The psychology of water restrictions – new approaches

One of the things that I never understand is why we are not all on national, permanent and maximum water restrictions, regardless of how much rain falls. We are, after all, the second driest continent in the world.

I was in Wagga this week and they’ve taken an interesting approach to managing water usage. The policy is essentially something like: no sprinklers between 10am and 5pm. That’s it.

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UK students apparently urged to drop mathematics

The BBC news website reported that UK students are being urged to drop mathematics because it’s too hard.

Apparently, the subject is considered ‘difficult’ and so students are not taking the subject in order to increase their overall A-level scores in order to get into university.

The interesting question is: why is this happening now? Has anything fundamentally changed in the type of mathematics being taught? When I went though high school (in NSW, Australia), I took 3 unit mathematics. for comparison, the entire four unit mathematics curriculum for HSC was taught in the first 1 – 2 months of my University level mathematics course.

Why is that comparison important?   If the students dropping maths to get a higher score want to do a science based degree, then they’ll need to do University-level maths. So at some point, they’ll be faced with some ‘hard’ learning to do.

Mathematics is the most fundamental of the sciences.  If you’re a reductionist (like me) , or even a soft reductionist, then you’ll know that physics, chemistry, computing and lots of biology reduces to mathematical equations describing natural phenomena.

If you don’t have a good understanding of maths, then how can you expect to have an understnading of the fundamentasl of your discipline.

Mathematics also underpins logic such as inference, deduction, induction, reasoning and critical thinking (these can eseentially be regarded as synonyms).

I think the most important thing for all educational institutions is to examine the passion for mathematics that the teachers themselves have (if they avoid maths, so will their students) and the content of the curriculum and pedagogical methods.   there are numerous methods to improve the quality of learning for students.  these techniques can improve the performance of students and nothing breeds success like success.

Mathematics (as well as language grammar) is essential for understanding the world around us.  You just need to look at the quiz shows and pubs and venues with gaming to see how poor people are at understanding statistics and the odds of winning.

The next time your kids complain about maths, consider how important it is.  consider how your own attitudes shape those of your children and take a look at the quality of teaching.  As parents, we have considerable responsibility to ensure our children are well equipped – the jobs of the future rely more and more on information, critical reasoning and judgement.  Mathematics is critical to develop these skills.

User interfaces in science fiction movies

This interesting article showcases user interfaces in science fiction movies. I particularly liked the image of Star Trek’s Scotty speaking into the computer mouse in Star Trek IV (near the end). It’s been a while since I’ve watched that movie -I’ll have to dust it off over this Easter long weekend. Now where can I get me some of that transparent aluminium?

Spending future generations’ money, wireless broadband and standard infrastructure

Kevin Rudd has identified Australia’s Future Fund as the way to pay for a $4.7 billion election promise to deliver broadband to Australian people.

I’ve recently been using Telstra’s Next-G network (850MHz HSDPA) and it works brilliantly. I’m regularly in regional Australia near Grafton and getting 200kbps is way better than the 21kbps available via a standard modem. In the city areas, the network can deliver peak speads of 3.6Mbps, with upgrades during this year and next year to ramp it up even further.

Besides the fallacy of spending future generations’ money, wouldn’t it make more sense to invest in wireless broadband than Mr Rudd’s vision of a wired broadband to homes? Large proportions of our population move home, meaning regular disconnect / connect cycles. Having a laptop card or a small wireless modem is a much more feasible option.

Also, 3.6Mbps is is plenty to receive a streaming DVD quality video. Right now, how much more do we need? Something like Next-G is, to me, a much more sensible strategy. But Telstra has work to do on delivering more reasonable pricing – Next-G is super convenient, but very expensive.

The one aspect of his vision is a neutral network where all players get equal access. One of the things that has always annoyed me about Australia’s telecommunications infrastruture is that for a population of just over 20 million on a vast continent, we have to have 3 of everything. remember when Foxtel dug up your road for its cable, then Optus came along a month later. do you see all those mobile towers everywhere? I wonder how much sharing between the carriers actually goes on?

What if we only had one CATV network and one mobile network and all the carriers bought time? How much faster would it have been to reach large tracts of the population? How much easier would it be to upgrade the network if you only do it once? Imagine how much cheaper it could be since you only need to pay for one installation of the infrastructure.

We’re seeing some aggregation with Telstra and Hutchison sharing, as is Optus and Vodafone. But still…the Austalian Government should have installed the infrastructure and leased time to the carriers. Carriers would then focus on services and content.

Mr Rudd’s vision is down this path, but with wireless broadband working very well, let’s skip the old generation and get on with the new. What we should be doing is encouraging all the carriers to agree on a single wireless broadband standard and just build the right infrastructure once.

A messy desk equates to more productivity

Every day when I sit at my desk I say to myself ‘I’ve got to clean up my desk’. There are paper and notes from one end to the other – things i just know I’m going to need (yeah, right!!).

A friend and colleague and a local university has a desk with nothing on it but his notebook, notebook stand and second monitor. Everytime I see him, I look enviously at it, wishing I could do the same.

In truth, I can. But the tidy only lasts a day – if at all. ExtremeTech features an article on research about messy desks and productivity. I feel a little better, but still secretly wish I could maintain a little more order.

Jobs, Careers and Callings

I read this interesting article from the SMH on Jobs, Careers and Callings. It describes how people perceive their job in one of three ways: they consider it just a job and do it for the paycheck, or they see it as a career, where there is a deep personal interest in the work. Finally, there are those who think their job is a calling and have a passionate committment to it. They do what they do for its own sake, rather than for pay.

I consider myself lucky that I see what I do as a calling, particularly epitomised by the project i’m working on.

If you think what you’re doing is a calling, then let me, and others, know…

First post

Welcome to my blog. You can read a bit about me here, and on the PTG Global website, the company that I run.

I use this blog to record interesting things I do or read about while I run my company. I hope you find them interesting and of value to keep checking back every now and then to see how things are going.

Enjoy!!