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"Mathematics Humor."
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Things to make and do in the fourth dimension : a mathematician's journey through narcissistic numbers, optimal dating algorithms, at least two kinds of infinity, and more
\"Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do--through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity--and slightly beyond. Both playful and sophisticated, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension is filled with captivating games and puzzles, a buffet of optional hands-on activities that entices us to take pleasure in math that is normally only available to those studying at a university level. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension invites us to re-learn much of what we missed in school and, this time, to be utterly enthralled by it\"--Publisher's description.
Book
Math Hysteria
Welcome to Ian Stewart's strange and magical world of mathematics! In Math Hysteria, Professor Stewart presents us with a wealth of magical puzzles, each one spun around an amazing tale: Counting the Cattle of the Sun; The Great Drain Robbery; and Preposterous Piratical Predicaments; to name but a few. Along the way, we also meet many curious c.
eBook
Problems with a point : exploring math and computer science
\"Ever notice how people sometimes use math words inaccurately? Or how sometimes you instinctively know a math statement is false (or not known)? Each chapter of this book makes a point like those above and then illustrates the point by doing some real mathematics through step-by-step mathematical techniques. This book gives readers valuable information about how mathematics and theoretical computer science work, while teaching them some actual mathematics and computer science through examples and exercises. Much of the mathematics could be understood by a bright high school student. The points made can be understood by anyone with an interest in math, from the bright high school student to a Field's medal winner.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Laughter as medicine: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies evaluating the impact of spontaneous laughter on cortisol levels
Laughter as an expression of humor has been recognized as good medicine for centuries. The health benefits of humor-induced well-being remain unclear and thus we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies to evaluate the impact of spontaneous laughter on stress response as measured by cortisol levels.
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Clinicaltrials.gov.
Interventional studies, which could be either randomized placebo-controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-experimental studies, conducted in adults that compared any spontaneous laughter intervention to a controlled setting and reported changes in cortisol levels were selected.
We examined the impact of laughter on percentage change in cortisol levels by calculating pooled estimates of the absolute differences between arithmetic means before and after interventions as compared to control using random-effects model.
Eight studies (315 participants; mean age 38.6) met our inclusion criteria; four were RCTs and four were quasi-experiment studies. Five studies evaluated the impact of watching a humor/comedy video, two studies evaluating laughter sessions administered by a trained laughter therapist, and one study evaluating a self-administered laughter program. Pooling these data showed a significant reduction in cortisol levels by 31.9% (95%CI -47.7% to -16.3%) induced by laughter intervention compared to control group with no evidence of publication bias (P = 0.66). Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that even a single laughter session induced a significant reduction of 36.7% in cortisol (95%CI -52.5% to -20.8%). In addition, analyses including the four RCTs reinforced these results by demonstrating a significant reduction in cortisol levels promoted by laughter as compared to the placebo arm [-37.2% (95%CI -56.3% to -18.1%)].
Current evidence demonstrates that spontaneous laughter is associated with greater reduction in cortisol levels as compared with usual activities, suggesting laughter as a potential adjunctive medical therapy to improve well-being.
Registration number: CRD42021267972.
Journal Article
Math for English majors : a human take on the universal language
\"This helpful, humorous handbook for the mathematically challenged uses author Ben Orlin's empathy, humor, and \"bad drawings\" to unravel the secrets behind the world's most confounding language\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Humor, motivation and achievements in mathematics in students with learning disabilities
This study examined the association between humor, motivation, and achievements in mathematics in students with learning disabilities. For this study, 80 sixth-grade students with learning disabilities who attend integrated classes in a general education school were tested using three instruments: a questionnaire about incorporating humor in mathematics instruction, a questionnaire about motivation, and a mathematics achievement test.The findings of this study show improved mathematics achievements and motivation in students with learning disabilities when humor is incorporated in mathematics classes. In addition, students with learning disabilities who were taught mathematics with humor scored higher on motivation and mathematics achievement at the end of the school year compared with the beginning of the school year. We conclude that incorporating humor in mathematics instruction can be recommended. The expected positive effect on motivation and achievements in this special population could have a positive impact on a variety of other pedagogical phenomena, such as dropout rates, academic achievements in other subjects, and social interactions.
Journal Article
Cluster Correspondence Analysis
A method is proposed that combines dimension reduction and cluster analysis for categorical data by simultaneously assigning individuals to clusters and optimal scaling values to categories in such a way that a single between variance maximization objective is achieved. In a unified framework, a brief review of alternative methods is provided and we show that the proposed method is equivalent to GROUPALS applied to categorical data. Performance of the methods is appraised by means of a simulation study. The results of the joint dimension reduction and clustering methods are compared with the so-called tandem approach, a sequential analysis of dimension reduction followed by cluster analysis. The tandem approach is conjectured to perform worse when variables are added that are unrelated to the cluster structure. Our simulation study confirms this conjecture. Moreover, the results of the simulation study indicate that the proposed method also consistently outperforms alternative joint dimension reduction and clustering methods.
Journal Article
Phonetics and Ambiguity Comprehension Gated Attention Network for Humor Recognition
Humor refers to the quality of being amusing. With the development of artificial intelligence, humor recognition is attracting a lot of research attention. Although phonetics and ambiguity have been introduced by previous studies, existing recognition methods still lack suitable feature design for neural networks. In this paper, we illustrate that phonetics structure and ambiguity associated with confusing words need to be learned for their own representations via the neural network. Then, we propose the Phonetics and Ambiguity Comprehension Gated Attention network (PACGA) to learn phonetic structures and semantic representation for humor recognition. The PACGA model can well represent phonetic information and semantic information with ambiguous words, which is of great benefit to humor recognition. Experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.
Journal Article
A joke on precision? Revisiting \precision\ in the school mathematics discourse
This paper discusses the place of precision in mathematics education by exploring its role in curricular guidelines and in classroom life. By means of a joke on precision delivered by a school student in South Sweden, our study focuses on student participation in mathematical tasks that require precision in processes of measuring and reasoning. The paper uses theories on humour and inferentialism to revisit the normative place of \"precision\" in mathematics classroom discourse.
Journal Article
Comparative use of aqueous humour 1H NMR metabolomics and potassium concentration for PMI estimation in an animal model
Estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI) remains a matter of concern in the forensic scenario. Traditional and novel approaches are not yet able to fully address this issue, which relies on complex biological phenomena triggered by death. For this purpose, eye compartments may be chosen for experimental studies because they are more resistant to post-mortem modifications. Vitreous humour, in particular, has been extensively investigated, with potassium concentration ([K+]) being the marker that is better correlated with PMI estimation. Recently, a 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomic approach based on aqueous humour (AH) from an animal model was proposed for PMI estimation, resulting in a robust and validated regression model. Here we studied the variation in [K+] in the same experimental setup. [K+] was determined through capillary ion analysis (CIA) and a regression analysis was performed. Moreover, it was investigated whether the PMI information related to potassium could improve the metabolome predictive power in estimating the PMI. Interestingly, we found that a part of the metabolomic profile is able to explain most of the information carried by potassium, suggesting that the rise in both potassium and metabolite concentrations relies on a similar biological mechanism. In the first 24-h PMI window, the AH metabolomic profile shows greater predictive power than [K+] behaviour, suggesting its potential use as an additional tool for estimating the time since death.
Journal Article