perception as Bayesian inference and learning, context sensitivity expresses as the precision weighting of prediction errors

what’s meant by intelligence

There Is Value in Every Child, Even If He or She Is Not “Smart in SomeWay”I am willing to bet you have heard someone say, “Every student is intelligent insome way,” or ask students to identify “What kind of smart are you?” I thinkteachers say this in an effort to communicate an egalitarian attitude to students:everyone is good at something. But there are a couple of reasons to be leery ofthis attitude. First, this sort of statement rubs me the wrong way because itimplies that intelligence brings value. Every child is unique and valuable,whether or not they are intelligent or have much in the way of mental ability. Iadmit that being the father of a severely mentally retarded child probably makesme sensitive on this issue. My daughter is not intelligent in any sense of theword, but she is a joyful child who brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people

There Is Value in Every Child, Even If He or She Is Not “Smart in SomeWay”

.To get the science whizreading for pleasure, don’t hand him a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry; givehim the memoirs of physicist Richard Feynman. I think that’s a sensible idea, ifnot terribly startling. I also think it will only take you so far. It’s a lot like tryingto appeal to students’ individual interests, a point I took up in Chapter One

What was singular was their capacityfor sustained work. Great scientists are almost always workaholics. Each of usknows his or her limit; at some point we need to stop working and watch a stupidtelevision program, read People magazine, or something similar. Great scientistshave incredible persistence, and their threshold for mental exhaustion is veryhigh

measure of the probability that the pre- and post-synaptic neurons both fire spikes during a small time interva

People who took their last math course more thanfifty years ago still know their algebra as well as people who took it five yearsago

scoring well on a working-memorytest predicts scoring well on a reasoning test,

shallow knowledge and on lack of transfer

numbered tracks on a CD

ratings from 1 to 7 of how much peoplelike Shredded Wheat,

whereas I think there is value, interest, andbeauty in learning about things that don’t have much to do with me. I’m notsaying it never makes sense to talk about things students are interested in.WhatI’m suggesting is that student interests should not be the main driving force oflesson planning. Rather, they might be used as initial points of contact that helpstudents understand the main ideas you want them to consider, rather than as thereason or motivation for them to consider these ideas

Teachers need to be both well organized and approachable.

They are able to connect personally withstudents, and they organize the material in a way that makes it interesting andeasy to understand

A two-item survey would be almost as useful as a thirty-item survey,because all of the questions really boil down to two: Does the professor seemlike a nice person, and is the class well organized? (See Figure 8.) Although theydon’t realize they are doing so, students treat each of the thirty items as variantsof one of these two questions

. In one of my all-timefavorite experiments, the researchers led subjects to think of one or anothercharacteristic of words by placing them in sentences—for example, “Themoving men lugged the PIANO up the flight of stairs” or “The professionalplayed the PIANO with a lush, rich sound.”5 The subjects knew that they neededto remember only the word in capitals. Later, experimenters administered amemory test for the words, with some hints. For piano, the hint was either“something heavy” or “something that makes music.”The results showed that thesubjects’ memories were really good if the hint matched the way they hadthought about piano, but poor if it didn’t.That is, if the subjects read the movingmen version of the sentence

Whatever studentsthink about is what they will remember.The cognitive principle that guides thischapter is: Memory is the residue of thought

Shallow Knowledge Is Better Than No Knowledge

I suppose we are to take these remarks as ironic,or at least as interesting, but I for one don’t need brilliant, highly capable mindstelling me (and my children) how silly it is to know things

. Books, newspapers, and magazines aresingularly helpful in introducing new ideas and new vocabulary to students

e.They come to school with a bigger vocabulary and more knowledge aboutthe world than underprivileged kids. And because knowing things makes iteasier to learn new things (as described in the next section), the gap betweenprivileged and underprivileged kids widens

knowledge of baseball determined how much they understood of thestory.Whether they were “good readers” or “bad readers” didn’t matter nearly asmuch as what they knew.

Mark would like to impress his boss. Putting these facts together would help youunderstand that Mark is afraid he’ll ruin the food the first time

How can you make the problem interesting? A common strategy is to try tomake the material “relevant” to students

People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unlessthe cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking.

Repetition is good for learning but terrible for motivation.With toomuch repetition, motivation plummets, students stop trying, and no learningtakes place.

e firstevolve ΨABC using the advected real Guinzburg-Landauequation

ω(r) = hm∫dsdr0ds δ(r −r0(s))

arbitrary sequence of exactly n

ion and then look for a decay into a stable equilibrium point (as a hint, the equilibrium point is stable at 9 μA/cm2, but the model goes into a limit cycle when started at an initial condition equal to the equilibrium point for zero current, determined above). Thus the equilibrium point will have to be determined at each current by explicitly finding it

stability of the model at rest with Iext=0

typical particle will have momentum of order P = (2mkBT) 1 /2

The transition of a channel between these different states is called gating

ACh receptor (and other ligand-gated receptors) must conduct ions through a channel

they open and close in response to speci!c electrical, mechanical, or chemical signals,

) They recognize and select speci!c ions

500 volts per second

cmdVdt=−im+IeA

interspike-intervalfiring rate of the neuron

the potential of the extracellularfluid outside a neuron isdefined to be 0.

adelung [2] has demonstrated that the Schrödinger equa-tion can be transformedin hydrodynamic form.

scattering length

+⎛⎝⎜⎞⎠⎟Emgx22d.322

order parameter of the condensate within a mean-field approximation

vortex reconnections

ortexfilament model based on the Biot–Savart lawand one of its approximations commonly referred to as the local induction approximation

quantised vortices correspond totopological defects of the order parameter of the system where the vorticity is represented by adistribution of Dirac’sδ-function

second sound in4He,

Atoms in the lowest energy state have the unique property that they can behavecollectively and undergo collective oscillations allowing them to display quantum mechanicaleffects on a macroscopic scale

track the topological defects of the superfluid andreconstruct the vortex lines which correspond to zeros of thefiel

pseudo-vorticityfield of the associated complex scalar order parameter ofthe superfluid

circulationintegral#Cvs·dris equal either to thequantum of circulationκ=h=mor to zero,