, and she looks like she is within a decade of my age.  I had a choice between a 250 word letter to the editor or a 600 word opinion piece.  I chose the latter.  I will expand upon it a little more.

It’s unfortunate that the Suze Orman Show is now gone, for Ms. Orman embodied the importance of math in finance and in life.  Those who sought help from her did not fully understand its importance, as the “Can I Afford It?” and “How am I Doing?” segments showed.  

My student who wanted to be a stockbroker couldn’t understand why he was learning logs, until I showed him how to determine the doubling time of money with 5 calculator strokes (72 divided by the interest rate in per cent is number of years), proving it in two lines (proof below).  He was amazed.  Another was thrilled to discover that by knowing the volume of a cylinder, he could determine cubic inch displacement of an engine.  I have never forgotten the look on his face, when he realized his knowledge.  Math is important, can easily be made relevant, and—yes—even fun.   Having my advisor in graduate school look at a proof of the first and second moments of a previously unknown hypergeometric function, say “Good job,” was one of my highlights of two difficult years away from home.

I grew up in an era where people did the same job their entire life.  The world is rapidly changing; multiple careers during one’s lifetime are now the norm.  At 66, I have had three.  We can’t imagine what jobs will be needed 10 years from now, let alone 50.  The winners in this new world will be those who can adapt; math is the single most valuable subject I know that increases one’s adaptability.  I taught adults in their 30s who discovered that they were wrong, when they thought in high school they knew their career path. Suddenly, they needed an MBA to advance in their company.   When faced with linear regression in a business model, knowing the slope of a line becomes relevant, as does probability, difference between a mean and a median, servicing debt, survey design, and measuring quality, to name only a few.  Without math, the glass ceiling becomes cement. 

I have heard students complain, like Ms. S., that they wouldn’t use math they were learning.  I could easily fill this paper with counterexamples, and my primary career was a neurologist.  I didn’t start my third career, statistics, until I was 49, and I had to review calculus taken 32 years earlier in order to get accepted.  Math, like learning music, chemistry, or Spanish, takes work and practice.  If Ms. S. thinks that math is stressful and makes people tired, I can assure her that I survived the stress and fatigue of reviewing calculus on my own and two years of graduate school, 300 miles commuting each way.  I didn’t remember calculus, but once I began to review it, I discovered something important: “If one learns a subject well, and doesn’t use it, he will forget it.  BUT, once he sees the subject again, it is relearned quickly.”

I have long thought we need a parallel educational pathway where math requirements vary for students.  I agree that a community college should not be a high school finishing institution, but until elementary and high schools teach students how to add and subtract, learn the multiplication tables, know when a calculator result doesn’t make sense, allowing remedial math to be the choice of a Lane student is saying math doesn’t matter at all, countering Ms. S.’s claim.  Offering math-free diplomas to increase graduation numbers is an astoundingly bad idea.  Our society needs proof of agreed-upon minimum math competence before a student  graduates from high school. Until then, Lane students must deal with the “stress” of learning math.  Life is tough. In the meantime, I hope Ms. S. understands that teaching compound interest to become financially literate requires algebra: Stating I=prt doesn’t allow one to understand continuous compounding any more than showing me middle C on a keyboard and thinking I can find D major.  For those who think math is worthless, I’m at Lane twice weekly by choice, to help students learn math.  To me, those 8 hours are almost a sacred calling.  Yes, sacred, not scared.

[A piece of wood was 40 cm long and cut into 3 pieces.  The lengths in cm are:

2x-5 

x+7

x+6   Add:

4x+8  = 40

4x=32

x=8; pieces are 11, 15, and 14.  Even if you didn’t know this, x+7 is larger than x+6.  One piece has to be at least 14 cm, so x has to be 7 or greater.  Put in some numbers.

What is the length of the longest piece?  15 cm.  7% of American 8th graders got it right; 53% of Singaporean.]

********************************************************************

Compound interest that can be taught for financial literacy (not difficult, but if you haven’t had algebra?):

Continuously compounded (the easiest):

P=Po exp^(rt) ; P= principal  Po=starting principal, exp= e (2.71828); r=rate, t=time. Don’t worry about e; ln takes it away just like division takes away multiplication, subtraction takes away addition.  Can you imagine doing that without knowing algebra?  Yes, e=[1+(1/n)]^n, as n gets large or ∑[1+(1/n!)] summing from 1 to infinity, but without algebra?

2P=Po e^rt; P=2Po, because money has doubled, (2Po/Po)=e^rt; ln2=rt

ln2/r= t; 0.693/r = t   69.3/r (%)  =t   round to 72/r=t, because 72 is divisible by many numbers.  That is 6 lines, but 8 small equations fit in 2 lines.

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DEATH AND LIFE

April 24, 2015

A few nights ago, or in the morning, whatever one calls 2 a.m., a young man and woman, both in their 20s, died when their car struck a tree, right down the road from where we live, where the speed limit is 40, and the road curves, but easily taken at 40.  Today, there is a memorial on the sidewalk, tree, and a few people are present.  The news reported, “speed has not been ruled out as a factor.”

Like so many accidents, the final results of the investigation are either never published or are so hidden in the newspaper that one often never learns the cause.  When I walked back home from a hands on children’s museum last Sunday, after showing sunspots to kids and adults, I was in sight of the tree that would be struck. The two victims were then alive and vibrant, full of life, full of promise, four decades of life ahead before they reached my age.  Now they are corpses, a dreadful word, but the truth.

For the truth is dreadful.  They are dead.

Not only are they dead, there is a high likelihood they didn’t have to die.  Driving the speed limit in a modern car, wearing seat belts and with air bags, one is likely to leave the road only by being distracted or intoxicated, both of which may well have been factors.  The kinetic energy at 40 mph is 45% that at 60 mph, for kinetic energy of a moving object increases with the square of the velocity, and the extra 55% may be enough to convert an accident with injuries into one with fatalities. Being belted in and having airbags doesn’t prevent death from a crash, but it greatly decreases the probability.

Too many don’t understand this concept.  To them, one counterexample invalidates a whole theory.  “She did everything right and died from xxx, so it didn’t matter.”  That might have been said about the woman, 60, who died from ovarian cancer, or a 52 year-old colleague who died from an astrocytoma, a colleague’s wife who died at 49 from a ruptured aneurysm, or the obituary today of a 35 year-old, killed by a drunk driver.  “Everything right” that we know of often doesn’t work.  Sometimes, it is as simple and as awful as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like being a 9 year-old girl at a Tucson Safeway on 8 January 2011.

Other times, it is just bad luck.  I never knew Mark Edelson, photo editor of the Palm Beach Times, named Newspaper Picture Editor of the Year nine times.  He recently died of lymphoma, only 64.  Reading that, I realized how lucky I am, how little I have to complain about, and how much more I must do with my life.

Doing everything right can greatly decrease death from lung, skin, cervical, colon, breast, hematopoietic, and other cancers, allowing people with these and other conditions to live far longer than they used to.  Acute lymphoblastic leukemia was a death sentence 40 years ago;  it is curable in 85% today.

Last week’s Stammtisch, a gathering of German speakers (or wannabes like me) was the only group in the pizza parlor.  For once, it was quiet, so I could understand people, which with my hearing is difficult enough in English, let alone in German.  I listened to a young man in his twenties, from the Portland area, living here, speaking German fluently.  He had studied it three years in high school, more it in college, and spent a year in country.  That’s how to learn a language.  Start young, study hard, and live in country for a year.

Peter, several years my senior, from Alsace, fluent in English, French, and German, sat next to me.  Peter served in the military in Europe, helping MPs get American soldiers out of trouble.  Speaking three key languages fluently allowed Peter to serve his country well.  He corrects my German gently.  Peter nudged me, nodded towards the young man, and said in German, “He has his whole life before him.”  I agreed.

“But I wouldn’t trade with him,” Peter quickly added.  I also agreed.  Yes, to be young, multilingual, good looking, healthy, with your adult life and the world before you, is great.

Unless you drive too fast at night, leave the road and hit a tree.  Or have really bad luck.

If possible, I would do over much in my life.  But I can’t change the past, only apologize, make amends, and then move forward, dealing with current circumstances.  I grew up in a wonderful time, being white, male, straight and middle class.  I had good parents, who taught me to be curious, to read, to love animals, and to treat the outdoors as a place to enjoy and to take care of.  We got dirty, bored, made up our own games, and enforced our rules.

I had pressure in school, but I never slept fewer than six or seven hours at night.  I read recently that some are taking a new stimulant allowing them to work longer in order to advance.  “Sleep is an option,” said one.  Wow.  I had summer jobs, and huge student loans were unknown.  I was a partner in a medical practice;  I now know highly qualified physicians who are looking for work, not even partner track, just work.  I never had that problem.

There were good times for the right people, but hardly idyllic.  “Negroes” were discriminated against, lynched, and we equated homosexuality with pedophilia.  Interracial marriages were illegal, and gay meant happy.  Smoking was considered cool, plane crashes were common, kids died from polio or measles, rape was considered a woman’s fault, wages for men were higher, “because he had a family,” doctors were God, and we dealt with cans in the wilderness by throwing them on the ground or sinking them in the lake.  The “good old days” were hardly that.  By the way, rape is still considered a woman’s fault in many places, gender wage equality isn’t, and racism is still prevalent.

I would not want to be in my 20s in this competitive world.  I am content with my age, hopefully wiser.  It is my world, too, one where I want to give back: volunteering tutoring math, learning a language or two, showing kids the night sky, leading hikes deep into the wilderness, seeing special places, volunteering at the crane migration every year, and living in my mid-60s.  No, the 60s are not problem-free.  Not at all.  Then again, in the obituaries virtually every day, I read about those who didn’t get to their 60s, 50s, 40s, or 30s.

Mark Edelson didn’t get to Medicare age.  What a loss.  When good people die, the rest of us have to make up for their loss.

Time for me to get back to work, and be glad I am alive to do so.

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DESIGNATED GUN HOLDER

April 20, 2015

In 2009, when Arizona allowed guns in places that served alcohol (read: bars), the owner of the gun was not allowed to drink alcohol.  This is “people will do the right thing” mentality, and if you believe people do that, you haven’t been on an aircraft lately, driven on an Interstate, picked up roadside litter, or heard of Curry Todd.

Mr. Todd is a Tennessee legislator who was arrested for DUI and carrying a firearm.  Todd claimed it was the prescription medicine that caused him to weave in and out of traffic, but the law reads “alcohol,” he had been drinking and taking medication, and was jailed for 48 hours.  Todd repeatedly argued during a debate about the law that gun owners were responsible and would not drink while carrying a firearm.  If gun owners are so responsible, why was Todd irresponsible?  Why do 600 people die each year (50 shot by a child less than 6) unintentionally?  Why are there more deaths due to firearms in states where there are more firearms?

Some gun owners are responsible; many are not.  Indeed, 22 million Americans are estimated to have anger issues and access to guns.  They don’t just get pissed off occasionally, like I do, but get skunk anger, red hot road rage sort of stuff.  One doesn’t have to drink in a bar to see people who have clearly imbibed too much.  Really, now.  Does anybody honestly believe we will have a “designated gun owner” who doesn’t drink?  Curry Todd didn’t.  He was an irresponsible gun owner that night.

Let’s look at the “people will do the right thing” mentality.

At Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska, 600,000 Lesser Sandhill Cranes, 90% of the world’s population, migrate through every spring, the greatest migration in the contiguous states, and the largest crane migration in the world.  Cranes are extensively hunted, Nebraska’s being the only state/province where they are not, so they are wary of humans.  The only way to see these birds close up is to be in a viewing blind where one is hidden.  Stand outside, and the birds will not land near you.  Try to approach the birds on foot (illegal in Nebraska; it is harassment), and they will move away.  That doesn’t stop people’s trying to do it.  A couple did it once and ruined one of my blind tours in 2004 over in Grand Island.  The birds left.

The migration is viewed by 20,000 people at Rowe annually; I have been in the viewing blinds 110 times watching, wondering, learning, simply in awe of these birds, which may live to be 35 in the wild, are usually monogamous, and may migrate 14,000 miles roundtrip (24,000 km) each year, to nest.

A lot of people capture this migration using cameras.  In the old days, there was limited time people could shoot a picture using a roll of film.  Digital cameras were a game changer.  At Rowe, we do not allow flashes, we tape over the automatic focuser light, and we do not allow LCD screens to be illuminated after dark.  These regulations occurred because flashes may spook the birds into the air at night, where they may collide with power lines and die.  Flashes don’t work at photographic infinite distance.  Automatic focusers may be seen a mile away.  LCD screens reflect off the face and are visible out on the river.

Before these regulations, we had banned automatic firing of the shutter, because the migration is an auditory and visual experience.  Even a rapid use of a manual shutter detracts from the experience.  We don’t allow lenses or any object to be outside the plane of the outer wall, because the birds will likely perceive the object as a rifle.  Tripods are not allowed in the corner of a blind, because they take up space for three or four windows.  In a dark viewing blind, more than one person has tripped over a tripod, sometimes the owner, who has also been known to drop lenses.  As a guide, I have seen every camera violation there is.  Some people become irate when I ask them to move the lens inside the blind.  Glad one didn’t have a gun.

Photography has become an issue among the volunteer guides.  Some think we ought to ban it outright, the way some museums do.  I don’t have a problem with photography, so long as the birds’ safety is not compromised. I like to take pictures, but I don’t need the perfect picture:  I want to show pictures to people so that they may understand the beauty that is in this world, seek out this beauty, and work to keep these special places…..special.

What would happen if Rowe Sanctuary had no regulations?  Nobody would be viewing the cranes, because people would be walking up and down the river.  People would pitch tents, promise to be quiet, wouldn’t be, leaving human waste and a mess, because people do those things.  People can’t be trusted not to throw trash into a composting toilet at a trailhead on Oregon Route 58 by Mt. Hardesty, despite a sign in the restroom telling them not to do it.  Go see, if you don’t believe me.  How difficult would it have been to have taken the trash back home?

Without regulations, we would have blinds full of tripods, large equipment, flashes, automatic focusing lights, automatic shutter speed, 8000 pictures in one two hour session (yes, a man once bragged to me that he had done that) the birds would be spooked, and the blinds become worthless.  But hey, got to have that one good picture that one can sell, put on Facebook, put it on one’s Web page, be a famous person.

Fact is that photographers failed to regulate themselves, so we regulate them to protect the migration.  We have rules about noise, how many may go to a blind, how they must enter, leave, and conduct themselves.  Left alone, people don’t do the right thing.  Remember Curry Todd.

If people did the right thing, we wouldn’t need speed limits.  We wouldn’t have litter along roads, we wouldn’t have signs shot at, we wouldn’t have scams, NINJA mortgages, the SEC, insider trading, derivatives that nobody understood, worthless supplements declared off limits for FDA regulation, thanks to conservative Orrin Hatch of Utah, need to regulate lasers shot into the air which blind pilots, or drones over important air space.

I don’t want a nanny state, a government that takes over every stage of a person’s life.  When people effectively self-regulate, we won’t need laws.  If people just voted right, we wouldn’t elect people like Curry Todd, who is still serving.

Unopposed.  I’m speechless.

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THEY’LL GO ELSEWHERE

April 10, 2015

I was speaking with an intelligent woman staff member at Rowe Sanctuary about the work they are doing, protecting a key part of the Sandhill Crane migration, the stopover on the Platte River the cranes take every six weeks from late February to mid-April.  The cranes are on their way north from the southern US and northern Mexico, and they refuel, rest, court, and spend 2-4 weeks in south central Nebraska, on the Great Bend of the Platte River.  They’ve been doing this migration for 9000 years, since the end of the last glaciation.

This habitat is critical.  There is waste corn in the fields, although before corn, the cranes came to wetlands here, where there were crustaceans and other invertebrates, rodents and other animals they could eat.  They would fly to the shallow Platte, full of sandbars, for safety at night, for cranes have a vestigial hind foot and cannot perch in trees away from predators.  The water makes it difficult for predators to approach without splashing announcing their presence.  Cranes live in three dimensions: ground, river, and sky.

Their habitat once spanned 200 miles of river, and cranes could be found anywhere there each spring.  But dams were built and irrigation began, channeling the river.  Invasive plants arrived, along with water guzzling cottonwoods, producing shade, but also allowing brush to fill in the river, making it less safe for cranes.  In 1975, a water diversion project planned would have completely dried up the river and the habitat.  It failed, but today, the habitat for the cranes in March is perhaps 50 miles of river, and only a few miles is totally protected.  The rest of it is hit or miss for the birds.  They may find a safe place, they may not.  We estimate 90% of their total habitat has been lost.

I’m pessimistic what the a warming climate and uncontrollable population will do to the migration.  In the name of jobs, because we aren’t going to decrease our population voluntarily in my lifetime, we will require more food, more fresh water, more living space, and put more demands upon all our resources.  Fresh water is the oil of the 21st century, and the Platte is a huge supplier of fresh water to the central US.  Underneath the river and well away from it lies the billion acre feet of the Ogallala Aquifer, fresh water that can be accessed underground.  The aquifer is a national treasure, yet we are risking the Ogallala in the name of building a pipeline to ship dirty, carbon intensive oil abroad, in order to make more carbon released in burning it.  Oil vs. water.

What if water in the Platte goes for other uses, in the name of jobs?  Well, I have been told, the cranes will have to adapt.  “They’ll go elsewhere.”  Really?  Where?  They’ve been coming here, longer than human recorded history.  They can’t adapt to “going elsewhere.”  They are cranes, not technologically advanced individuals capable of altering the environment.

“The climate has always changed.”  Indeed, it has.  And species come and go, but they have come and gone over thousands of years.  We are changing the environment in a matter of a few generations, not over thousands of years, which animals require to adapt.

“They will be fine.”  Really?  That is rationalization, wishful thinking.  No, the birds won’t be fine.  They will go extinct.  And then what?  For the cranes to “go elsewhere” is like my telling humanity right now that we have a century to find “another planet,” because this one won’t be livable.  It can’t be done, and the cranes can’t find another river, another flyway.  There isn’t one.  And by the way, I am dead right.  We have a century.  No more.

I told the young woman that I had no children, no skin in this game, and once I was gone, it wouldn’t be my problem.  She disagreed, stating that my presence as a volunteer meant that I DID have skin in this game, that I felt it mattered to be here.  Yes, she was right.  It does matter to me.

She additionally mentioned how young people of today are angry at the world they are being left.  They should be.  I was left a world after two wars, with enough conflicts that during my young life. I served in the military, visiting countries abroad in uniform, not the way the young do today, traveling freely, learning other languages, being connected with people all over the world on social media.  I survived.

To the younger generation, I will do my best to contribute my skills to make the environment better.  They must do the rest.  They need to get out into this natural environment, not see it on Facebook, play video games on cruises through Kenai Fjords, not look at wild fruit as “yucky,” and not tweet, call, or instant message their parents or friends about their adventures in wild country.  When people see my pictures and ask where I got them on the Internet, I say, I took them.  I WAS THERE.

We are not as far removed from our ties to nature as many might believe.  A number of studies have stated how disconnection from nature makes us unhappier, not happier.  We have one advantage over cranes that can’t go elsewhere.  We alone can manipulate our environment.  We can deal with greenhouse gases, we can figure out ways to avoid or mitigate ocean rise and de-alkalinzation, continued loss of coral species, and an Anthropocene where Earth has far fewer species of animals.

We have reached a time where we can continue on our present path, and when a species can’t go elsewhere, it dies out.  One of those species will some day be us, should we continue.  We can assume we are above the rest of the biosphere and pretend the world isn’t changing.  Or, we can assume we alone can change our environment, need to and start acting.  We can keep denying, and nature will respond.  Biology will respond to changes in physics and chemistry, not to Jim Inhofe, Ted Cruz, and those of my detractors who have been wrong on the climate.  Not one of them, not one conservative think tank can change those laws, no matter how sharp a speaker looks, speak, or tries to debate what is no longer, and never was debatable.

I won’t be around to see much of this.  If the coming generations don’t channel their understandable anger into fixing things, fail to realize that in saving the environment and nature is not a matter of cutsy sayings or “like”s on Facebook, but science, understanding nature, getting out into nature, demanding, working to reverse the damage that has been done, they won’t be around, either.

It’s time to get connected.  With nature.  Without electronics.

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WHO NAMED THE STARS?

March 28, 2015

I had just finished the last of six shows in the planetarium my first day as a volunteer at the Science Factory, a hands on museum for children, right down MLK from my house.  I had given six shows, three each of a different topic.  While the shows and my explanations had been good, I realized how much I had to learn as a volunteer, and I was tired.  As the last family left the dome, their 4 year-old daughter looked at me and made my day:

“Who named the stars?”

My fatigue vanished.  A 4 year-old had just asked me a question.    She didn’t just ask me a question, she asked a dynamite one.

That in itself is not surprising, because children are naturally curious, until they keep hearing, “Be polite, don’t bother the man,” or “don’t know, go away.”  She asked, because she wanted to know, and it’s a cinch her parents didn’t know.  I think I understood why the Science Factory wanted planetarium volunteers who knew amateur astronomy.  So, who named the stars?

I bent down to her level, and said, “What a great question that is!!”  Then I answered it:  “The ancient Arabs, Greeks and Persians named the stars.”  I didn’t get into the reasons they did: these people were desert dwellers, had no electricity, and light pollution occurred only with the Moon or a campfire.  The nights were dark.  Small wonder that they knew the sky well.  The ancient Jews knew the Moon’s irregular phase cycle to within 2 minutes.  The Saros cycle for eclipses, a repeat of a similar eclipse every 18 years and 10 or 11 1/3 days, was known 3000 years ago.

“Mommy, I want to come back here in summer and learn more names of the stars.”  I hope I am doing planetarium shows that day.

I looked in the main room and saw an 18-month old girl trying to reach a door handle. She didn’t know what it was, but she saw it, and she wanted to figure it out.  Kids run wild in that room.  That is why the museum works.  Kids need to look at how things recycle, how gravity works, how colors mix, where the lizard is in the terrarium, how we can make optical illusions, and what orbital velocity requires.

When I ask at the outset of a talk whether anybody has questions, they are invariably from children.  The questions are good.  When I was a docent at Kitt Peak in 1986, a junior high school student asked me what a parsec was.  Impressive.  It is the distance of a star from us with parallax of a star one arc second.  In other words, a star viewed six months apart in the Earth’s orbit appears to have moved, just like your thumb appears to jump when you close first one eye and then the other. The closest other star to the Sun is  1.3 parsecs.  Great question.

Young viewer of the Sandhill Crane migration, Kearney, Nebraska, 2012. Two great sights: the migration, and seeing a young person enthralled with nature.

Young viewer of the Sandhill Crane migration, Kearney, Nebraska, 2012.
Two great sights: the migration, and seeing a young person enthralled with nature.

I was lucky.  My curiosity was fostered by my parents.  I listened to my brother ask so many questions at the dinner table that finally my father told him to ask only three.  Great idea.  Small wonder my brother became a superb grant writer.  He learned to ask good questions; because grants are difficult to obtain, the better the question, the more likelihood of success.

I wasn’t as good as my brother, but I grew up curious. In kindergarten, I asked the teacher, “What does ‘Proceed with Caution’ mean?”  When children weren’t able to read, she was impressed I could.  I still remember her name, I still have her report cards from 1954, and I was once chided by her: “Mr. Smith, we do not say goddamn in my kindergarten.”

Precocity with some words is not always valued.

Often, I don’t answer the questions but let the children find out by watching the show or doing an experiment.  I’ve shown more than one child the Sun through a solar filter, and hear them say, “It looks like the Moon.”  Yep, it does.  That’s why we can have solar eclipses.  I showed one girl Jupiter one night, and she asked about the dots near it.  She had just discovered the Galilean Moons, as surely as Galileo had.

The following day, I spoke about solar eclipses to OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  This was a tough audience of retirees. I figured I would get a couple of questions I didn’t know the answer, and I did.  I also got mildly chastised by a man who did not understand the concept of protecting the eyes from sunlight during the partial phases of eclipses.  To me, the concept is easy.  He didn’t understand it until after I explained in great detail how the Sun’s rays damage the retina.  He finally said, “OK, why didn’t you say that?”  That’s a tough group.

I also learned I didn’t explain the concept of eclipse families well, because several asked me at the break.  I had the ephemeris and showed them the eclipses of 1997, 2015, and 2033.  Then I showed them 1991, 2009, and 2027.  They understood.  Sure, there were one or two asleep while I talked, and a few looked bored, but that happens.  When I took some out to view the Sun through filters, they were thrilled.  Without my speaking, they saw a large sunspot and noted the Sun was the same apparent size as the Moon.

I was concerned that I had gone through the material too quickly, but this group of adults has been lifelong learners for a reason, and that reason is curiosity.  They were curious as kids, and they never stopped being kids.  I opened the floor to questions, and I no longer had to worry about finishing too early.  Great questions, too.

The interesting thing about adults in these situations is that some drop the fears they have about asking questions, the embarrassment, the feeling they are being impolite, and revert to being a kid, asking questions when they don’t know.  I love teaching in that situation.  Some of the questions make me think, so I learn, too.  I watch their eyes shine in a way that perhaps they haven’t shined for years, because for too long they felt it was impolite to question or were afraid it was dumb.   Some took it to the next level by asking followup questions.  Kids, of course, are naturals at doing this.

The little girl got me thinking—I used to know the names of over 100 stars.  I just went through the sky with my eyes closed and can still do 60.  I’ve got work to do.  That girl may be back, and I sure don’t want to disappoint her.  If I can get everything in the Big Dipper and Pegasus-Andromeda right, the southern stars in Canis Major, and a few others, I’ll be ready.

There is only one dumb question, asking one that was just answered when you weren’t listening.

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