Letters to Joel

A professor and his students answer his brother’s question: Is mathematics art

The Deconstruction of Mathematics: A criticism of Reuben Hersh\u27s What Is Mathematics, Really? and the Humanist Philosophy of Mathematics

Mathematics, as an academic discipline, has stood for many years as the last bastion against a growing tide of intellectual relativism that has become all but ubiquitous. More recently, however, efforts have been made to humanize mathematics by advocating a social-constructivist approach to the philosophy of mathematics, both in practice and education. This paper is intended to serve as a critical response to one advocate of this approach, Reuben Hersh (What Is Mathematics, Really?, 1997), and in the process a defense of Platonism

Mathematics As Worship

This paper treats worship in a broad, inclusive sense as the primary and necessary response of human beings to their creator. It provides a brief overview of the relationship between mathematics and theology from the Pythagoreans to the present. It argues that all knowledge is contingent upon faith and thus that contemplation of mathematical insights can lead to worship of God

The Hidden Injuries Of Overloading \u27ADT

The most commonly stated definition of abstract data type (ADT) is that it is a domain of values and the operations over that domain. So, for example, a language\u27s built-in types, like int are seen to be ADTs. It is our opinion that a pure interpretation of this definition yields a semantics in which using an ADT is the same as using built-in types: the operations are side effect free and there is no concern over alias, shallow copy or synchronization problems. Unfortunately, the term abstract data type has over time been associated with at least three distinct meanings, and those incompatible definitions have often been conflated, causing confusion to students and textbook authors alike. We believe that this has resulted in a loss of appreciation for the value-based semantics of ADTs

Book Review

A book review of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals\u27 Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont

The Deconstruction of Mathematics

This paper is a criticism of Reuben Hersh\u27s What is Mathematics, Really? and the humanist philosophy of mathematics

Design Early Considered Harmful: Graduated Exposure to Complexity and Structure Based on Levels of Cognitive Development

We have recognized that the natural tendency to teach according to the structure of one’s own understanding runs contrary to established models of cognitive development. Bloom’s Taxonomy has provided a basis for establishing a more efficacious pedagogy. Emphasizing a hierarchical progression of skill sets and gradual learning through example, our approach advocates teaching software development from the inside/out rather than beginning with either console apps or monolithic designs

JKarelRobot: A Case Study in Supporting Levels of Cognitive Development in the Computer Science Curriculum

We introduce a new software tool, JKarelRobot, for supporting an Inside/Out pedagogy in introductory programming courses. Extending the original conception of Karel the Robot , with Bloom\u27s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives as a guiding principle, we have provided a mechanism for designing exercises that are cognitively appropriate to the developmental levels of our students. JKarelRobot is platform independent (written in Java) and language/paradigm independent, supporting Pascal, Java, and Lisp style environments

Autophosphorylation at serine 1981 stabilizes ATM at DNA damage sites

Initial localization of ATM to double-strand breaks requires the MRE11–RAD50–NBS1 complex, but prolonged association requires ATM autophosphorylation

The Influence of HIV on the Evolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

HIV significantly affects the immunological environment during tuberculosis coinfection, and therefore may influence the selective landscape upon which M. tuberculosis evolves. To test this hypothesis whole genome sequences were determined for 169 South African M. tuberculosis strains from HIV-1 coinfected and uninfected individuals and analyzed using two Bayesian codon-model based selection analysis approaches: FUBAR which was used to detect persistent positive and negative selection (selection respectively favoring and disfavoring nonsynonymous substitutions); and MEDS which was used to detect episodic directional selection specifically favoring nonsynonymous substitutions within HIV-1 infected individuals. Among the 25,251 polymorphic codon sites analyzed, FUBAR revealed that 189-fold more were detectably evolving under persistent negative selection than were evolving under persistent positive selection. Three specific codon sites within the genes celA2b, katG, and cyp138 were identified by MEDS as displaying significant evidence of evolving under directional selection influenced by HIV-1 coinfection. All three genes encode proteins that may indirectly interact with human proteins that, in turn, interact functionally with HIV proteins. Unexpectedly, epitope encoding regions were enriched for sites displaying weak evidence of directional selection influenced by HIV-1. Although the low degree of genetic diversity observed in our M. tuberculosis data set means that these results should be interpreted carefully, the effects of HIV-1 on epitope evolution in M. tuberculosis may have implications for the design of M. tuberculosis vaccines that are intended for use in populations with high HIV-1 infection rates