Yeah, I've seen that as well, but considering that many cashier's only make minimum wage, if that, I'd be willing to guess it's more of what the business is willing to pay someone to do the job and not education as a whole. Unless, of course, you discussed the cashier's education background with them and found that they had a PhD in nuclear engineering. Likely, the person has that job because they had no other skills and perhaps they never even completed high school. I'd say, it's more about the job applicants that are competing for that job than a statement of what education levels are.

Btw, though I have run into a few cashiers like this, I've run into far more that can give proper change with no problems. It's just that people with basic math, english, thinking skills can get better jobs and that makes room for those that don't have those skills in these positions.

Hmmm,
      If I remember correctly logic/critical thinking was fairly easy because it was basically discrete mathematics for non-science types. Seems like a decent class to give people and introduction to logic and how to analyse arguments. It wasn't about continuously questioning the same statements over and over. It also pointed out some of the main fallacies that people use in arguments, which though I had a course with similar concepts in the 5th grade, I imagine a lot of students don't get that type of education and it falls upon the colleges to at least give students some sort of critical thinking concepts. Does everyone get and understand them, no, but tell me one class where every student understand everything the course was designed to teach.

Sure with a degree in Mathematics the class might have been a waste of time to you, but what about others that don't have your background. Arguing that the class shouldn't be a requirement for all students wouldn't be a bad argument, but stating that the class is a waste of time and implying that the class should be removed is not really a valid argument in my opinion. Also not, that there are a lot of different classes with that title, perhaps the class you took could have been improved especially if all you got from the class was that arguments have to be argued even if they are "proven" Of course, if the argument was proven, then it wouldn't be an argument anymore, it would be a statement correct with supporting evidence, correct?

Be careful about falling into the third group btw. Undergrad is a place to get a degree, not an education. Taking courses that interest you, or even god forbid challenge you can cause your GPA to fall and other education rules nastyness. Might not for everyone, but I know I've screwed myself a bit because of taking courses outside the required courses and it's caused me a few problems. Pretty important to know how the education system works at your school, even the "unpublished" rules that they point out later that because you didn't look at subsection 123.73.1.b in the revised edition of the student guidelines you aren't eligible to take any classes that semester.

Pain in the butt, but in my opinion for undergraduate work, your likely better off strictly following the course guideline the school gives you and not taking interesting or challenging classes until you hit graduate school and perhaps not even then.

Even if the algebra skills are not directly applicable, mathematics teaches people how to figure out "correct" solutions. It focuses on procedure and how to analyse and figure out the answer. I can't think of another subject that guarantees this. History is more about memorization. English being able to write well, doesn't mean it's correct nor does memorizing some paragraph from some book. Art... Maybe shop does this, but it's a bit more materials intensive than actually requiring students to think. That doesn't mean students in other subjects don't think, just that mathematics has objective tools to test whether they understand the concepts or not.

Well, in truth how many times do engineers pour over the court documents that the lawyers develop while in court? Pretty simple to miss something occasionally, I'm not convinced that Google has just decided to flip the bird to all it's users and the court system yet. In comparison to the people that are "too smart" to get caught or too powerful for the courts to do anything to.

President doesn't make laws, typically. Congress does and since most candidates running for office are lawyers, I don't think there is much choice since you can either vote for member A or B, throw you vote away on C or not vote. Biggest issue I see is no accountability by our elected officials, but that's a different issue.

I wasn't aware that they were planning on building several new nuclear plants. I had heard of one or two, but sixteen is quite a few more than I expected. What caused this shift in new building versus how new plants were basically put on hiatus after three mile?

Wouldn't this be considered a successful test? I mean it would only be a failure if everything went perfectly and they felt confident to send the system out into space where it failed. This way at least they know there are still issues.

No.

First off, are you agreeing with the caption that this is a failure? It isn't it's testing to get data. So it blew up, no biggy it's data one more datum of information that says not all the kinks are worked out. Which brings us to

Point two. This isn't engineering, this is working with new designs that have not been completely tested, which by definition is science. You don't expect everything to go perfectly when you attempt something because you don't know what all the variables are and you are looking for information. If you weren't looking for information, then that would be engineering, and you wouldn't bother to test it to see if it would work. In which case, the boom would be on the moon not at a testing facility.

Furthermore, This is being built on a shoestring, ie low cost, budget, which means they aren't going to book supercomputer time, build a bunch of prototypes, build redundancy systems, etc. There is an understanding that there will be a greater chance of error in the system, but for the cost of a expensive 99% mission, they can send a lot more of these missions. Which means even if you have a few failures, you still have a better overall chance of success.

Using clean fuels is not sub-optimal, it's just a constraint on the system. Just like any other constraint, you deal with it and figure out what to do. Of course, removing a building with sledgehammers, explosives, cutting restraints, is harder than setting off a thermonuclear bomb, but I don't really consider the results suboptimal, just one of the constraints on the system that other buildings in the neighborhood should still be standing at the end of the project is just one of the constraints.

Hmmm, it's almost like it's rocket science and they don't expect it to be perfect the first time through so they run tests. I agree not really news, just some more data.

I tend to use math most days. Estimation, ballpark figures, cost per ounce etc and I no longer work in the computer industry. Now that being said, is there justification for higher level mathematics in computer programming.

Well, yes and no. The typical programmer isn't working on anything complex, just providing a bunch of criteria for a switch statement or copying information from one location to another, not a big deal, but when you start working with algorithms, not to be confused with (Al Gore)ithms an understanding of upper level mathematics can certainly help. Discrete mathematics is a no brainer since it focuses on logic and proofs which can help a programmer find edge cases and cut down on errors via the processes you learn in discrete mathematics.

Calculus and other higher math is generally useful in making algorithms run more efficiently. Brute force searching algorithms take a lot of time, binary is significantly faster, but using calculus can even improve on the binary search methods in the right circumstances. The thing is, if you don't have the knowledge about high level techniques you cannot use them. For instance, if you don't know sorting routines a bubble sort seems incredibly fast in comparison to sequel sorting however without the knowledge of sorting algorithms you wouldn't realize how ineffective bubble sort is in comparison to say merge sort.

Most programming isn't focused on efficiency and most things can be brute forced within a reasonable timeframe with modern computer systems, however, knowledge of calculus and other higher level mathematics can help quite a bit as techniques can be transferred into computer programs that need them.

I guess you could make the same comparison to electronics, does a programmer really need to know electronics, diodes, resistors, refresh rates and protocols to make a computer do something useful? Probably not, but if you do know those things it can make you far more efficient and effective than the person who does not know them depending on what type of programming you are doing. Whereas most systems are built requiring basic skills or specific study of one area, higher level mathematics provide tools that can be used in a wide range of applications and tend not to be limited to specific cases. With the knowledge of upper level mathematics, when you do run into situations where it can be used, you can pull out a book or do a search to find an efficient algorithm whereas when you don't have the knowledge you'll end up spending a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.

Not sure what you are saying here. When I worked in system administration, I didn't do much programming. But I can remember having to scan code quickly when problems arose at times. Other times it was about setting up automation, ensuring packages worked well together, knowing the right people to call if I couldn't fix the problem quickly, documenting the systems, interviewing vendors, etc, etc, etc.

I'm just saying that the skills involved as a system admin are different than those of a developer and that there is no direct comparison between the jobs. Developer work is a much slower pace and you get to know the systems you are working with well, whereas I was responsible for a couple of hundred machines running different applications, pretty hard to know every system in depth.

Comparing apples to oranges I think. Not saying one is more important than the other, though I suppose you could compare a programmer with a janitor if you really wanted to. System admins have some programming skills, but there is also integration and working on a timeline that you seldom get being a programmer. When the active system has a limited amount of scheduled downtime or when an unexpected failure happens, being able to run through thousands or more lines of code to identify the problem and fix it without having a complete understanding of the codebase is certainly a skill many admins are known for. Is that more important than writing the code in the first place? Not really, but at the same time, do you as a coder expect to be called at any time day or night or on vacation to fix a problem?

Are developers better coders than system admins, probably in most cases. Are system admins more experienced in handling real time issues, probably in most cases.

As far as developers being a joke compared to developers, well in general system admins, I mean real system admins, make more on average than developers. It seems to me that there are both advantages and disadvantages to each position, but they are both important to proper infrastructure.

After the third, I figured I wasn't going to wait any longer to get to the content. Time to blacklist newscientist I guess.

Really? Cthulu is the lesser evil? Have you looked at Mickey Mouse recently?