Interesting Links for 23-04-2016

[andrewducker]

Girls more afraid of maths than boys (tags: gender mathematics fear anxiety ) Bank that lost $86million had no firewall and used $10 second-hand routers to connect to financial networks (tags: banking epicfail security Technology OhForFucksSake ) UK government minister in "Reasonable response to technological issue" shock! (tags: Technology

Comments

[bart_calendar]

When I was in high school it seemed like the people who were "good" at math were the ones whose parents hired them private tutors after school, while the rest of us sort of sucked at it, because the teachers moved the classes forward at the speed that accommodated the kids who had private tutors

[gonzo21]

Nobody in my high school had private tutors. But it was a scuzzy rural highland high school.

The kids who were good at maths were one genuinely brilliant friend of mine, and this other kid who was the son of the head maths teacher. So we never really had that problem of the class pushing on. We just all sucked at maths because it was hard.

Mind you I do remember one maths teacher in particular who spent all of his time helping this one poor girl who just couldn't do anything, but she had an impressive rack. So pretty much every class he'd be bent over helping her while the rest of us flew paper aeroplanes out the window.

[andrewducker]

As someone who didn't get either literature or philosophy at an early age, and after a lot of reading and discussion now does, I disagree with your final paragraph...

[bart_calendar]

I should have specified with the help of a tutor at a young age.

I think most people do start to get philosphy as they get older. But at age 15 you can't just have someone force you to super concentrate on your homework to "get it" the way you do with math. You've got to really want to read all those books a nd talk about them with people.

[bart_calendar]

I gave up on match courses entirely after my sophomore year when we studied geometry because the whole "proofs" thing drove me insane.

They'd like show you a picture of a triangle and be like "prove this is a triangle." Um.... why? It's obviously a triangle."

I'd done fairly well the year before at algebra because that just sort of felt like doing crossword puzzles with numbers.

[momentsmusicaux]

That aspect of maths does take some adjustment. In my 1st year of maths at uni, you have to do things like 'prove -1 * x = -x', and you're like, '.... but it IS'. Then you realize it's because you've had years of being used to the notation, and that's what's giving you the assumptions.

[bart_calendar]

True. And I was probably an immature little shit for being like "fuck this, I'm taking extra lit classes next year instead of trig" - but on the other hand nobody has ever since asked me to prove that a triangle is a triangle, while at least books have let me have conversations with women in bars.

[andrewducker]

Oh yeah. If you're not going to go on to be a mathematician, or work in physics, engineering, etc. then the amount of maths you need is pretty small, and you can probably stop at age 15.

[gonzo21]

That EU tax haven blacklist will intensity the BREXIT mob, most of whom seem to be the most corrupt of the corrupt.

And surely a central bank with such lax security, that has to be the head of the IT department in on the crime? Surely?!

[don_fitch]

Yup. When you publish that List of OffShore banks for hiding income sources, from The Tax Man, please slip me a copy, under the table.

Oh, wait! That won't work with Social Security and my County Pension (which are c. 90% of my income) but only for people who get an enormous amount of money from mysterious sources, right? Oh well, I might as well stay honest.

[gonzo21]

To the best of my knowledge there isn't actually anything illegal about a small private citizen like you or I establishing our own offshore business to evade tax. It's just to do so you usually need to contract a quite expensive lawyer to set it all up for you. (Or otherwise have the know-how yourself.)

It's maybe the answer. If enough normal citizens start doing it en masse, and suddenly nobody is paying tax anymore, then governments will be forced to shut it all down.

[pigwotflies]

I was more afraid of boys than maths.

[andrewducker]

Boys are pretty terrifying.

I was certainly scared of them!

[skington]

Robert Goodwill appears to be that rare beast, a politician who's actually interested in transport and has stayed in the transport brief. At least under Labour, transport ministers tended to last in the position about as long as Spinal Tap's drummers.