School code breaking

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21121058

Schools' codebreaking competition winners announced

By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

 

Bletchley Park codebreakers during World War II used Enigma machines to crack German messages

A team from City of London School has been named the winner of a national codebreaking competition.

In total 6,268 pupils from 725 British schools took part in the National Cypher Challenge at the end of 2012.
Previous years have seen 200 teams take part but this year 1,600 teams signed up to decode a series of cryptic codes released online.
The event was organised by Southampton University with support from GCHQ and commercial partners.
The competition was only for UK schools but teams from Tokyo, Bangkok, Florida and Honolulu also applied to take part.
It ran over a period of two months, with codes of increasing difficulty being issued periodically on the internet for school teams to crack, explained Prof Graham Niblo, organiser of the contest and head of mathematics at Southampton University.
While 1,600 teams signed up for the challenge only 30 managed to complete every level, he said.
Cypher secrets "We started with a Caesar cypher, which is the most basic cypher that everybody learns at school. We ended with a Trifid cypher - the most difficult one this year," he told the BBC.
A Caesar cypher is decoded by substituting the letters in a code with others further down the alphabet. For example, an A becomes a C, a B becomes a D and so on.

A Trifid cypher is a complex combination of both an advanced version of the Caesar cypher and anagrams, where words are jumbled.

"It is the longest it has ever taken for the winners to decode any of our cyphers. This year they had to think quite hard about it," said Prof Niblo.
He added that it was very difficult for contestants to cheat.
"We did catch a couple of people trying to get help online. We tracked them down and warned them off," he said.
"The last cypher was not a standard cypher, and we modified it so they couldn't use any standard decryption software."
The winning team - Samson Danziger, Daniel Hu, Anthony Landau and Charlie Hu - cracked the Trifid code in 44 hours and 20 minutes. They will receive a £1,000 prize from GCHQ.
In second place was Andrew Carlotti from Sir Roger Manwood's School in Kent and a team from King Edward VII School in Sheffield came third.
The top 50 runners-up will also receive Raspberry Pi computers.
Competition history The National Cypher Challenge is now in its 11th year.
Foreign Secretary William Hague MP launched the competition at codebreaking museum Bletchley Park in October 2012, as part of three GCHQ initiatives aimed at attracting young people into maths and computer science.
"Teachers tell me the children find it very gripping and engaging," said Prof Niblo.
"A number of them worked on it at home or went along to maths clubs they wouldn't usually attend."

On arbitrage: Armstrong Becomes ‘Madoff on a Bike’

The problems with arbitrage are pervasive:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/armstrong-becomes-madoff-on-a-bike-as-cheating-shatters-lives.html


Side comment: To the thugs who speed recklessly on our national roads in  massive luxury sport or farm utility cars, you have to ask yourself what sort of country you are contributing to. This is not a MadMax movie. It is not cool to ignore pedestrians, overtake on a blind-rise or over double solid lines or to drive on another driver's tail at 120km/hr.

On the School Norms Draft Bill

Draft Norms - comments due 15 March 2013:  http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=181582

There does not seem to be much to comment at this point - 6 pages for actual doc. Compare with the Rwandan doc for example: “Child Friendly Schools Infrastructure  Standards and Guidelines”

So there is clearly a lot of work to do. This is not my area of expertise or my day job - my interest is as a citizen.

Equaleducation.org.za appear to have been instrumental in the current initative to nudge forward school infrastructure development - see update on their site: http://www.equaleducation.org.za/node/765

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Can we determine how many toilets our school  system needs?

Extract from MG article: "Equal Education's court papers stated that 93% of public schools have no libraries, almost 2 500 have no water supply, 46% still use pit latrines and 913 have no toilets at all.

Yet the eight-page draft norms [6 actually if you ignore the minister's covering letter] merely generalise about schools needing an "enabling teaching and learning environment", including "adequate sanitation facilities [and a] basic water supply".

The gazetted document does not stipulate any figures or quantities, such as the number of toilets required or the amount and type of power and water supplies relative to school size, nor does it give any implementation dates."

[http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-11-angies-new-school-norms-a-slap-in-the-face]

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Screensnip from gov.org.za on 15 Jan: apparently it's all about football 



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Crisis or poor state?

• Angie decries poor state of public schools - Politics | IOL News | IOL.co.za
• 'No education crisis': Angie Motshekga - Times LIVE

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Shortsighted bureaucracy: http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2013/01/09/brilliant-maths-teacher-loses-her-job

On publication, plagiarism, fair usage, copyright and refereeing matters

Rule of thumb: cite what you read and read what you cite (unless, in the case of the latter, it happens that you need to cite some seminal work which was published in a foreign language).

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Plagiarism is a serious problem facing the university accreditation process. Fair usage demands that all reference sources be cited. University procedures incorporate electronic plagiarism checks. Project students are expected to deliver reports to verify that content has not been plagiarised. 

For my own part, I declare and clarify that: 

• I am the sole author of my PhD thesis and that my peer-reviewed publications and working papers are fully refereed works with novel contributions. My specific contributions in teamwork components of related publications have been documented.  

• I communicate existing knowledge and research developments as a teacher. To this end I use, iterate on and develop from scratch, course outlines and course material based on pre-existing course notes, reputed textbooks, peer-reviewed publications and topical discussion pieces in the news media. I endeavour to cite all my sources in notes and slides.

• Research presentations contain original material and/or formal literature review (with full citations) as focus. For some slide presentations, I have sourced illustrative images and cartoons from the web - I have generally (but not always consistently) included URL /source references for the latter. 

A list of diane's publications and other research outputs are posted on http://www.dianewilcox.net/publications.htm . Yes, this blogger refers to herself in the 3rd person or as the author as well. It's a style which I picked up somewhere from academic literature (literature reviews, journal articles, theses and monographs). I also blog on FB, where I typically use quotation marks to indicate comments made by other authors.  

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2012 Wiki link on FAIR USE:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use: Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test.

A 2005 Fair disclaimer which may be relevant if some source is reproduced for some open academic discussion: "FAIR USE NOTICE  This page contains links to copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available for the advancement of understanding of political, human rights, economic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. The use of such material for nonprofit educational purposes  constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material (which, for the instances of items from US based sources, happens to be provided for in the US Copyright Law at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml). "

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Remembering Aaron Swartz: "An Incredible Soul": Larry Lessig Remembers Aaron Swartz After Cyberactivist’s Suicide Before Trial; Parents Blame Prosecutor  

Aaron H. Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) 

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Humour to highlight the existence of academic publishing hegemonies, from #overlyhonestmethods  http://bit.ly/13kgtR9

Math misconceptions

Mathematical symbols make up  a LANGUAGE for describing ABSTRACT IDEAS. Mathematical theorems start off with reasonable assumptions which are TRUE within the context set out. Such reasonable assumptions are often called AXIOMS when they describe abstract facts.  The statement that "3  > 2" is a reasonable mathematical assumption, since it is true for the natural numbers which most of us are familiar with. More generally, the claim that "parallel lines never intersect" is a more abstract truth in Euclidean geometry. In metric spaces, an axiom about distances between 2 points, called X and Y, can be that the distance from X to Y is equal to the distance from Y to X and this may be written as: d(X,Y) = d(Y,X).

Theorems are proved by LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS from axioms. This is not magic and is concerned with the search for TRUTHs. However, this can be challenging and often requires concentration and discipline to  understand. Unfortunately, symbols can be abused to deceive people who are ignorant. In this sense, mathematical knowledge becomes power not to be deceived. Mathematics becomes demystified when the MEANING of the mathematical symbols become clear. 

The article below discusses a case study in social science on the UNREASONABLE respect which people may give for information when mathematical symbols are abused to impress, but  are not actually meaningful: 



http://journal.sjdm.org/12/12810/jdm12810.pdf
article by Kimmo Eriksson

Abstract (summary): Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality. However, this "nonsense math effect" was not found among participants with degrees in mathematics, science, technology or medicine.

MATH 4 AFRICA

new: http://africanwomeninmath.org/resources/news/african-women-mathematicians
African Women in Mathematics Asssociation (AWMA) , is an association whose main aim is to promote women in mathematics in Africa and promote mathematics among young girls and women in Africa. AWMA, a non-profit, international, non-governmental organization was established on  19th July 2013.

http://www.mathemafrica.org/
Mathemafrica is designed to be a blogging platform for bloggers writing about mathematics within Africa and those who are blogging about mathematics with relevance to Africa. We aim to be a multilingual, multiblogger platform, giving a voice to anyone who wants to discuss mathematics and a source of information and inspiration for anyone who would like to know how mathematics might be relevant to them.

http://aimssec.aims.ac.za/
The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Programme(AIMSSEC) is a not-for-profit organisation providing professional development courses for mathematics teachers, subject advisers and field trainers in South Africa, introducing new mathematics teaching skills, improving subject knowledge and empowering teachers from disadvantaged rural and township communities.

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Mathematical inspirations
(Jan 2015): Here is a link to an interesting article on one of the 2014 Fields medalists. One of the remarks is that  Artur Avila did not do well at all in his first math olympiad, highlighting that that the skill and talent required for such competitions is also based on prior training: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140812-a-brazilian-wunderkind-who-calms-chaos/

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It's our culture: 

"On mathematics education in SA and the relevance of popularising mathematics" 

http://www.dianewilcox.net/dianewilcox1999_on_math_ed_in_SA.pdf

The above working paper was drafted as a side project in 1999 and was last edited in 2003. Many of the comments are still relevant and it would be interesting to compare how some of the metrics faired in 1999 compared to 2013.
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Free downloadable mathematics poster:

Mathposter_by_DWilcox (2007): 

This is a general mathematics poster which this blogger designed for science and math information days in 2007.  While the design is original, the sub-topic descriptions  are based on centuries of accumulated knowledge and are not my describing my own research. The idea to include an interactive component (the chaos game by R.L.Devaney and co-authors)  was motivated by the objective to provide content for interactive information tables at science days. 

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We are all mathematicians
2013 comments: posted 11 Jan, edited 13-15 Jan
(by diane wilcox)

There are math popularisers who hold that you need to be a prodigy or math olympian at school to appreciate mathematical thinking. It does take doses of discipline and experience to be quick and accurate in the logic of some complex mathematical arguments, whether this be the proof of some perturbation theorem or simulation of  war games. Nevertheless, over the long haul,  the care of building and reflecting on consistent arguments can take one a long way.

The sort of complexity involved in describing an applied problem is sometimes similar to the design of a useful physical product or planning a big event. The art of abstraction, where the problem is stripped down to its elementary components, can make challenges much easier to grapple with. In fact some mathematicians find math problems easier to deal with than the physical real-life which we experience. Within a consistent mathematical framework, the honesty and preciseness of focus means that clean outcomes of trueness or falseness are generally attainable in the even advanced mathematical ideas and models . Back in complex day-to-day life, however, there is ambiguity and uncertainty. So while  the discovery of absolute "truth" is not always attainable, mathematics CAN serve as a tool for finding improved solutions as the limitations of models become understood.

As with most activities, you CAN learn with correctly-pitched learning material  and encouragement (and of course, adequate nourishment and a safe environment to sit quietly). Most people like context and can think from A to C via B. Now much maths gets taught with starting at C or going from A to C with the learner left missing something.

Repeating the above discussion on pivotal math concepts, all kinds of learning incorporate some sort of transition from existing knowledge to new knowledge. This is very much the case in mathematics and if you have faulty building blocks then you are off to a permanently shakey start. So if a learner can just sing numbers and not grapple that  "2" is a symbolic representation of a quantity of twoness (which is shared by all sets of 2 objects), then a keystone in his or her foundation is missing. It goes on from there.

Children are particularly good at math in topics are introduced in the correct unambiguous way. More importantly, mathematical thinking starts long before learning numbers. Kids figure out little cause-and-effect relationships right from birth - you can't beat the laws of nature. Construction toys and sequentially difficult puzzles and learning toys promote access to understanding engineering principles, consistent relationships between objects and laws of nature, etc, etc... So very general math education can start with some routine or formality by age 3 already.  The solution of getting kids to school from age 3, when learning consists of play, creates a safe place for kids to develop confidence as they enter school. Finally, this approach takes society closer to building socially supportive education system in which working parents are supported more adequately.

On sexual harassment

Added 28 Jan: http://www.globalresearch.ca/hate-crimes-in-america-and-elsewhere-a-rape-a-minute-a-thousand-corpses-a-year/5320839

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Added 21 Jan: Girls and women 'hit the hardest' by global recession (21 Jan 2013)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21088042

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ORIGINAL Blog:

 “This tragedy would not have happened if she had chanted God's name and fallen at the feet of the attackers. The error was not committed by just one side,” he said in video footage which has been widely circulated on the Internet.

From the iol article: Indian guru blames Delhi rape victim

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/indian-guru-blames-delhi-rape-victim-1.1448789

The underlying issues concerned overlap with the  cultural problems in SA, which is reported to have the worst incidences per capita in the world.

Can one really believe that student is to blame for violating herself and getting herself beat-up like that? Would falling on her knees, as recommended, have saved her life. We cannot know how many rape victims have died whilst trying this approach since they cannot speak for themselves anymore. Maybe she did beg. We will never know!

And so the lawyer uses it in his defense:Rape accused's lawyer claims victim was to blame for bus attack

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rape-accuseds-lawyer-claims-victim-was-to-blame-for-bus-attack-8446847.html?origin=internalSearch


And a proposed solution is:Top Hindu priest advises women to wear Muslim veil to avoid rape:
http://www.ummid.com/news/2013/January/01.01.2013/hindu_priest_on_purdah.htm


The patriarchal nature of some cultural norms in SA leads to the same blinkered views that women are to blame.


In the article on recommended dress, the religious leaders have very low opinions of the carnal control capabilities of members of their gender. Perhaps they are correct to do so since globally and across society, rape exists in various degrees of severity and insidiousness.


Nevertheless, there are enough pockets of society where rape is not such a severe problem. Real upliftment entails empowering the male part of the population to control their more primal instincts and communicate their social frustration in constructive ways.


Many  schools and office and retail environments have dress codes for both men and women. I myself think that society may enjoy liberal THINKING, but there should be recommended bounds on dress for a comfortable and respectable environment that is neither overtly-provocative or stifling. Beyond such bounds, the provocative should expect to be looked at, but unwanted touching or sexual harassment  never need to be tolerated. Nor should there be any need for tolerance of repeated unwanted requests, particularly in asymmetric relationships. So yes, there should be rules. But women should be included in deciding what they are and diversity in religious views should be respected.
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Added 15 Jan:

Posted on : http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/world/2013/01/15/india-school-rape-sparks-mass-protests

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From FB: 

                                     

This photo was posted on STFU, Conservatives Tumblr page last night. The reason why I'm sharing it is not because of the photo itself (which is epic in it's own right), but for the comments it generated.

One person wrote, "but then again, its kind like putting a meat suit on and telling a shark not to eat you".

STFU responded (with bolded text):
...
"We (men) are not fucking sharks!

We are not rabid animals living off of pure instinct

We are capable of rational thinking and understanding.

Just because someone is cooking food doesn’t mean you’re entitled to eat it.

Just because a banker is counting money doesn’t mean you’re being given free money.

Just because a person is naked doesn’t mean you’re entitled to fuck them.

You are not entitled to someone else’s body just because it’s exposed.

What is so fucking difficult about this concept?"

Bravo."

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From by OWS on FB:

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