1999: Eric graduates Stuyvesant Highschool and begins attending Brown University. At the time, he foolishly assumes that his affiliation with Brown will be limited to a mere four years.

2003: Eric graduates from Brown University with an Bachelor of Science in Applied Math/CS. In a shrewd attempt to avoid joining the workforce, or even pay for a U-Haul, he elects to remain at Brown and begins living with 9 of his yet-to-graduate friends. He also starts working for professor John Savage, securing his status in Brown’s directory as a “Class F Employee”.

2004: Eric is accepted to Brown’s PhD program and elects to continue working under Professor Savage as a computer science graduate student. Upon renewing his Brown Student ID, he immediately remarks on its absurdly distant expiration date: 06/01/10.

2006: Eric fulfills the requirements for a Masters of Computer Science and is admitted to PhD candidacy. Although he is awarded his Masters, he chooses to sleep in and skip the degree ceremony.

2008: Eric boldly relocates to New York City while continuing to work toward his PhD. The majority of his research-related discussions now take place between him and the cat.

2009: Eric’s proposed thesis, “Reliable Computing at the Nanoscale”, is approved! Completion of his third Brown University degree appears imminent.

2010: 9 agonizing months and 150 harrowing pages later, Eric sends out a finalized draft of his thesis to his thesis committee and schedules his defense for March 5th. He also relocates to Providence for his final semester in order to begin work with Professor Michael Black. He is enthusiastic about his new research area and extremely enthusiastic that he will not be re-renewing his student ID.

So there you have it. I’m back in Providence (at least for the semester), and I can now officially assert that my tenure as a Brown student has “spanned three decades”. I’m also looking forward to resumed blog posting (plus, the frickin’ olympics just started up again!)

During the Atlantic’s viewing party for President Obama’s speech, Stiles interrupted Klein’s response to the president’s proposals to talk about how city’s public schools had failed her. When she transferred to a private middle school, her science teacher instructed the class to take out their beakers, and she didn’t know what one was, she says. “Everyone laughed at me. I’d never had a science class!” Afterward, Stiles, mortified (“I have a lot to say and I was wildly inarticulate”), apologized and awkwardly asked for Klein’s e-mail.

The funny thing is, I’m 95% percent sure I was in Julia’s 7th grade science class (earth science with Ms. Allen). I have only a vague recollection of the incident she describes, but I do remember that Ms. Allen was intimidating, and I certainly apologize for laughing. Also, it’s really too bad for Julia that she missed out on 5th and 6th grade science at Friends, because our teacher, Glenn McKnight, was probably the best teacher I ever had. Having spent several days upset over our country’s math curricula, it’s a welcome contrast to recall some education done right (also, for the record, I liked practically all of my math teachers, both at Friends and Stuyvesant, and I do think Friends does a better job than most schools)

The great thing about Glenn was that he taught Science, not just facts, but scientific inquiry: forming conjectures, making predictions, conducting experiments, and examining their outcomes. To do this, he’d lead the class through a scientific investigation of say, why objects sink or float, or how batteries power circuits. By having us suggest ideas, develop experiments, then revise their hypothesis, the stuff we got tested on became secondary (and with good cause, we’d all see it again in grades 7-12 anyway). Plus, Glenn would let older students come back to his class and visit during their free periods, which was definitely a good time. Oh, also he let me write a few damn funny plot summaries of the Second Voyage of the Mimi Series. (Maybe if I can dig them up I’ll use them to fill in the season’s missing Wikipedia entry)

And there you have it. My 5th and 6th grade science classes were top notch, and my 7th grade science class was a challenge for now-famous actress Julia Stiles (who was actually a top student, I should note). Even so, Julia has since appeared in a number of thoroughly enjoyable and extremely successful movies, where as I have squandered my 20’s working toward a PhD in Computer Science. I think we can safely chalk up the whole thing as triumph on Julia’s end.

Eric’s Top 5 Stiles Film Picks: State and Main, 10 Things I Hate About You, the entire Bourne Trilogy.

Bonus Fact: My father went to school with Julia’s mother, although they were a few years apart.

Paul’s essay, Lockhart’s Lament, is a little on the long side (24 pages), but the first three pages make his point beautifully (and humorously). Remember back when you were ages 6 – 18 taking 12 years worth of math classes, well it turns out you weren’t learning math. At first you learned some arithmetic (albeit in an extremely dry, monotonous fashion), and after that it was all downhill. Seriously, just read the first 3 pages, it’s a good time (also maybe check out the last two pages for quick drilldown of the standard US math education, plus I really like page 18 onward).

Here’s the big secret about math: It’s an art, not a science. It may look like a science, but that’s just because science has a lot of math in it. Almost all of mathematics, particularly the math you see in school, was not developed to try understand the world. It was developed when smart people made up interesting questions, then thought about how to answer them in interesting ways. As such, no one should attempt to learn math without taking time, a lot of time, to think about those very same questions. Examples of said questions (from Paul’s essay) include: “What is the area of a triangle?” or “Given the sum and difference of two numbers, can you determine what they are?”

With luck, time, and guidance from the teacher, students may actually be able to figure out solutions to these problem (and remember them), but even if they fail, they’ll make progress, and when they are taught the answer (i.e. a formula, an algorithm, a proof) they’ll appreciate why someone is bothering to explain it to them. Also they’ll have gotten a taste for the amount of thought that’s realistically required to understand math (hint: it’s a lot).

Sadly, in your own math classes, you were probably too busy learning to solve “math problems”—and you’ve no doubt forgotten how to solve most of them—to spend any time at all thinking about actual math. When it’s was all over, your big reward was that you went to college, got a job, and then never, ever, solved a “math problem” again. Maybe you use arithmetic, although I seriously doubt you find yourself multiplying 3 digit numbers or carrying out long division, but if you do anything beyond that it’s almost certainly material you saw/revisited in college.

In short, we really get very little in return for 12 long years of math education. Even for someone who likes math (me!) there’s just a ton of wasted time. Most of the skills you learn aren’t at all practical, and the most of the interesting ideas behind them are left out. I could go on (and trust me, I will) but mainly I just wanted to share Paul’s essay because it does a great job of illustrating, to the corrupt masses, what mathematics is actually about. As Paul points out on page three, most people leave high school with absolutely no idea.

I have never taken Adderall, but I have many friends who have. Molly Young’s essay (which is short, you should read it!) mostly describes her own experience with an Adderall-induced super work ethic. As Molly mentions (and Matt affirms), her experience is far from universal, but it is certainly representative.

It’s tough to find actual usage statistics, but Adderall XR (extended release) is currently Shire Pharmaceuticals best-seller, accounting for over $1 billion in annual revenue (for reference, 30 pills cost about $100). What’s more, Shire’s exclusive rights to the drug expire next year, so prices are likely to fall (although if Shire has its way, they’ll soon be a new ADHD drug of choice).

Having heard so much fuss made over sports related drug use, I was surprised to hear Randy proclaim Adderall use ethically acceptable. One questioner—Molly I believe— felt the same way. As she put it, “Marion Jones had to return all the prize money she earned while taking steroids. Should I be stripped of all the A’s I received for papers written on Adderall?”

Randy was quick to draw a distinction between sports, which are by definition competitive, and higher education, which is supposed to be about bettering oneself. Under this arguably idealistic view of higher education, taking Adderall unnecessarily does not force others to do the same. Simply harming oneself, Randy explained, is not unethical.

Most in the audience agreed that some students find college much more competitive than Randy’s answer acknowledged. At Brown, I doubt students are genuinely forced to take Adderall just to keep up, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to find a few students who thought they needed it for that reason. Also, even in a noncompetitive student body, widespread Adderall use has an impact on person’s college experience. This may not be a negative impact, but ethical or not, we need to start asking ourselves how many people we’re comfortable with taking Adderall.

If we’re not ok with performance enhancing drugs in sports (although Malcolm Gladwell thinks we should reconsider), it’s seems odd for us to be ok with them in everday life. And what about Adderall use on the job? Surely a fresh generation of Adderall enthusiasts aren’t going to give it up just because they’ve graduated. Should we be worried?

I personally am terrible at sitting at a desk and focusing on work. Still, I don’t see myself taking Adderall anytime soon to enhance my attention. I have been told that a well-known, long-lived, and particularly prolific mathematician, Paul Erdos, took amphetamenes later in life specifically to do math. I’ve also never heard anyone question the value of his work because of it. In the 20th century, Erdos was a rarity, but in the brave new world of tomorrow, there’s going to be a lot more folks at the top of their field who’s productivity and personality are directly dependent on the pills they’ve committed to taking.