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Author: Dave HughesDave Hughes Date: Dec 5, 2006 08:39
On Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:40:43 +0000, Richard Gadsden wrote:
> Like running a second set of wires into people's houses?
Got that.There's no way Gryfgen will pull out a cable at their expense,
but the other telco have their own running in. I was impressed by the guys
fixing the line fault at midnight last night, though less impressed by the
phone call at 2am to say it was fixed.
This is on a standard residential line as well, so it wasn't a "we supply
multiple digit percentages of our revenue, and will happily talk to your
competition" situation.
--
Dave Hughes | dave@ hired-goons.net
It's the twenty-first century, for Pete's sake. If you can't have a
flying car, you should at least be able to buy a sodding ray gun.
- Dan Rutter
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Author: Dave HughesDave Hughes Date: Dec 12, 2006 21:46
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:55:48 +0000, Zebee Johnstone wrote:
> If I know in my bones how it works, then the equation is
> shorthand for what I already know. I know how it works, know what it
> says, so I know how to use it. That's the point of the story. NOt
> "I don't need to memorise it" but "memorising it didn't make it
> useful, understanding it did."
And understanding it led to it embedding itself into your mind so that you
can still quote pv=nrt several years later. Hell, I can remember
*deriving* that relationship in a standardised exam despite not being
taught it [1] because there was sufficient information in a later question
to understand the principles.
You do need to memorise stuff, but rote memorisation is the most basic way
and isn't that effective for stuff that needs to be taken in context. Even
for things like order of the planets or musical notation it's more common
to use mnemonics since you get two hooks instead of one, so they're more
effective.
[1] We were later told this question didn't count as a result of their
screwup. I can't remember if I kicked up a stink.
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Author: J.D. BaldwinJ.D. Baldwin Date: Dec 12, 2006 22:38
In the previous article, Zebee Johnstone gmail.com> wrote,
quoting Robert Uhl NOSPAMgmail.com>:>> And so where seven year olds once read Greek and Latin today they
>> cannot even read their own language.
>
> I do point out that very few 7yos read Greek or Latin[1], and
> memoirs are full of stories about how most were not able to do same
> even at 15plus and several years of schooling.
I've been reading the McCrum biography of P.G. Wodehouse, which
mentions that, as was the norm at the time (Britain, turn of the last
century), he and his schoolmates all had a solid command of ancient
Greek; they even staged productions of Aristophanes plays in the
original. This wasn't exactly Eton -- Wodehouse's family was solidly,
utterly middle class, and so was the school he attended. That element
of his schooling was far from unusual.
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Author: Paul MartinPaul Martin Date: Dec 13, 2006 02:44
> You do need to memorise stuff, but rote memorisation is the most basic way
> and isn't that effective for stuff that needs to be taken in context. Even
> for things like order of the planets or musical notation it's more common
> to use mnemonics since you get two hooks instead of one, so they're more
> effective.
soh
cah
toa
--
Paul Martin zetnet.net>
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Author: Paul MartinPaul Martin Date: Dec 14, 2006 12:20
In article <4580a6f1.10764062@news.xs4all.nl>,
Richard Bos wrote:
> "Dave Hughes" hired-goons.net> wrote:>> And understanding it led to it embedding itself into your mind so that you
>> can still quote pv=nrt several years later.
> Wrongly, apparently. Physics, like all good systems, is case-sensitive.
...and mathematics is font sensitive.
--
Paul Martin zetnet.net>
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Author: Steve VanDevenderSteve VanDevender Date: Dec 15, 2006 08:50
> Ah, the memories. Turning in a programming assignment with a
> function with side-effect so it wasn't too clear it does The
> Right Thing from just reading the code. Getting it marked down
> for not doing The Right Thing. "Did you bother to actually run
> it and look at the output?"
My experience was being in a college-level computer science class on
"Computer Organization" where they covered computer hardware and machine
and assembly languages. Unlike most of the other students...
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