Social Relevance in Lowenfeld’s Creative and Mental Growth

For the sake of this panel presentation, I am defining social relevance to mean that aspect of an art education textbook which fosters a growth relationship between the student and his or her social and physical environment. Ten Minutes is not much time to deal with this, either in depth or detail. This entire panel could be spent discussing the varieties of social growth in Lowenfeld\u27s Creative and Mental Growth. I\u27m sure each of the panelists could say the same about the books they are covering

Mahler Measure of "Almost" Reciprocal Polynomials

Here we give a lower bound of the Mahler measure on a set of polynomials that are "almost" reciprocal. Here "almost" reciprocal means that the outermost coefficients of each polynomial mirror each other in proportion, while this pattern breaks down for the innermost coefficients

Teaching and learning about controversial science issues

The overarching Nature of Science (NoS) strand in our revised science curriculum presents teachers of science with a number of challenges. One of them is the ‘Participating and Contributing’ achievement aim with its focus on controversial science issues (CSI). This article reports on a new classroom model for exploring controversial science issues with students that was trialled in New Zealand science classrooms, writes Dr. Kathy Saunders, the University of Waikato

The number of k-tons in the coupon collector problem

Consider the coupon collector problem where each box of a brand of cereal contains a coupon and there are n different types of coupons. Suppose that the probability of a box containing a coupon of a specific type is $1/n$ and that we keep buying boxes until we collect at least $m$ coupons of each type. For $k\geq m$ call a certain coupon a $k$-ton if we see it $k$ times by the time we have seen $m$ copies of all of the coupons. Here we determine the asymptotic distribution of the number of $k$-tons after we have collected $m$ copies of each coupon for any $k$ in a restricted range, given any fixed $m$. We also determine the asymptotic joint probability distribution over such values of $k$ and the total number of coupons collected

everybody doing what everybody else is doing

The title is drawn from economist Abjihit V. Bannerjee’s 1992 study ‘A Simple Model of Herd Behaviour’, in which he notes ‘There are innumerable social and economic situations in which we are influenced in our decision making by what others around us are doing. Perhaps the commonest examples are from everyday life: we often decide on what stores and restaurants to patronize or what schools to attend on the basis of how popular they seem to be. … We set up a model in which paying heed to what everyone else is doing is rational because their decisions may reflect information that they have and we do not.’ Such herd behaviour may arise through an information cascade which, as David Easley and Jon Kleinberg note in their book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, ‘has the potential to occur when people make decisions sequentially, with later people watching the actions of earlier people, and from these actions inferring something about what the earlier people know.’ In everyone doing what everyone else is doing, players make selections from a series of actions, judging what to do in response to choices made by others around them. First performed: Plus Minus Ensemble, Material, City University Experimental Music Group, Performance Space, City University, London, 08.04.14

Introduction: what is Wandelweiser?

The introduction to a special issue of 'Contemporary Music Review' on Wandelweiser

Rebecca Saunders, Still

Programme notes created for BBC Radio 3's UK premiere of 'Still' which was broadcast live from the Barbican, London on 10 February 2012