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Re: [Phys-L] integrated science, data science, big data, not defining the learning



Who says that the learning of physics best occurs in an academic environment?

My cat does her physics calculations before every jump, and she usually gets it right, except when she misjudges whether she is approaching a claw-worthy surface. And her calculation time varies depending on her situation - she may have only one second for calculating, before becoming attacked, for example.

Similarly, the champion high diver, who has never heard of physics, must, nevertheless, do physics in his head for a variable number of seconds before he jumps.

Bill Norwood
Retired Technician
U of MD Physics Dept
1966-2018

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 20, 2022, at 8:02 PM, Zeev Wurman via Phys-l <phys-l@mail.phys-l.org> wrote:

I like and agree with essentially everything John wrote so I will not
attempt to add anything.

This discussion, however, brings yet again the question why teaching
science in American high schools produces such dismal results. I am aware
of Physics Last, of Physics First, and other efforts of improvement, yet
nothing is really helping and I personally think nothing of such kind will
ever help even under the best of circumstances.

The key, in my opinion, is elsewhere. It is in those blasted "Carnegie
Units," that force high schools to teach a full year, or at least a full
semester, a *single* science (be it Physics, Chemistry, bio, earth,
"general," whatever) every day of the week. And what if biology content
requires some chemistry or physics? Tough! Either the teachers will gloss
over it, or they try to provide a quick--and easily forgettable--"catch up"
intermezzo. Compound it with the fact that most colleges require only 2 or
3 years of science--any science--and it's a small wonder most our students
have superficial understanding of *any* science and often a complete
absence of some Sciences.

I grew up in Israel and while the Israeli system has its own issues, this
is not one of them. Basically the system works as follows:
In every grade in HS one studies essentially all sciences, but the focus
changes at each grade. So, for example, in 9th grade one may have 2 hours
of Chem, 2 hours of relatively math-light Physics, and 2 hours of
chem-light biology, in 10th grade one can get another 2 hours of chem, 3
hours of Physics and one of biology (or 3 biology and 1-2 physics if one
chooses life-science orientation) and in 11th grade perhaps one hour of
chem and 3 hours of physics (or 1 physics and 3 bio in life-science). Etc.,
etc.

Math teachers teach math appropriate and necessary to teach the science in
each grade, and vice versa, science teaching pedagogy is heavily reliant on
the math taught (and on other Sciences being taught in parallel) so
calculus-based science (not only physics) can often be taught in Senior
year.


Clearly, this
-- expects curriculum coordination among the science teachers and the math
teachers
-- changes the daily schedule for every day of the week
-- causes no student to leave HS without *some* instruction in all key
Sciences
-- makes scheduling more complex and in junior/senior years allows students
to pick "orientation" that will beef some subjects and reduce others,
similar to our electives in a sense
-- does not produce Carnegie Units making transfer across schools more
complex

Yet I find this method much superior to what we practice today. I believe
most other nations, whether in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere compose their
HS science curricula in a generally similar way.

Perhaps if our science instruction in HS would improve, colleges will have
a somewhat easier task :-)

Ze'ev



On Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 6:21 PM John Denker via Phys-l <phys-l@mail.phys-l.org>
wrote:

Hi --

Let's take a higher-level look at the big-data discussion.

Just because it needs to be done doesn't mean the physics
faculty has to do it, althogh sometimes it seems that way.
A big part of the introductory physics class is remedial
math, but it doesn't have to be that way.

There is such a thing as integrated science instruction.
At Princeton, a typical first-year homework problem is
to write a program to simulate the diffusion of some
biomolecule. That ticks the boxes for computing, physics,
chemistry, and biology all at once.

This isn't a particularly new idea. When I was a college
freshman, many moons ago, we noticed a conspiracy between
the math and physics classes. Math did derivatives, physics
did principle of virtual work. Math did matrices, physics
did photon polarization. And so on. There was no formal
arrangement AFAIK; it was just that the math professors
and physics professors were friends. They talked. They
shared ideas about authentic homework exercises.

In this vein, let me point out that there are some huge
natural-language corpora. One possible exercise would be
to use that, plus some nontrivial programming, to form an
estimate of the entropy of English text. That ticks the
boxes for big data, algorithms, linguistics, and physics
(twice). Entropy is important in every branch of physics,
and big data techniques are becoming almost as important.

There's also such a thing as computational drug discovery.
This involves reeeeeally big databases. The data is so
valuable that you might have a hard time laying hands
on it, but on the other side of the same coin the drug
companies are so desperate for trained data scientists
that they might bend over backwards to help you teach.

I'm almost afraid to mention it, but there is a monstrous
industry that uses big data to target consumers and voters.
That's why nowadays it is almost impossible to buy bread
or milk or anything else without coughing up an ID number.
Cambridge Analytica and all that. Nasty business.

Since this is at heart a pedagogy list, let me add that
there are some interesting pedagogical and psychological
corpora. There is fun stuff you can do with this, e.g.:
Wang & Bao (2010)
Analyzing Force Concept Inventory with Item Response Theory
https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.5473

Physicists often argue, rightly, that the skills learned
in physics class are portable to other fields of endeavor.
My point is that the reverse is sometimes true. Physics
majors need to learn big data techniques, but if they
learn that in some other context not much is lost.


So ...... putting on my science manager hat ......

I suspect it might be about time to convene a Big Data
BoF (birds of a feather) meeting. I find pizza helps with
this. Order a bunch of pizza and invite all the big-data
guys you can find, from physics, astronomy, linguistics,
biochem, educational psychology, comp sci, B-school, and
everywhere else you can think of. Ask the first-order
invitees who else should be invited.

It would be prohibitively difficult to integrate the
whole university-wide instructional program on Day One,
but you don't need to do that. Instead, start by coming
up with one integrated course that ticks as many boxes
as possible. It might help to start by identifying a few
interdisciplinary exercises and projects. Then figure
out who's going to teach it. I predict students will
sign up in droves.

You know what else helps with this? Money. See if you
can get a grant from somewhere, to buy somebody a year
of relief from teaching and other routine duties, so
they can do the curriculum development work.

I guarantee this is not easy. However, the alternatives
are worse in every way: they are just as difficult, and
end up in a less-desirable place.
_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@mail.phys-l.org
https://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@mail.phys-l.org
https://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l