LearningNerd http://www.learningnerd.com On a mission to learn everything Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:50:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 learningnerdhttp://feedburner.google.com Number Sense in Animals http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/PK-fB7VqbFk/ http://www.learningnerd.com/number-sense-animals/#comments Sun, 11 Nov 2012 19:15:40 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/?p=504 Continue reading →]]> From horses that do math (not really) to ants that count, here’s a compilation of some of my favorite research on the numerical abilities of animals.

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Recommended Books

The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics

What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math

More about Number Sense in Animals

Transcript

Do you think horses can do math? Because there was this one horse named Clever Hans who supposedly could solve problems like 2/5 + 1/2. I don’t know how, but he gave the correct answer 9/10 by tapping his hoof 9 times and then 10 times. And he even answered questions posed by random audience members, not just his master. He was a bit more shy around strangers, but that’s understandable, because “of affection on the part of Hans, who for the last four years had had intercourse only with his master” (Pfungst, 1911, p. 19). I’m so immature. :D (Note: I just had to highlight this perfect example of how words develop new meanings over time! Isn’t language interesting?)

Anyway, this horse was quite a sensation. He was featured in the New York Times in 1904, and then a commission was formed to see if Hans really could do math. And as the New York Times published later in 1904, “Expert Commission Decides That the Horse Actually Reasons“. You have to read that article. I can’t believe that 13 smart people all thought this horse could actually solve problems like 2/5 + 1/2! I mean, I can’t even do that! I haven’t gotten to fractions yet. (Note: I will make a future video on fractions once I do get there!)

Luckily, one person was not convinced. His name was Oskar Pfungst, and he tested this horse much more thoroughly and wrote a 200-page book on his findings. He found that people were unconsciously giving the horse subtle cues when he got close to the correct answer, like jerking their head up a little bit or looking tense. So, if the person asking the question didn’t know the answer, Clever Hans didn’t know the answer either.

And guess what? The trick is still done today. (Video of a horse on Animal Planet answering “what’s six plus six?” by tapping its hoof 12 times. Then a video of a dog on Opera tapping its paw to answer “what’s two times three?”)

For a long time after this Clever Hans incident, all the scientists were very skeptical about animal intelligence. Maybe if this Clever Hans thing never happened, more research would’ve been done by the time Jean Piaget was around, and Piaget wouldn’t have thought children were born blank slates, and his theories wouldn’t have influenced educators, and educators wouldn’t have ruined math for an entire generation of students! But that was my last video. (Note: Piaget’s theories did influence educators, but there were many other factors that contributed to the New Math movement and its failure. This was just an exaggerated, hypothetical example to make the point that Clever Hans had an influence that lasted for many years.)

Anyway, here’s what Monsieur Piaget has to say about animals doing math:

“if [mathematics] was pre-formed [...] we would have to go back to invertebrates to find the source of mathematics.” (Piaget on Piaget: The Epistemology of Jean Piaget (1977) by Yale University Films)

I’m so glad you said that, Piaget. And I really wish you were still around to see this:

(Video clip of an experiment showing a honeybee differentiating two from three. See study for details.)

Invertebrates can do math. Uh, OK, sort of. They have a sense of numbers, though, just like us. Honeybees “can not only differentiate between patterns containing two and three elements, but can also use this prior knowledge to differentiate three from four, without any additional training” (Gross et al., 2009).

And a weird experiment on desert ants suggests that they actually count how many steps they take to get to their food and then use that knowledge to walk the same number of steps to get back to their nest. How do we know that? Well, you have to watch this dorky cartoon from NPR:

The scientists put some ants on stilts (I didn’t know you could put ants on stilts!), so that way they would take longer steps. And for another group of ants, they cut off part of their legs so they would take shorter steps! The ants on stilts took the same number of steps back home and walked past their nest, while the stumpy-legged ants took the same number of steps and stopped before they got back home, and so the best explanation we have is that apparently ants can count!

(Video clip from NPR’s ant video posted above, in which one ant says, “I want my legs back.”)

Oh, and here’s another one of my favorite studies. They compared guppies to college students and found that “the students and guppies showed almost identical performance patterns” (Agrillo, Piffer, Bisazza, and Butterworth, 2012).

Oh OK, maybe not identical; the student test didn’t involve any swimming. It was actually very similar to the test I took at Panamath, where you have to choose the larger of two sets of dots. The fish, on the other hand, were placed in a tank like this and tended to swim to the group with more fish. Both students and fish can distinguish numbers up to four, and beyond that we both rely on the ratio between the groups; distinguishing 6 from 24 is easier than 6 from 8.

And with training, some animals can do way, way more than that, like Ayumu the chimpanzee and even Alex the African grey parrot.

(Learn more about Alex the parrot and Irene Pepperberg’s incredible research in this PBS video and this video on YouTube.)

“This system, this gut sense of number, is something evolutionarily very old. I mean rats have it, pigeons have it…” (Dr. Justin Halberda, in What Makes a Genius?)

Ants have it, bees have it, fish have it, and lions, birds, monkeys, apes, dogs, cats, dolphins, bears, raccoons, elephants, and sea lions have it. Salamanders try to eat the video showing more flies. Baby chicks choose the larger group of balls. Horses can’t add fractions but they can tell the difference between two and three. And I bet that penguins and giraffes and velociraptors and all other animals have it too! It’s not just us.

References

Media Credits

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/number-sense-animals/feed/ 1 http://www.learningnerd.com/number-sense-animals/ When Do Children Develop Number Sense? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/o-f5ippsTwI/ http://www.learningnerd.com/children-number-sense/#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:41 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/?p=422 Continue reading →]]> Today I learned about a couple theories and some interesting research on numerical cognition in children. And I thoroughly enjoyed debunking Piaget!

Transcript | References | Media Credits | Comments

Featured Books

My First Book of Time (DK Games)

The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics

What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math

More about New Math

Transcript

So I was taking a little stroll down memory lane, and I found the book that saved my life. Because learning to tell time was probably the most difficult thing I have ever learned, to this day, and it’s still a bit of a struggle for me. But that’s for another video. The reason that I dug up this book is because I was trying to figure out at what age I first understood what a number is. And I didn’t have any luck, unfortunately.

But there’s this pretty famous guy named Jean Piaget, who did a lot of research on this well before my time. In the 1950s he did some famous experiments on children — and that doesn’t sound right… But here’s one of them. You present a child with two rows of objects, and you ask them, “Does this row have more, does this row have more, or do they have the same?” After the child agrees that both rows have the same number, you stretch out one row and ask again, “Are they still the same amount? Which one has more?” (Video clips showing children picking the row that looks longer.)

Kids are so adorably stupid, aren’t they? I love kids. Especially making fun of them. So Jean Piaget thought that children are born as blank slates, with absolutely no understanding of number whatsoever. As he says in his own words,

“…mathematical knowledge is constructed, not pre-formed. If this knowledge was pre-formed, [...] it would have to exist implicitly in babies and even in animals.” — Jean Piaget in Piaget on Piaget: The Epistemology of Jean Piaget (1977) by Yale University Films (Watch clip on YouTube)

Now, the mathematician Tobias Dantzig, who I mentioned coined the term Number Sense, believed the exact opposite. As he says,

“Man, even in the lower stages of development, possesses a faculty which, for want of a better name, I shall call Number Sense.” — Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science, page 1

So, who do you think is right? The psychologist, or the mathematician? Are we born a blank slate, or are we born with number sense?

Well, Jean Piaget’s theory dominated psychology in the 1950s and had a huge impact on education.

To give a really brief and one-sided history lesson, in the 60s and 70s there was a popular reform in math education known as New Math. You might’ve heard of it from the popular song by Tom Lehrer:

The very funny, very confusing New Math movement was heavily influenced by Piaget’s theories. People thought Piaget had proven that children can’t understand numbers until they first have a logical foundation for them, so teachers thought it made perfect sense to focus on really formal, abstract ideas like set theory. And so math education was stripped of all its intuitiveness, because Piaget thought children have no intuition!

But hold on one sec… When Piaget’s famous experiments were redone slightly differently, the results told a very different story.

For example, in one experiment they show the children two rows of candy. And instead of asking them which row has more objects, they simply ask, “Which row do you want to eat?” And in this case, regardless of which row looked longer, the children picked the row with the most candy, even if they were as young as two years old.

And here’s something interesting: when the experiment is redone but with younger children, they get the answer correct even without candy. For some reason, there’s a gap in understanding. The youngest children get the answer correct, and so do the oldest children, but for some reason, the children in the middle get confused. So some other researches set out to discover why this is happening.

The researcher warns the child that there is a naughty teddy bear puppet. (Something like this. I know it’ not a teddy bear, but it’s the best I got.) A naughty teddy bear puppet likes to come in and ruin the game for us, because he’s evil. Evil teddy bear. The teddy bear comes in, does his evil stuff (oh no, he’s ruining the game, oh no!), and after the tedd bear rearranges things, the researcher asks, “OK, well, now which row has more objects?” And in this experiment, the children got the answer correct, indicating that yes, they do understand numbers. They just get confused when you ask them the same question two times in a row. And I would probably be confused, too.

So take that, Piaget! Or should I say, vous sont incorrectes, Monsieur Piaget. And more recent research has found that infants as young as four days old have a basic sense of number.

And in another experiment, if you show infants two screens showing a different number of objects, and you play a certain number of drum beats, the infants will look much longer at the screen in which the number of objects matches the number of drum beats they heard.

And infants can even understand basic addition and subtraction. Dr. Karen Wynn discovered this with a little magic show. One object is put on the stage, and then a screen hides it from view. Then another object is clearly put behind the screen. When the screen lowers, if it reveals only one object, the infants looked much longer than if it reveals two.

And even more impressive is that this still works with larger numbers, too. So if you show them 5 plus 5 equals 5, they’ll look much longer than if they see 5 plus 5 equals 10.

So, it seems that we probably are born with this innate number sense! And it should come as no surprise that Jean Piaget is considered completely wrong about some things. But you know what’s really discouraging? When I was doing research on YouTube, I found a bunch of videos on Piaget’s experiments, but not a single video disproving Piaget. Not one. So I want to fix that, and I want to get my hands on some children! :D I mean… Does anyone want to lend me their kids for a little while? For science?

Actually, if you have access to young children, you can do the experiments yourself! I would love to see the results! And I think we need to show the future generations of educators and psychologists (who will undoubtedly learn everything they know from YouTube) that children aren’t actually as stupid as we used to think.

“Not bad for the first day. Hoo-ray for New Math, new hoo hoo math. It won’t do you a bit of good to review math. It’s so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it!” — “New Math” by Tom Lehrer

References

Media Credits

And public domain media:

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/children-number-sense/feed/ 13 http://www.learningnerd.com/children-number-sense/ Math in the Brain: Number Sense http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/edCNdinUiKo/ http://www.learningnerd.com/math-in-the-brain-number-sense/#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:18:18 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/?p=400 Panamath.org. I'm really curious to know if anyone else got an unexpected result... Continue reading →]]> Today I learned about number sense, the magical thing built into our brains that gives us our intuitive numerical abilities. I also took a number sense test at Panamath.org. I’m really curious to know if anyone else got an unexpected result…

Transcript | References | Media Credits | Comments

Featured Books

Number: The Language of Science by Tobias Dantzig

What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math by Brian Butterworth

Learn More

Transcript

Bertrand Russell, a famous philosopher, mathematician, historian, logician, and all around super smart and sexy guy, once wrote:

“It must have required many ages to discover that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days were both instances of the number 2: the degree of abstraction involved is far from easy.” — Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, page 3

Really? Cause it sounds pretty easy to me. So how does all this squishy stuff inside our skulls enable us to do math, anyway? Well, according to phrenology, a pseudoscience of the 1800s, the math organ, the part of the brain that does calculations, is right about… here. (Pointing to just behind my.)

The phrenologists thought you could predict a person’s abilities by feeling the bumps on their skull. And they found a bunch of people who were good at math, who also had really big bump in the same place, so they figured: ah, that must be the math organ! Seems legit to me.

There is some truth to it, though. Modern neuroscience has found that there is a specific part of the brain that seems to control our intuitive ability to do things like estimating how many marbles are in a jar, converting Farenheit to Celsius, and other fun stuff like that. That intuition is usually thanks to the approximate number system, usually just called our number sense. It seems to be located in the parietal lobe — more specifically, in a structure called the intraparietal sulcus. I hope I’m saying that right. I’m not exactly a neuroscientist… Ooh! But I can quote one!

“We now know that the human brain has evolved specialized circuits to exploit the fact that much of the perceptible world is countable. This is why neurological damage can affect numbers and nothing else, and why people are born dyscalculic.” — The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics by Stanislas Dehaene, page 351

Just like some people are dyslexic, meaning their brain has trouble with letters, a similar percentage of people are dyscalculic — their brains have trouble with numbers. One study found that children who are dyscalculic actually have less grey matter in the intraparietal sulcus. And a handful of people even have what’s called arithmetic epilepsy. Their epileptic seizures are triggered whenever they do math. (I know I shouldn’t say this, but a really small part of me wishes I had that, just because it would’ve been the perfect excuse not to do my math homework!)

Anyway, it seems we have a calculator built into our brains. But unlike a real calculator, our brain calculators only handle estimates. The more objects there are, the less accurate your estimation becomes. This has been called the magnitude effect. And there’s also what’s called the distance effect: the closer together two numbers are, the harder it is to tell them apart.

All that stuff might help to explain why we can only perceive up to about four objects at a time without counting them. There’s even a name for that ability:

Subitizing: the “ability to take in the numerosity of a visual array of objects at a glance, and without counting” — What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math by Brian Butterworth, page 113

Now once there are more than about four objects, we have to either count or estimate. And it turns out that everyone’s estimating ability, or number sense, is different. Professor Justin Halberda created a test that measures your number sense. You see a bunch of blue and yellow dots for only an instant, and you have to guess which color has more dots. Since you don’t have time to count them, you’re forced to rely on your number sense.

(Taking the number sense test at Panamath.org.) OK, let’s see how I do… I feel like I’m just guessing randomly, but I seem to be getting most of them correct! Correct, correct, correct… aww, darn.

(Looking at the results.) Dude… I’m awesome at this! I wasn’t expecting this. I’m terrible at arithmetic! Oh, OK, hang on. This explains it. I’m really good, but I’m also really, really slow. That actually explains a lot.

The very latest research, just published in January 2012, created an artificial brain that taught itself how to estimate the number of objects in an image without being preprogrammed to do so. Wow. As the lead researcher says,

“It answers the question of how numerosity emerges without teaching anything about numbers in the first place.” — Marco Zorzi, quote from Neural network gets an idea of number without counting by Celeste Biever, New Scientist

So if an artificial neural network can teach itself to estimate the number of objects, regardless of size or color or stuff like that, then clearly abstraction thinking isn’t that difficult after all, and it doesn’t take ages to discover that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days are both instances of the number two. Sorry, Bertrand Russell. Despite your sexy mustache, I guess you were wrong. That’s OK, though. I forgive you.

References

Media Credits

And public domain media:

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/math-in-the-brain-number-sense/feed/ 16 http://www.learningnerd.com/math-in-the-brain-number-sense/ Series Introduction: The Fundamental Concepts of Arithmetic http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/k9FZnz1Tj5M/ http://www.learningnerd.com/arithmetic-intro/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:26:47 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/?p=390 Continue reading →]]> A short look at my personal experiences with math, why I’m starting with arithmetic, and a glimpse of what this series will cover.

Transcript | Media Credits | Comments

Transcript

Today, I start learning everything. And I’m going to start with arithmetic, cause, like I said, I’m starting at the very beginning. What I want to do is just start over again and learn math at my own pace, taking time to stop and smell the mathematical roses. And this time, I want to have fun with it! I want to explore and play and see if I can enjoy math for a change. You know, like Vi Hart does it? Oh, I could marry that girl.

Unfortunately, because of school, I always hated math. When I think of math class, I think of memorizing formulas, boring teachers, and being bored out of my mind.

So, instead, I want to just learn math the way I wish I could’ve learned it in the first place. I’m not gonna focus on boring algorithms like how to do long division; no, I want to just focus on the fundamental concepts behind it all. I want to understand this stuff for a change!

And I don’t have all it figured out yet, but I do know I want to start out by examining how the brain understands math in the first place, and that’s mostly because I have a bunch of really cool books on neuroscience and numerical cognition.

And in addition to that… Get it? In addition? ;) In addition to that, I also want to review all the fundamental operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division… all that basic stuff that you have to know if you’re gonna take over the world.

But first, I have so many questions that I need to answer, like what is the difference between the commutative property and the assocative property? What is an irrational number? What is a number? How old are we when we first start to understand humbers? And how many animals can understand numbers? And which came first: the abstract concept of numbers, or the numerals we use to represent those numbers? And why is a negative times a negative equal to a positive? And is math really invented, or is it discovered?

(Attempting to build a house of cards and failing miserably.) I know arithmetic might not be the most exciting thing to start with, but you need to have a solid foundation before… you need to have… a solid… founda-shhhhhi — OK, new metaphor. This is what I’m not going to do with the foundation of my mathematical understanding. (Throwing the deck of cards in the air, starting a game of 52 pickup.)

Of course, you don’t have to be good at arithmetic to do more advanced math. For example, when I took calculus, I had no problem with the calculus part. Limits and derivatives, piece of cake! But when it came down to simple arithmetic… I had a lot of, um, brain farts, let’s call them. Oopsies. I was so slow, I didn’t even finish my first college calculus exams, and, um, yeah… That didn’t work out too well. But at least I know enough math to know that 55% is a failing grade.

I would love to work my way back up to calculus again, but I want to make sure I do it by understanding why everything works rather than just memorizing how it works. So I have my work cut out for me. But I hope you join me, and learn math with me, and send me all your questions about arithmetic and math in general and I’ll see if I can find the answers. There’s a good chance they might be right behind me.

Media Credits

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/arithmetic-intro/feed/ 4 http://www.learningnerd.com/arithmetic-intro/ So I’m Gonna Learn Everything http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/owCFf__BfQY/ http://www.learningnerd.com/introduction/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:33:37 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/?p=376 Continue reading →]]> Hello! My name’s Liz and yup, I want to learn everything. And while I’m at it, I’ll also be making lots of videos to share what I learn. This 3-minute introduction video explains what this crazy project is and why I’m doing it.

Transcript | References | Media Credits | Comments

References

  • “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein. (via GoodReads)
  • “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” According to Wikiquote, this is often misattributed to Einstein.

Transcript

Hello, there! My name is Liz, and I want to learn… music composition, animation, how to make videos games, engineering, design, the arts, the sciences…

Goal #1: Learn Everything

Phew! So that’s probably enough to keep me busy for several lifetimes or so, but that’s only half of my plan. I also want to share everything I learn, and to do that, I’m going to make a video on every new concept I come across, teaching what I learn while I’m learning it. And for every educational video I make, I’m going to pin a little sticky note badge onto my lovely corner office. The plan is to start with the very, very basics and work my way up one step at a time.

The Videos

First of all, the videos will be short and to the point. I’m aiming for about five minutes or less. And whenever I get the chance, I’m going to make good use of images, video clips, famous quotes, cultural references… whatever I can do to get a point across.

Disclaimer

I am not an expert. At anything. Like Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” And to make up for my lack of expertise, I plan to cross-reference all my information from lots of online resources and, of course, books. I want my information to be 100% accurate, and if it’s not, I expect you fine people of the internet to tell me. And my videos will have a section of related links and references on my website, so you can see where I got my information and read about the topic in more detail.

Why Learn Everything?

You know the saying, “Knowledge is power.” Well, that’s one reason to learn everything: world domination! (Bwahahahaha! ;) Tee hee.) But aside from that, the more you understand, the more you can appreciate. So by trying to learn everything, I’ll also learn to be interested in everything.

Why Make All These Videos?

Teaching is the best way to learn. Like that popular quote says it, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Plus, sharing what I learn with the whole world is a great way to keep myself motivated. But that part that really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside is giving back to the amazing community that is the internet.

So, I hope my videos are useful in some way, and I hope you join me and never stop learning new things. But, in return, you have to teach me everything you know. I might need a little help once I get to rocket science.

Media Credits

Public domain goodness:

Also relevant is Major in the Universe by Randall Monroe. (Thanks Marco Piedra for sending this my way! It sure sounds familiar…)

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/introduction/feed/ 36 http://www.learningnerd.com/introduction/ Weekly Word: Autotelic http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/cUCZCgwzOyc/ http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-autotelic-2/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:29:56 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-autotelic-2 Continue reading →]]> Autotelic is an adjective that means “having within itself the purpose of its existence”.

I’m taking a creativity workshop class, which had me read part of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. If you haven’t already heard of it, read Wikipedia’s entry on Flow for a summary — or, better yet, watch Csikszentmihalyi himself discuss “flow” in this TED Talks video.

The state of “flow” basically occurs when you’re completely focused on a task. It’s often called “being in the zone” — you know, like when you look up and suddenly 5 hours have passed. One of the characteristics of this state is that the activity is autotelic; you’re running just for the sake of running, or painting for the sake of painting. If you’re doing it for fame or fortune, it isn’t autotelic.

Autotelic comes from the Greek roots auto-, “self”, and -telic, having an “end” or “goal”. Combine the two and you get a self-goal — a goal within itself.

What are your favorite autotelic activities?

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-autotelic-2/feed/ 3 http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-autotelic-2/ Weekly Word: Dog Days http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/ibjbPX4YG8Q/ http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-dog-days/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:36:39 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-dog-days Continue reading →]]> The dog days refer to “the sultry part of the summer, supposed to occur during the period that Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun: now often reckoned from July 3 to August 11″. More generally, this phrase can also refer to “a period marked by lethargy, inactivity, or indolence”.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has an interesting bit of history about the dog days:

“The name originated with the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians; they believed that Sirius, the dog star, which rises simultaneously with the Sun during this time of the year, added its heat to the Sun’s and thereby caused the hot weather. Their belief that dogs were subject to spells of madness at this time also may have contributed to the name.”

Here in Los Angeles, the dog days came a little later this year. It’s been hot lately! Anyone else suffering from spells of madness? I know I am.

Bonus word: the adjective canicular means “relating to the dog days” or the Dog Star, since the Latin name for the star comes from canis, the Latin word for “dog”.

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-dog-days/feed/ 6 http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-dog-days/ Weekly Word: Fey http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/1EQwGzkn8Fg/ http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-fey/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:43:59 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-fey Continue reading →]]> The adjective fey has a few very different meanings, including “supernatural”, “whimsical”, and “being in unnaturally high spirits, as were formerly thought to precede death”. As used in British dialects, fey means “doomed; fated to die”. In Scot usage it has a similar meaning, but with more of a sense of “appearing to be under a spell”. Notice a common theme here?

This word comes from the Old English word f

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-fey/feed/ 0 http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-fey/ Weekly Word: Abstruse http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/bjRXMMxLJ_c/ http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-abstruse/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:42:16 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-abstruse Continue reading →]]> The adjective abstruse means “hard to understand”.

Photo by polandeze

Some examples found on Google News include “America’s abstruse tax code”, “abstruse terms and conditions”, and “abstruse mathematics”. The abstruse sign pictured on the left is another prime example of something that’s hard to understand.

Interestingly, abstruse and extrude both share a Latin root: trudere, which means “to thrust” or “to push”. So abstruse literally means “to thrust away”, while extrude means “to thrust out”. The word extrude matches its literal Latin meaning perfectly, but abstruse doesn’t. How does “thrust away” mean “hard to understand”? Well, it turns out that abstruse has a second, obsolete meaning: “hidden”. I imagine an old book pushed under the bed, hidden from sight.

]]> http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-abstruse/feed/ 1 http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-abstruse/ Weekly Word: Vinculum http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/learningnerd/~3/kHgK0xKLUuU/ http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-vinculum/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:39:38 +0000 Liz Krane http://www.learningnerd.com/weekly-word-vinculum Continue reading →]]> This word came up for me recently in both a math book and in some random Star Trek trivia. A vinculum is “a bond signifying union or unity”.

As a term used in mathematical notation, it refers to “a horizontal line placed above multiple quantities to indicate that they form a unit” (Wolfram MathWorld).

And in the world of Star Trek, the vinculum is a processing device in the core of Borg vessels that connects the minds of all the drones (Memory Beta Star Trek Wiki). Brainwashed drones all working in unison? Yup, vinculum is a perfect name for a device that creates a bond like that.

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