Japan’s terrifying earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters have the world watching, talking, and thinking hopeful thoughts for people in that island nation. Yesterday, I listened as a seismologist talked to an NPR radio host about the magnitude of the Sendai earthquake, which has now been upgraded to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

The seismologist said that Japan is no stranger to earthquakes, and has put considerable effort into quake-proofing their infrastructure. But their preparations have targeted magnitude 7.0 quakes. Nobody would have predicted a quake as large as the Sendai quake happening in Japan. “It was almost 1000 times more powerful than a 7.0 magnitude quake,” he said.

This confused me.

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My twitter stream brought this video to me today:

http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-snc6/81489/34/1605260179420_2624.mp4?oh=ac31...

It shows waters rushing into a port town. Watch and listen. Respect the power of moving water.

It looks like Congress has renewed the America COMPETES Act. The House passed (228 to 130) the Senate's version that was passed last week.

I don't know how to introduce this video "Verizon Math Fail" (embedded below) blog. It's been around for a while, so you may have heard about it or seen it.

The piece is less than three minutes long and is full audio, so it should load very quickly in your browser. Give it a listen.

Think about this for a second. We've stumbled upon some innumeracy that rises to the institutional level. Two people at this customer service center can't wrap their heads around this problem. And, according to the blog, Verizon continues to misrepresent the cost of the service that is causing this problem. If this is true, can you imaging how many people had to sign off on the mistake? It boggles the mind.

I like to point out to people that rarely will someone say to a total stranger, "I suck at reading and writings" but often people don't think twice about saying, "I'm bad at math." This says something about our society, doesn't it. If it's true that America's economic competitiveness rests in part on having a scientifically and mathematically literate (if not sophisticated) workforce, than we need to be afraid.

For more discourse on the topic of numeracy and innumeracy, check out these books by John Allen Paulos:

• Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (link to Amazon.com)
• Beyond Numeracy (link to Amazon.com)

Both are interesting reads for anyone.

Disclaimer: I recommend these books because I've read them and they had an impact on me. My interest in recommending these or other items is not financial. It stems from my desire to draw more people into the study of science and mathematics.

Just discovered this place, the Museum of Mathematics, via Make Magazine. I don't know much about it, and the web page doesn't have much detailed information on its exhibits, but from what I can see it seems pretty cool.

The Museum of Mathematics is contributing a "Math Monday" entry to the Make Magazine blog that looks like its worth a follow, too.

Kristi Oloffson's article "The Job Market: Is a College Degree Worth Less?" for Time.com, 8 December 2009, talks about the changing role a college degree plays in hiring decisions. Where it used to be that fewer than half of all American citizens had a college degree, a college degree made a job applicant stand out from the applicant pool. Now, about 70% of American citizens earn a baccalaureate degree. This means that a college degree has become a minimum requirement for many entry-level jobs. One of my colleague in industry likes to say that a baccalaureate degree is just your 'drivers license' for employment.

The article then goes on to explore (as well as a short article can) what hiring managers look for when they examine a candidate pool for jobs. There's not many concrete ideas for making an application more competitiveness, but there are a couple general ideas mentioned. Employers are looking for people who

• can do jobs that can't be outsourced (see Friedman's tome, The World Is Flat, for a discussion on what these jobs are) and who can work independently,
• have the right-brain skills of seeing structure in chaos, connecting the dots, and
• have done things while earning a degree that distinguish themselves from others.

Let me add a some flesh to these bones with some ideas that Truman's STEM Talent Expansion Program has come to believe in.

• soft skills like the ability to communicate orally and in writing are critical, as are analytical skills that contribute to problem solving,
• internships and research experiences not only give you an edge when applying for jobs (read them as 'work experience'), but they expose you to the realities of employment and help you make choices regarding what you want to do with your professional life,
• the more mathematics you take (and learn), the more competitive you'll be, regardless of the position you're applying for,
• do things that teach you how to work as part of a team, especially if the team is cross-disciplinary,
• GPA is not nearly as important as you think it is.

Do you have other advice to share with students who are currently in college or planning their college career? Share it in the comments.

This morning, I saw a tweet that drew my attention to the Mathematical Association of America's web page for the 2010 Math Awareness Month, [here].    The month is sponsored by the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics

There's a nice article in the New York Times, online edition, today that touches on several STEM talent expansion issues (New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs, by Steve Lohr). At the heart of this story, though not explored much, America's economic need for people who can leverage computational tools and methods is juxtaposed against the way computer science is portrayed to today's students. The article uses a couple tiny case studies of people whose careers use computers in a central way but who came at computing through non-standard directions. (This means that they weren't computer science majors, first; their primary passion lay outside the CS major.)

As a STEM educator (who is not a computer scientist), the article hurt a bit to read. On the one hand, it made me want to start wading into this area by helping developing the type of classes for junior high and high school students that are described in the article. On the other hand, I know that I should defer in this regard to my colleagues in computer science. Shouldn't I? Or are they the people who are responsible for drying up the supply of American talent in computer science? Sure, they might point the finger at lawyers and financiers whose high-salary careers seem to be attracting students away from computer science, but what has been their response?

Reading this article makes me more certain that we should no leave science and technology education up to the scientists and technologists. We should not sit back and hope that our local computer science department takes the time and effort required to create and offer a course that presents computation to young people in a holistic way that's integrated with topics from the 'real world' (as opposed to ins-and-outs of some programming language or other). We're perfectly justified in leaving them behind if they think their way is the Right Way to train future computer scientists.

I'll get off this train of thought now, as I'm risking taking this post away from what I'd originally intended it to be: a shout out and thumbs-up about a nice article on STEM talent expansion efforts.