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PARIS - Despite a significant drop in education spending, Canada's teenagers scored some of the highest marks in math, science and reading among Western nations, according to a new international study. Canada also had the highest number of students attaining post-secondary education, according to the 500-page international survey put out by the international think tank the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD). The study, called "Education at a Glance," compared national education costs, staffing and test results of 30 countries within the OECD. Among 15 year-olds, Canada joined Japan, Korea, New Zealand, The Netherlands and Finland with the highest...

Women are better at instant counting than men, a mass mathematical experiment has revealed. Over 18,000 people took part in the research, using touch screens inserted among interactive exhibits at a science exhibition in Bristol, UK. The study confirms that the brain has two distinct ways of counting, an idea first proposed 50 years ago. "If I hold up three fingers, most people don't need to count how many there are," says lead scientist Brian Butterworth, from University of College London. But for more than a handful of objects, the time needed by people for their calculation jumps and increases...

Question: When is 39 a passing grade? Answer: When it's the Math Regents exam. A new scoring system announced yesterday suddenly transformed hundreds of failing grades on June's Math A Regents into passing grades. So many students flunked the test that state Education Commissioner Richard Mills threw out the scores, allowing schools to substitute coursework grades for the Regents scores. A new scoring table was released yesterday that establishes a grading curve based on the June 2002 test. "It holds this year's students to the same standards as the ones to which the June 2002 students were held," Mills said....

New Test Scores, Old B-S.By Tom ReevesNational Association of Scholars | August 29, 2003 Recently announced SAT scores for 2003 prompted the College Board's president and others to rejoice at the progress being made in the nation's high schools.  The gains were modest, to be sure.   Verbal scores for women increased by only one point, and men's scores rose three points.  Both men and women enjoyed a gain of three points in mathematics.  Still, the math scores were the highest in more than 35 years.  A record 1.4 million high school students took the examination.Not everyone was jubilant.  The Center...

Something else positive to post. Math SAT scores in 2002 were 516. That matches the 1967 value of 516. But, most importantly, 46% of students now take the SAT whereas much fewer did in 1967. Also way more minorities take the SAT now (whites scored 533 in 2002, which is way above the mostly white 1967 crowd). All things considered, I think it is fair to say this is the best SAT result ever!! Congratulates students.

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time Mechanics, Zeno and Hawking undergo revision A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who...

Amateur mathematician's time theories published at last 31.07.2003 11.04 am University drop-out Peter Lynds, 27, of Wellington says he has further plans for mathematical and philosophical explorations after publication of his theories on the nature of time. Mr Lynds, who studied at university for just six months, said his paper, Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs Discontinuity, was being published in the August issue of a Dutch-based journal, Foundations of Physics Letters. The journal specialises in rapid dissemination of research in theoretical or mathematical physics, or the philosophy of science. Now a broadcasting school tutor, Mr Lynds said...

Scientists have found a simple mathematical relationship that connects the whole of nature, from the tiniest cell to the vast forests of the Amazon. The connections are all based on the three dimensions of the physical world - length, depth and width - plus one, making the number 4. "Four is the magic number of life," says Dr Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, a keynote speaker at the NZ Institute of Physics annual conference last week. Dr West, a British-born physicist, and US ecologists James Brown and Brian Enquist have found more than 50 biological...

Slides Rule At a gathering of the Oughtred Society, the reckoning may be dead or logarithmic, but the conversation is always right on the mark BY SILKE TUDOR To those born after 1970, the thought of sending someone into space with a slide rule seems ridiculous, but, to early Apollo crews, the mere thought of going up without one would have been a good enough reason to scrub a launch. Slide rules (the Pickett N600-ES Dual Base Log/Log to be precise) were compulsory equipment during our first five trips to the moon; in fact, Neil Armstrong probably determined the distance...

1 If your precocious nine-year old daughter asked you to place one penny on the first square of a chessboard, two pence on the second square, four pence on the third, and so on, you would need to put £92 million billion on the 64th and final square. 2 Prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 13 and so on ...) are divisible only by themselves and the number one. The largest prime number yet discovered has 2,098,960 digits. If we were to print nothing except this number across all sections of today's and next week's Observers (containing around 250,000...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - Greg Smith, who graduated from Randolph-Macon College at age 13, will attend graduate school at the University of Virginia, the university said Wednesday. Smith will pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. He plans to take two summer courses and attend U.Va.'s orientation on Monday, his 14th birthday. "It has been my plan since I graduated from high school to apply to U.Va. for my graduate work," said Smith. "I am so excited to have this wonderful opportunity to study at one of our country's best universities." Smith has kept a rapid academic pace since early childhood, solving math...

LONDON(Reuters) At Heathrow Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a slide ruler. Authorities believe he is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

I am looking for help. My sons (7th grade),school district has started to use "new-math" also known as Core Math. I am very unimpressed with this program. I have spoken to his math teacher (not an advocate), and have been told that their is no alternative standard in our district. My problem is not that my son is doing poorly (quite the opposite), but the program itself. After exsaustive research this program stinks. There is absolutely no basic math skills involved. No learning of the basics. Instead the program centers on "community learning" (groups of kids working together to figure...

<p>It has been 20 years since "A Nation at Risk," the 1983 report on education in America, concluded that the "intellectual, moral and spiritual strength of our people" were threatened by a failing education system.</p> <p>The report recommended better-educated and -qualified teachers, regularly assessing teacher and student performance, and performance pay for better teachers. It also proposed a much stronger curriculum, particularly in math and English.</p>

April 15, 2003 Celebrated Math Problem Solved, Russian Reports By SARA ROBINSON [A] Russian mathematician is reporting that he has proved the Poincaré Conjecture, one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics. The mathematician, Dr. Grigori Perelman of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, is describing his work in a series of papers, not yet completed. It will be months before the proof can be thoroughly checked. But if true, it will verify a statement about three-dimensional objects that has haunted mathematicians for nearly a century, and its consequences will reverberate...

Math teachers at Landmark Middle School in the Glendale Elementary School District are piloting a program called the SRA Corrective Math method, which helps students below grade level in math. About 200 children were given a placement test and grouped with children of the same skills. At the Isaac E. Imes K-8 school in Glendale, kids ranging from fifth to eighth grade learn in the same classroom. In one class, students are building a model of the school. They measured the entire campus, including playing fields and basketball courts. Kathy Malone of the Paradise Valley Unified School District's Desert Cove...

The emerging field of Qualculus originated in the mid 80s from data models created to mimic biochemical reactions in a computer program. So what does that have to do with politics? Qualculus also deals with mass changes in a system such as millions of enzymes attacking sugars in metabolism. These mathematical models can also deal with similar mass changes in the economy where millions of people are buying and selling goods and services. One very important factor in the economic models is called Delta V. V is a symbol used to denote VIM, or Very Important Money. VIM is the...

The emerging field of Qualculus originated in the mid 80s from data models created to mimic biochemical reactions in a computer program. So what does that have to do with politics? Quaculus also deals with mass changes in a system such as millions of enzymes attacking sugars in metabolism. These mathimatical models can also deal with simular mass changes in the economy where millions of people are buying and selling goods and services. One very important factor in the economic models is called Delta V. V is a symbol used to denote VIM, or Very Important Money. VIM is the...

<p>LONG BEACH, Calif. - More than half the first-time freshmen at California State University failed to meet math and English proficiency requirements, but most who took remedial courses became proficient by the end of the first year, according to a report released Tuesday.</p>

Date Released: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 House Science Committee Media Advisory: President to Sign NSF Doubling Bill into law on Thursday WHAT: White House Signing Ceremony - H.R. 4664, "National Science Foundation Authorization Act of 2002." WHEN: Thursday, December 19 - 2:05 P.M. WHERE: Roosevelt Room, The White House. WHO: Bill sponsors from both the House and Senate will join the President for the ceremony. MEDIA INFO: Only still cameras will be allowed at the signing ceremony. For more information, contact the White House Office of Media Affairs at 202-456-6238. On Thursday, December 19, President George W. Bush will sign...